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China, the US-Japan alliance, and the security dilemma in East Asia
... By contrast, many Eurasian states, including China, Korea, and (less so) Japan, face encirclement or abut powerful neighbors. The local intensities of the NEA security dilemma do not impact the USA as much (Christensen 1999Christensen , 2006). The only serious long-term territorial threat to the USA in East Asia would arise from a hegemonic Chinese-led bloc. ...
... When Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said, 'China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that is just a fact' (Pomfret 2010), he was invoking a classic Thucydidean rationale for competition and dominance. Hence, US Asian allies, most obviously Japan and Taiwan, could easily tip into a tight actionÀreaction security dilemma with China (Christensen 1999Christensen , 2006Christensen , 2011 Khoo and Smith 2005: 197; van Tol et al. 2010 ). Conservatives are already suggesting that China and Japan are in a 'cold war' (Auslin 2012). ...
This paper posits four ranked, generic goals of state foreign policy, maps them against the American ‘pivot,’ and concludes with possible handicaps of that shift. Drawn broadly from realism and liberalism, those abstract goals are as follows: national security, economic growth, prestige among the community of states, and the promotion of cherished national values. Applying this framework specifically to Northeast Asia, the USA, regarding security, is likely to increasingly ‘hedge’ China, and its North Korean client, with regional allies, off-shore balancing, and a shift toward AirSea Battle. On trade, the USA will continue its decades-long effort to reduce Asian mercantilism by tying Asian traders into multilateral, neoliberal rule sets. Regarding prestige, the ‘Beijing Consensus’ is a growing challenge to US soft power which the pivot seeks to refute. In addition, on values, the USA will continue to nag especially China to conform to US standards of law and human rights. The USA will continue to push the broad liberalization of Asian polities and economies. The democratic peace and liberal trade are the ideological frame and motivation of the pivot. Nevertheless, significant US handicaps may slow the pivot: American cultural distance from Asia means little public support and understanding of its necessity; strong regional allies will tempt the USA toward offshore balancing on the cheap; and the dire US budget shortfall will reduce the resources necessary to fund it.
... Finally, they resolve security dilemmas between American allies and their local adversaries. 11 Security dilemmas occur when one state tries to make itself more secure, inadvertently making other states feel less secure in the process. 12 For example, suppose Japan were to develop nuclear weapons to deter China. ...
The US Army is under pressure. If trends persist, it will soon shrink to its smallest size in nearly 70 years. While there are sound arguments for the current drawdown, reasonable policies can still yield unintended consequences. In particular, we argue Ameri-can landpower helps make America's conventional and nuclear security guarantees credible. Since these guarantees stabilize alliances, deter aggression, and curb nuclear proliferation, landpower's relative decline could have serious implications for the broader security situation of the United States.
... Beijing's sensitivity, and belief that BMD is fundamentally o ensive, explains why it has continued to pursue conventional and nuclear missile force modernisation despite security-dilemma theory positing that a notionally defensive system such as BMD should not create an arms race. 170 ...
Since the introduction of Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door policy in 1979, the value and complexity of Sino-Japanese economic ties have grown exponentially. However, even as economic ties have developed, security relations have deteriorated as perceptions of a ‘China threat’ and a ‘re-militarised Japan’ have emerged in Tokyo and Beijing. The simultaneous existence of these trends challenges international relations theory. Economic interdependence theories expect that the development of economic relations reduces the role of security in bilateral relations. Conversely, neorealist theories posit that, given the preeminence of national security, a perception of threat will cool economic relations.
Sino-Japanese economic relations have demonstrable bilateral benefits. Additionally, economic relations have created interest groups invested in maintaining good relations. These groups have successfully managed economic friction points and integrated bilateral trade. However, economic interdependence seems not to translate to the security calculus confirming neorealism’s contention that national security is preeminent. In particular, Japan’s development of Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) illustrates the insignificance of economic ties in security planning. That said, it is equally true that perceptions of threat appear to have little influence on bilateral economic interdependence. Therefore, Sino-Japanese relations are best described by applying interdependence and neorealist theories in a complementary approach.
