Oriana Skylar Mastro

Oriana Skylar Mastro
Stanford University | SU

Doctor of Philosophy

About

56
Publications
21,106
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
240
Citations
Introduction
I am a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University where my research focuses on Chinese military and security policy, war termination, and coercive diplomacy. I am also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. I continue to serve in the United States Air Force Reserve for which I work as a strategic planner at INDOPACOM. I hold a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton.

Publications

Publications (56)
Research
Full-text available
China’s military modernization, coupled with increasingly assertive behavior, has led to more frequent and dangerous encounters between the PLA and the militaries of countries across the Indo-Pacific. These interactions have heightened tensions, with specific incidents emphasizing the risk of miscalculations that could escalate into major conflicts...
Chapter
Full-text available
Over the past twenty-five years, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has heavily invested in modernizing its military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Thanks to a 740 percent increase in its budget, top-leadership attention, strategic emulation, and innovation, the PLA now presents a formidable challenge to the US-led international order, the...
Chapter
Full-text available
The focus of this volume is how the United States should respond to deterring two peer competitors: Russia and China. This paper’s main contention is that the nature of U.S.-China military competition from 2035 to 2050 will exhibit some unique characteristics compared to the U.S.-Russian nuclear relationship that require new thinking on these topic...
Article
Why are some states open to talking while fighting while others are not? We argue that a state considering opening negotiations is concerned not only with the adverse inference that the opposing state will draw, but also the actions that the opposing state might take in response to that inference. We use a formal model, with assumptions grounded in...
Chapter
Full-text available
Taiwan is a close, trusted partner in the global semiconductor supply chain. The United States and Taiwan should seek to use the semiconductor industry to promote Taiwan's prosperity and stability by creating an environment that fosters deeper business-to-business, research, academic, individual, and civil ties with Taiwan and other global partners...
Article
China’s Yellow Sea strategy has received less scholarly and policy attention than its approaches to the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and the Indian Ocean. However, China has significant economic and strategic reasons to prioritize its presence in these waters, including ongoing sovereignty disputes with the Republic of Korea (ROK). Chinese...
Article
As countries in the Indo-Pacific seek to manage the challenges posed by China’s growing power and assertiveness, they are increasingly relying on minilateral groupings and emphasizing deterrence to maintain regional peace. The essays in this Asia Policy roundtable address the resulting question: can minilateral groupings deter coercion and aggressi...
Article
What are intentions and how should states decipher them? For scholars, the debate about uncertainty and intentions lies at the heart of international relations. And yet there are theoretical and empirical issues with how scholars have defined, measured, and operationalized intentions to date in the context of understanding China’s rise. This articl...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter evaluates the role that nuclear deterrence plays in the US–China strategic relationship. It lays out the pathways to conflict and the implications for nuclear use, evaluates how allies influence nuclear dynamics (the conditions under which nuclear weapons would most likely be used and how) and explores how escalation to nuclear conflic...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter evaluates the role that nuclear deterrence plays in the US–China strategic relationship. It lays out the pathways to conflict and the implications for nuclear use, evaluates how allies influence nuclear dynamics (the conditions under which nuclear weapons would most likely be used and how) and explores how escalation to nuclear conflic...
Chapter
Full-text available
The US national defense strategy has characterized the US-China relationship as one of great power competition—a term referring to the struggle between powerful states to shape the world or regional orders in a manner favorable to their interests. Deterring and defeating Chinese aggression requires the United States to 1) convince Beijing that the...
Article
Oriana Skylar Mastro and critics debate her earlier article, "The Taiwan Temptation."
Chapter
Full-text available
The rise of China from a poor, isolated country to a prosperous and powerful one in forty years’ time is one of the most interesting and impactful phenomena in international relations. China’s grand strategy has evolved over time from strategies of survival under Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping to regaining its standing as a major power under Jiang Ze...
Chapter
Full-text available
China and the actions of its leadership have been increasingly seen as a challenge to U.S. national security. This belief is held in common by high-level state officials throughout their official statements as well as by the general public in polls about China’s perceived threat. This article seeks to examine the extent to which China poses as a ch...
Article
What are China’s intentions in the South China Sea? In this article I present an analytical framework for understanding intentions based on two components: 1) distinguishing between intentions about the process and those about the outcome and 2) incorporating information from discourse, behavior, and capabilities. Through applying the framework, I...
Article
Full-text available
Students and instructors alike have lamented the nature of methods instruction in political science curricula. Existing research has presented a number of innovative approaches to engage students in this important learning enterprise, from blogging and simulations to data visualization and the use of clickers. This article builds upon this literatu...
Article
Even though the Kim regime has been an exception, the pattern of rapid, unexpected regime collapse among hereditary autocracies indicates a need for policymakers to be prepared.
Article
The original version of the article unfortunately contained a mistake. The right-side header of the “Theoretical Framework” table on page four is mislabeled. “Lower Likelihood of War” should be written as “Higher Likelihood of War.” The correct information is given below. © 2018, Journal of Chinese Political Science/Association of Chinese Political...
Article
“China will not, repeat, not repeat the old practice of a strong country seeking hegemony,” Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said last September. It was a message that Chinese officials have been pushing ever since their country’s spectacular rise began. For decades, they have been at pains to downplay China’s power and reassure other countries—e...
Article