... Mistrust among the potential adversaries would be bound to occur, leading each side to take "defensively motivated" measures that the other would perceive as an offensive threat, leading them to pursue "countermeasures in kind, thus ratcheting up regional tensions, reducing security, and creating self-fulfilling prophecies about the danger of one's security containment." 17 As argued earlier, the pillar that deters these potential adversaries from pursuing a spiral of tension is the alliance. Fortunately, the alliance in Northeast Asia is asymmetrical in structure and therefore anchored by a more powerful state. ...
China's apathetic attitude toward South Korea's call for international efforts to reveal the truth regarding the sinking of the Korean corvette Cheonan in March 2010 bewildered many observers. Most analyses have attributed it to a problem characteristic of alliance politics; namely, fear of entrapment in a conflict between an ally and its enemies, or the defection of the ally. This article rejects such analysis as the source of China's attitudes toward North Korea's provocations for two reasons: The first is that China reckons the cost of entrapment would be greater than any gain-a constraint that has the opposite effect for North Korea. The other is structural, in that neither China nor North Korea can afford to abandon the alliance against the South Korea-U.S. and U.S.-Japan alliances. An abandonment strategy toward alliances is effective only if a state has a strategic option to defend itself on its own or to align with others, and if an ally can defect and/or align with others, including the adversaries of the alliance. The true motivation for China's attitude can be found in the security dilemma posed by the situation.
... The disputes Japan has with Russia over the four southernmost Kurile Islands/Northern Territories, with South Korea over Dokdo/Takeshima Island, with the governments in Beijing and Taipei over the EEZ delimitation in the East China Sea as well as the sovereignty over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands; the Chinese contentions with South Korea over the EEZ delimitation in the Yellow Sea, and with Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Taiwan and the Philippines in the South China Sea attract enormous political and scholarly attention. One major reason therefore is that, in view of the discourse of a 'rising China', the maritime sphere figures as a prominent indicator, especially in the eyes of North American observers, of how 'peaceful', as claimed by Chinese academics and policy-makers, that rise really is (Christensen 1999, Ross 2009), and how Beijing's increasing influence can and should be contained, 'hedged' against, or its 'choices being shaped'. Moreover, as the Valencia (1996) or Paik (2005) who advocate the building of maritime regimes in East Asia, the literature of political science dealing with the maritime sphere focuses rather narrowly on a few issues of seemingly intricate maritime conflicts. ...
High economic growth rates, the revolution in telecommunications, and the end of the Cold War have brought about rapid and profound changes to the domestic as well as regional environments of Northeast Asian governments. The maritime sphere, where increasingly militarized state boundaries delineate political authority and economic activities link increasingly interdependent communities therein, bears high significance for the study of regional cooperation. This paper looks at how the maritime sphere of Northeast Asia is represented in common political and academic discourses of international relations. It finds that maritime affairs are firmly cast in the language of national security, and that empirical evidence against perceived threats and related security imperatives is often neglected if not completely ignored. The paper argues that the maritime space, due to its special character, has become the stage on which the consequences of modernity appear particularly strong. The relentless quest to develop and control the ocean clashes with the notion of the sea as a space of global trade and communication flow. At the same time, the ocean as an entity itself is excluded from the discourse because it is irreconcilable with the conception of the international system of sovereign territorial units. As a result, the maritime sphere is seen as a dividing element between nations rather than a connecting element, and salient environmental problems of the maritime space remain low on political and academic agendas. This is also a consequence of mainstream methods of political science that continue to reproduce discourses of territorial division and fail to offer alternative approaches suitable for the study of contemporary Northeast Asia.
... Chinese assertiveness in the maritime disputes clearly provokes the search for an external balancer in East Asia. Japanese, 58 South Korean, 59 Vietnamese, 60 and Philippine 61 statements, as well as US statements, 62 testify to this dialectical relationship over time. 63 Furthermore, China occasionally pushes ASEAN to refrain from a common stance on issues, so that it may then utilize the complete asymmetry of relations between itself and individual ASEAN countries. ...
The rise of China has brought about new considerations and a debate in East Asian security studies. Several of the countries
neighbouring China have been probed for their degree of ‘Finlandization’, as manifest in excessive attentiveness to the interests
of a neighbouring great power, due to the power asymmetry between the ‘Finlandized’ and the ‘Finlandizer’. This article will
scrutinize Finlandization and determine to what extent the power relationship between Finland and the Soviet Union can be
compared with the emerging power relationship that China’s East Asian neighbours will have to tackle. Furthermore, this article
will seek from the Finnish experience lessons for East Asia on how to adapt to power realities without making the mistakes
that Finland and the Soviet Union made in their relationship. China’s East Asian neighbours could learn how to avoid compromising
their autonomy from Finland’s mistakes. They could also learn from Finnish realism how to tackle the security dilemma that
the rise of Chinese power involves, and how to seek security in a way that would not make the rising great power feel any
less secure.
... They were alarmed by the upgraded alliance and especially upset about Japan's agreement to operate beyond its borders in regions surrounding it, that is potentially in Taiwan. This, combined with the lingering shadow of Japan's militarist past, created a higher threat perception in China and caught both China and Japan in a potentially destabilizing security dilemma (Christensen, 1999; in contrast, Kang argues that the security dilemma in Asia is relatively weak and therefore the importance attributed to the alliance system is over-rated; see Kang, 2007). The stakes vis-à-vis China have only risen since, in the third period discussed later, making Japan's interest in pursuing its dual strategy even greater. ...
This paper examines American policy regarding regional security arrangements (RSAs) in Asia. It argues that it is American
perceptions of regional interest in such RSAs and of the compatibility of the goals of regional partners with those of the
United States, which eventually shape American policy. After discussing the potential value and cost of RSAs, it suggests
that actual policy choices are shaped largely as a reaction to regional states’ motivations and policies. Since in Asia, there
was limited functional pooling effect to be gained from RSAs, changes in American policies reflected much more a reaction
to changes in regional interest in such arrangements. This interaction is demonstrated through a review of post-Cold War developments
regarding US RSA policy, distinguishing between the early years of transition to unipolarity and the erosion of unipolarity
since the late 1990s. These are also compared to earlier American policy regarding RSAs during the Cold War.
... North Korea is isolated within this globalizing capitalist system and increasingly targeted by international criticism for its nondemocratic political system and its stated ambition to develop nuclear weapons. Although much research on the implications of these shifts has focused on the changing geopolitical power held by states and regional levels of security (Hogan 1992; Buchanan 1999; Christensen 1999; Ross 1999; S.-H. Lee 2003; Shambaugh 2005; Beeson 2007), few scholars have examined how the changing geopolitics of the region differently affect the daily lives of North Koreans (Park 2003). The current debates and practices around the migration of North Korean women should therefore be understood as crucial elements of an emerging imperial geopolitics of trafficking. ...
This article recovers the subaltern stories of North Korean migrant women living and working underground in China. This work begins to unravel relations of power operating through hegemonic discourses of human trafficking. International human rights agencies and the U.S. government often make totalizing statements that categorize North Korean migrant women in China without authorization as trafficked: powerless victims without agency who need to be rescued with the assistance of international society. Based on in-depth interviews with North Korean migrants and extensive document analysis, however, I argue that the strategic spotlight on North Korean human trafficking has actually worsened the condition of North Koreans in China by leading to more crackdowns by both North Korean and Chinese authorities who consider those international efforts as political intervention and threats to their national security. In addition, current discourses on North Korean human trafficking are grounded in Western liberal discourses of the universality of human rights. As a result, trafficking discourses and policies ignore the complicated nature of global political and economic structures that shape women's basic economic security and their decision to migrate. Through critical examination of contemporary geopolitics, this article shows the urgency of democratic and decolonized ways of understanding the trafficking of North Korean women and of offering them support.
... Although the actions of the US in the aftermath of Asia's economic crisis were an inadvertent spur to greater regionalism, the 'war on terror' has provided a powerful reminder of the strategic fault-lines that have helped shape the region in the post-war period. For all the resentment that America's heavy-handed intervention in the economic sphere generated, it is important to recognise that for most East Asian nations – China is the obvious exception -America's strategic engagement is seen as a vital and irreplaceable component of regional stability (Christensen 1999). Consequently, despite the moves toward greater regional cooperation noted above, and the development of specific multilateral security organisations like the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the US's continuing strategic dominance of the region means that there are major constraints on the possible development of regionally-based initiatives (Hara 1999). ...