Rising powers and the consequent shifts in the balance of power have long been identified as critical challenges to the international order. What is the likelihood that China and the United States will fall into the Thucydides Trap, meaning that the two countries will fight a major war during a potential power transition? This article creates a fra...
Article
Is China likely to intervene if war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, and if so, does Beijing have the willingness and capabilities to deal safely with North Korea's nuclear program? Securing and destroying Pyongyang's nuclear weapons would be the United States’ top priority in a Korean contingency, but scholars and policymakers have not adequate...
Article
Full-text available
What factors do autocracies evaluate when responding to perceived threats and why might they fail to balance appropriately? I posit that autocratic leaders may choose greater exposure to an external threat if, by doing so, it preserves regime legitimacy. Specifically, the desire to promote a positive image to one’s domestic public creates incentive...
Article
Full-text available
How has China historically approached diplomacy, mediation and escalation in conflict? To what degree are these historical patterns of behavior likely to manifest themselves in future conflicts, especially given all the changes to China’s internal and external environment since China’s last war in 1979? And how might the U.S. role in the region, an...
Article
Full-text available
This article addresses the question of how China ends wars in a three-stage approach. First, I synthesize the central elements of the extensive literature on war termination and conflict resolution. From this review, I derive three independent variables that impact the likelihood of conflict resolution in a given period: states’ approach to wartime...
Article
Full-text available
Over the last two decades, Chinese relations with North Korea have deteriorated drastically behind the scenes, as China has tired of North Korea’s insolent behavior and reassessed its own interests on the peninsula. Today, China is no longer wedded to North Korea’s survival. In the event of a conflict or the regime’s collapse, Chinese forces would...
Article
Full-text available
This paper seeks to provide an overview of the evolving airpower challenge that the United States faces in the Western Pacific and beyond. We will begin by exploring Chinese military writings on air base strike operations, and then evaluate the current trajectory of the PLA’s precision strike capabilities for conducting such operations. Following t...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter explains how a broad base of national power, the prevalence of perceived maritime threats, and national narratives about the “century of humiliation” and Chinese exceptionalism combine to make regional power projection the most attractive national military strategy to Chinese leaders.
Chapter
This chapter explains how a broad base of national power, the prevalence of perceived maritime threats, and national narratives about the “century of humiliation” and Chinese exceptionalism combine to make regional power projection the most attractive national military strategy to Chinese leaders.
Article
Under what conditions will China decide to employ military capabilities abroad and will this be a positive or negative development for the United States and the international order? We argue that developing expeditionary capabilities is clearly a priority for high-level leadership and the domestic public’s expectation for protection while abroad fu...
Article
Scholars and officials persistently criticize China for low transparency in its military affairs. Why does Beijing exacerbate the asymmetric information problem, even though this theoretically increases the likelihood of conflict? I offer an explanation, the vulnerability hypothesis, for why rising powers are likely to reject military transparency...
Chapter
Full-text available
What are Chinese strategic intentions in Northeast Asia and how have they evolved in recent years? I argue that Northeast Asia is the foundation of China’s strategy to facilitate its rise, keep Japan down, and eventually to keep the United States out.
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter considers the doctrinal, strategic and force posture changes the PLA may undergo to become a global expeditionary force by 2025-2030 and assesses the implications of these changes for Chinese propensity to use force and regional and global stability.
Article
Full-text available
As Chinese political, economic and military power continues to grow at impressive rates, the impact of Chinese external behavior on the region has increased in tandem. A debate has emerged in scholarly and policy communities about whether china will moderate its assertiveness foreign policy behavior, which has emerged primarily in its approach to t...
Article
Full-text available
For over a decade, academics, policymakers and government officials have been engaged in a relentless debate about Chinese military capabilities and intentions. This debate about current Chinese capabilities and intentions only marginally informs decision makers about China’s future. While the Chinese leadership would prefer to stay focused on inte...
Chapter
Full-text available
What are the major components of China’s A2/AD approach and how does the U.S. rebalancing address these challenges? In this chapter, I will lay out a comprehensive characterization of China’s active defense strategy—the A2/AD approach in American parlance. I will explore how China is responding to the U.S. declaration that it will rebalance toward...
Chapter
Full-text available
In this chapter, the author first outlines the historical basis of noninterference, how its interpretation has evolved over time, and assesses the conditions under which China is flexible about its application. The author then identifies the pressures for change that have shaped its historical evolution. Lastly, the chapter will address the more in...
Article
Full-text available
The conviction that economic ties will engender peace is a lynchpin of US strategy, but Asian leaders view failure to protect territorial claims as worse than the losses associated with a limited war.
Technical Report
Full-text available
This study will assess the steps that Japan should take to bolster its air power stance and how the United States can contribute to these efforts. Currently the JASDF operates approximately 350 fighters, including FB15J, FB4EJ, and FB2 fighters, but plans to shift to a smaller, more technologically advanced force of 260 aircraft. Traditionally, the...
Article
Full-text available
On 8 March 2009, five Chinese vessels shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in close proximity to the US Naval Ship (USNS) Impeccable. This paper seeks to explain the incident and its aftermath in the context of Chinese coercive diplomacy. China's strategy, designed to motivate the US to cease surveillance operations near its militarily sensitive ar...
Book
Since at least the early 1950s, the entire Asia-Pacific region has struggled with the complicated and complex relationship between China and Taiwan—today the Taiwan question is considered a potential flashpoint for a much larger international conflict. Bringing together experts from the United States and Taiwan, Assessing the Threat provides a comp...

Network

Cited By