The intention of this chapter is to examine the impact that the US has had on Southeast Asia's historical development, both during the Cold War period when the emergent states of the region attempted to consolidate and assert their independence, and more recently, when the combined effects of economic fragility and the emergence of new strategic challenges have provided a painful reminder of just how susceptible the region remains to powerful external forces over which it has limited influence.
... Such spirals are especially likely when a state increases its defense spending significantly and acquires force projection capabilities, two features of China's current military modernization effort. 33 Signs of mistrust and suspicion consistent with the presence of a security dilemma are not difficult to find within the U.S. and Chinese militaries. The 2006 U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review, for example, concluded that China's growing military capabilities, the size of the East Asian theater, and China's continental depth (normally viewed as a defensive advantage) "place a premium on forces capable of sustained operations at great distances into denied areas"-on offensive capabilities to offset China's modernization. ...
How much military power does China ultimately desire? A close look at Chinese texts on military doctrine over the last decade reveals that Beijing’s objectives for the use of military power are more certain than many policy analysts maintain.
China’s rise, along with deepening Sino-European economic relations, seems to have a strong impact on the diplomatic outlook of actors in Europe. An interesting phenomenon is that, while several major European states have become strategic partners of China, they remain US allies at the same time. In the context of trade tensions and a possible decoupling between China and the USA, what are the diplomatic effects of the close economic relations between Europe and China? To find the answer, this study builds models on the functions of trade and partnerships with China with respect to voting choice of China’s partners, including those in Europe, in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). After making a statistical analysis and presenting detailed analysis on France, Germany, the UK, and Poland, this paper finds that the close economic and trade ties do indeed enhance voting similarity between China and major states in Europe in the UNGA.
This chapter conceptualizes the types of institutional strategy and constructs a theoretical model based on agent-centered historical institutionalism to understand the timing of its strategy shifts. This theoretical model analyzes how the member states of a regional security institution perceive and assess their immediate security environment and create or change the institutional strategy. Since member states’ perception is generally affected by the regional distribution of power, the chapter emphasizes the importance of analyzing the regional strategic environment as well as agent’s decisions. The methodology of the analyses is briefly discussed through case studies on the role of ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions regarding the SCS issue. The chapter also provides an overview and assessment of the general trend of the strategic environment in the SCS from 1990 to 2020 over four phases: 1990–2002, 2003–2012, 2013–2016, and 2017–2020. These four phases will be used as a principal indicator to understand the change and continuity of institutional strategies employed by ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions.
The end of the Cold War has led to dramatic changes in the global order. With the acceleration of East Asian integration and the amplification of its spillover effects, the engagement between the four major powers, i.e. China, the US, ASEAN and Japan, has been at the heart of the transformation of East Asian order. Against this backdrop, East Asia is embracing a changing future.
People's threat perceptions play a role in influencing foreign policies towards perceived adversary countries. Earlier research has identified multiple components shaping mass‐level threat perceptions including military power, adversary country's perceived intentions, and national identities. On the individual level, education, use of media, and interest in politics have been shown to influence threat perceptions. However, most studies on perceptions of security threats fail to include both contextual and individual‐level explanatory factors and to consider that different national threats may be constructed differently. This research bridges formation of threat perceptions on the individual level to wider societal processes and provides an empirical perspective to understanding threat perceptions among the educated section of the Chinese population. To analyze threat perceptions, students from leading Chinese universities (N = 771) took part in a survey in the autumn of 2011 and spring of 2012. Respondents who followed conventional media were more likely to perceive both the United States and Japan as threatening, and the effect of media consumption was particularly strong with regards to perceived threat from Japan. In addition, each threat perception was significantly associated with threat‐specific explanatory factors. Potential explanatory factors of threat perceptions were explored with linear regression models.
In lieu of taking stock of the many problems presently plaguing Sino‐US relations, this research zeroes in on just one of them – the evolving situation on the Korean Peninsula that has both alarmed and captivated the world. Korea, prima facie, is a case that has the likely potential to erupt into an open conflict between China and the United States. Situated against the broad context of great power entanglement on the Peninsula, this paper examines the convergence, as well as divergence, of interests and strategic objectives for both China and the United States in terms of areas of cooperation and competition. It argues that their shared aversion to a war, and the complex, multilateral nature of the matter, distinguishes Korea from other disputes, particularly Taiwan and the South China Sea. Korea, therefore, is not at the center of a Sino‐US Thucydides Trap. Nevertheless, Sino‐US competition to shape the future of the strategic landscape of the Peninsula will undoubtedly continue and might even intensify.
This article argues that the Security Dilemma can in fact be abolished by integrating the militaries into one common global organisation, possibly under one common command. The existence and workings of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are an approximate example of this ideal in a geographically limited space. For illustrating this argument, this article discusses the logic of the Prisoners Dilemma, as the intellectual model underlying the Security Dilemma, and proposes an alternative version of the Prisoners Dilemma. It is then argued that the Security Dilemma only persists in a politically and economically ever farther integrated world because the international militaries are not integrated and hence partial anarchy persists at least in the military realm. The solution to remaining international conflicts, such as arguably one between NATO and Russia recently, would be to expand NATO to include “threatening” states’ militaries until all militaries are joined in a global organisation, a truly global NATO. Finally, revised non-violent functions for NATO, as well as a global welfare state and an early warning system for civil wars, are proposed and discussed.
Over the last decade, a vast array of international relations theories has been drawn upon to project China’s foreign-policy objectives and behavior in the emerging global order. For those who look at the rise of China from the outside in, China presents not just a policy challenge but also an intellectual one. The puzzle for realists is that the Chinese realpolitik has not evolved in the direction their theories have anticipated, either in the form of balance of power or that of balance of threat in regional and global diplomacy. The systemic power transition has not resulted so far in disruptive consequences in Sino-American relations to the extent their theories suggest. Liberals are equally intrigued. The dire prediction of the democratic peace theory about an authoritarian China, unconstrained by domestic politics in seeking power and self-interest that is likely to come into conflict with and to be confronted by democratic powers collectively, has not materialized. Weakness in formal international institutions in the Asia-Pacific region (as compared to Europe) has not proved to be so debilitating as to hamper successful socialization of China into multilateral cooperation in the region. Further, the constructivist intervention, with the introduction of ideational-cultural factors such as identity and beliefs, continues to grapple with the nature and purpose of Chinese power.1
The American decision to engage in NATO expansion deep into Eastern Europe—a strategy that is now being combined with the US “pivot” or “rebalancing”1 in the Indo-Pacific—represents a post-Cold War reactivation of containment that is aimed at checking Russian, and lately Chinese, influence, both regionally and globally. These dual policies—which impact the western, eastern, and southern flanks of Eurasia—possess ramifications that directly or indirectly impact the foreign and security policies of the major centers of power and influence—Europe, Japan, and India, as well as the “wider Middle East,” in addition to Russia and China and their immediate regions.
It was at the November 2011 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, as well as in speeches to the US Congress and in Australia in 2011—12, that President Obama publicly articulated the “pivot” or “rebalancing” to Asia strategy, which possesses both geostrategic and political-economic dimensions. On the one hand, the new Asian strategy seeks to implement proposals for a controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in 2009, largely as a response to the rise of China as a major political-economic (and financial) actor. On the other, it seeks shift up to 60 percent of the US navy to the Indo-Pacific by 2020 (at a time of an expected $500 billion in Pentagon budget cuts over the next decade!). This is to simultaneously counter China’s growing military and naval capacities since the end of the Cold War, while simultaneously expanding radar and missile defense systems to protect Japan, South Korea, and other US allies from the “dangerous, destabilising behaviour of North Korea.”1
What will the regional order in Northeast Asia look like in the next 15–20 years? Will the hub-and-spoke bilateral alliance system anchored by the US prevail? There certainly exists a dichotomy of views in response. While the (neo-)realist school of thought founded on the perpetual predominance of US military forces foresees US prevalence as a dominant power and no substantial change in its regional primacy the (neo-)liberal school of thought argues for a fundamental change to occur as a result of significant decline in US economic power and persistent ‘out of touch’ approach to regional affairs. It particularly becomes problematic for the US if it insists on adhering to the old tactics of alliance and ignoring the fast-changing facet of reality in regional politics, economics, and security.
The remembered history of the Second World War continues to infect contemporary relations between China and its Northeast Asian neighbours. This article argues that a ‘history spiral’ has taken hold in Northeast Asia as a result of the region's changing strategic order and domestic politics in China, Japan and South Korea. Using the case studies of the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands territorial dispute, the Dokdo/Takeshima territorial disputes, and Sino-South Korean memorial diplomacy, we explore the interactive spiralling dynamics of Northeast Asia's history problems. We suggest that despite some recent signs of an improvement in Northeast Asian relations since late 2014, the ‘history spiral’ is likely to remain a fixture of Northeast Asia's international politics owing to the region's changing strategic order.
The use of international institutions by the United States is characterised by pragmatism. US officials approach institutions as instruments of convenience across time, across regions, and across economic and security issues. US political rhetoric since the end of World War II has emphasised the importance of multilateralism. But in practice, the US approach reflects a process of trial and error and a tendency to focus on what works in terms of US domestic and foreign policy interests. Successive US administrations have proved flexible in modifying, expanding, neglecting and even discarding those institutions whose initial instrumental purpose is no longer essential. These twists and turns have proved frustrating to America's economic and security allies who have been forced to bear the brunt of adjusting to the changing institutional preferences of their more powerful partner.
China is well on its way to transform from a regional power into an actor with global interests and influence. Since the gradual opening up in 1978, its economy has quadrupled in size and "by some estimates will double again over the next decade."1 If this rapid ascent persists and stagnation continues to plague America, China will emerge as a challenger by default. Not only to the United States but also to other powers. Power transitions are a recurring phenomenon in international politics and have always constituted moments of uncertainty and danger. They tend to entail fierce strategic rivalry between the challenger state and the residing hegemon, thereby increasing the likelihood of conflict and even escalation into war. No wonder then that China's spectacular economic growth and increasingly assertive diplomacy have incited many an observer of world politics to ponder how Beijing will seek to manage this transition and even more how it will use its leverage afterwards. China is presenting its ascent not as a power shift, but as a paradigm shift. It claims that its rise will be different from expansive powers in the past and that it is out to set an example for a fundamental revision of the nature of great power politics. It does not matter how much power China relatively gains, but how much others can also benefit from it. Instead of tragic rivalry for hegemony, the aim is to develop strategic relationships that allow both China and its partners to gain, and to invest collectively in a stable and prosperous world order. If so, it could herald the end of a history that has been characterized by hostile balancing and hegemonic wars. It could pave the way for stronger institutionalized international cooperation on economic, environmental and security affairs. This conference series examines whether such a paradigm shift is indeed discernable in China's main partnerships. It will also try to elucidate which dynamics have or have not been driving such a paradigm shift. Is it a new notion of complex interdependence? Might it be because China has been one of the first large industrializing powers that learned to exert its influence peacefully through multilateral institutions and norms? Is it because the Asian juggernaut has for itself reconstructed the notion of power? If such evolutions have taken place, will they be sustainable? Hence, this closer look at China's great power relationships should permit us to clarify whether it is really redefining the nature of great power politics, or whether it is applying
US‐Japan security arrangements have formed one of the most significant pillars of Japan's security strategy ever since the end of World War II. However, what is noteworthy is the incremental growth in the Japanese profile within the alliance, from the time of its inception to the present. This paper traces the growing Japanese role within the alliance and argues that the relationship is likely to remain robust in the foreseeable future. Japan's changing security policy as well as its augmented role within the parameters of the partnership has ensured that the alliance has made a marked shift from being asymmetrical to a mutually beneficial and reciprocal arrangement.
:Sino-Japanese relations are still in the shadow of the past. Without much mutual trust, China is wary of Japan's military capability and desire to be a political power. China's policy toward Japan has largely reflected its perceptions although the two do not necessarily mirror each other. It is in China's interests to forge a constructive relationship with Japan. However, a series of challenges will test the wills and skills of both leaderships. As a region of strategic importance for both China and Japan, Southeast Asia is poised to benefit from the strategic competition of the two Asian giants. Yet at the same time, ASEAN should play an active role in strengthening regional security order by involving China and Japan into regional confidence-building measures and economic co-operation.
The constructivism-inspired study on hegemony focuses on the dominant state's ability to shape the beliefs and values of ruling elites in secondary states as a basis of hegemony while paying less attention to the attitude of the mass public in secondary states toward hegemony and the effects of its ‘socialisation’ with hegemonic ideas. This article provides a conceptual framework for studying the relations between hegemony and the mass-public of secondary states and then subjecting it to a preliminary test against postwar Japan's cooperation with the United States on China policy.
This paper traces the formal and informal aspects of Japan's robust bilateralism on issues of external and internal security and discusses a variety of embryonic multilateral arrangements that have sprung up in the 1990s. Asian-Paciic multilateralism is not yet a strong and unquestioned collectively held norm in either Tokyo or any of the major capitals in the Asia-Pacic. What matters instead are political practices shaped by a strong tradition of bilateralism and, only very recently, by an incipient multilater-alism.
Answer to inducing China's active and full participation in regional cooperation scheme in Northeast Asia has been long sought by many. In the course, what they have overlooked is China's willingness to participate in such scheme when the conditions of world order are met: a world order built upon Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence, not dominated by one single individual power, and by which national sovereignty is fully guaranteed. Otherwise, China claims, prerequisites for cooperation, confidence and trust, would never be built among the concerned parties. In recent times, China has taken the initiatives to achieve this end, as reflected in its “summit diplomacy”. Thus far, the consequence of such an effort has been regarded very positive. Based on this observation, the paper explores the correlation between the consequence of China's omni-directional diplomacy and subsequent changes in its attitude toward cooperation at regional level. It finds that there is a strong correlation between the two variables as proven in ASEAN and ARF.
Asia presents scholars of international security institutions with a bewildering variety of arrangements to examine. This
chapter provides a broad overview of the regional institutions that Asian countries are using to manage security, their characteristics
and the driving forces that have shaped them over the past two decades. In so doing, I attempt to avoid being confined by
any single theoretical commitment, whether it be neorealist, neoliberal or constructivist, and instead share Peter Katzenstein
and Rudra Sil’s view that regional phenomena in Asia are so complex that a variety of theoretical approaches is necessary
to capture their multiple facets.2 Having said that, I believe that we can derive a great deal of explanatory power from a constructivist approach that emphasizes
how cognitive and perceptual shifts interact with material structures such as military power and existing institutions. These
interactions, in turn, can mitigate material constraints and ultimately lead to structural transformations in regional politics.
Given that there have been significant shifts in Asia’s power dynamics and security institutions, a constructivist approach
seems to be a good place to start.
China may be the high church of realpolitik in the post-Cold War world. Its military and civilian elites regard other nations, alliances, and internationalism of any stripe with suspicion. There are only two exceptions. Realpolitik would suggest that any rift between the United States and Japan is good for China. But China fears the remilitarization of Japan more than it dislikes American forces (which maintain the status quo in East Asia). And with Taiwan, China is willing to risk a major confrontation over even a nominal change in the island's status. With a huge stake in the region, America should figure these realities into its strategy.
As economic crisis plunges Asia into chaos, old wounds may reopen. The continent still fears Japan, thanks to its World War II brutalities. By refusing to apologize, Tokyo only makes matters worse. A power vacuum results: an unrepentant Japan will never be allowed to lead a suspicious Asia. Instead, flash points may ignite, and East Asia and even America could be dragged into a war. To defuse tensions, America must push its ally to show remorse and Japan must pay its World War II debts. In turn, China and Korea--age-old enemies of Japan--must learn to look forward, not back.
This study examines various attempts to define the concept of the offensive/defensive balance of military technology, to trace the theoretical consequences of an offensive or defensive advantage, and to measure or classify the balance for the last eight centuries. It is concluded that the last two tasks are flawed because of the ambiguity of the concept of the offensive/defensive balance. There are multiple definitions and multiple hypotheses, but these are not interchangeable, particularly between the pre-nuclear and nuclear eras, where the concept means something fundamentally different. Hypotheses appropriate for one definition may be implausible or tautological for another. It is concluded that the notion of the offensive/defensive balance is too vague and encompassing to be useful in theoretical or historical analysis, but that some of the individual variables that have been incorporated under this broader concept may themselves be useful. Much more analysis is needed, however, to demonstrate that these concepts have important theoretical consequences.
Thomas U. Berger is a Fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He wrote this article while a fellow at the Olin Institute, Harvard University.
The author would like to express his appreciation to Masashi Nishihara, Seizaburo Sato, and Yoshihide Soeya, as well as to three anonymous readers at International Security, for their helpful comments and suggestions.
1. Among those who see Japan as a threat is the so-called revisionist school of Japan experts, including Chalmers Johnson, "Their Behavior, Our Policy," The National Interest, No. 17 (Fall 1989); Clyde Prestowitz, Trading Places (New York: Basic Books, 1989); James Fallows, "Containing Japan," Atlantic, Vol. 263, No. 5 (May 1989); Karel Van Wolferen, The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation (New York: Knopf, 1990); and Pat Choate, Agents of Influence (New York: Knopf, 1990). American public opinion is also moving towards a more negative view of Japan; according to a February 1992 Times/Mirror poll, 31 percent of those surveyed now view Japan as the country that presents the greatest danger to the United States. See William Watts, "Japan Focus of America's Worst Fears," The Japan Times, July 15, 1992, p. 21, for a review of recent surveys.
2. See George Friedman and Meredith Lebard, The Coming War with Japan (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991). See also Simon Winchester, Pacific Nightmare: A Third World War in the Far East (London: Sidgwick and Harrison, 1992). Such concerns can be seen in the recently leaked Pentagon report which emphasized that the United States must remain actively engaged in maintaining regional security in order to prevent Japan and Germany from feeling compelled to build up their military forces. See Patrick Tyler, "U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop," New York Times, March 8, 1992, p. 1 and 14.
3. The Mutual Security Treaty is the cornerstone of the U.S.- Japanese security relationship and commits the United States to help defend Japan militarily in return for Japanese cooperation on security issues. For an overview of the origins of the Mutual Security Treaty system, see Martin E. Weinstein, Japan's Postwar Defense Policy, 1947-1968 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971).
4. Classical statements of this point of view include Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: Free Press, 1954); and Martin Wight, The System of States (Atlantic Heights, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1977).
5. See Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (London: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
6. See, for example, James E. Auer, "May the U.S.-Japan Defense Alliance Continue Going from Strength to Strength," The Japan Times, February 26, 1989; and Jimmy Carter and Yasuhiro Nakasone, "Ensuring Alliance in an Uncertain World: The Strengthening of U.S.-Japan Partnership in the 1990s," The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Winter 1992), pp. 43-56.
7. Friedman and Lebard, The Coming War with Japan.
8. This is one of the key distinctions between classical realist theorists such as Morgenthau, Wight, and Gilpin, and the so-called structural-realist or defensive realist school represented by Stephen Van Evera, "The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War," International Security, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Summer 1984), pp. 58-108; Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984); and Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).
9. On Japanese fears concerning a potential North Korean nuclear threat, see The Japan Economic Journal, May 18, 1991.
10. See Mark Mihovjec, "The Spratley and Paracel Islands Conflict," Survival, Vol. 31, No. 1 (January/February 1989), pp. 70-78.
11.
The author is grateful to comments made on this point by Professor Masashi Nishihara.
12. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987).
13. On Asian fears that the U.S. military commitment to East Asia is weakening, see The International Herald Tribune, January 31, 1991.
14. See for example Hisahiko Okazaki, Hanei to Sutai to Orandashi ni Nihon ga...
Edward D. Mansfield is Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and author of Power, Trade, and War (Princeton University Press, 1994).
Jack Snyder is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. His most recent book is Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Cornell University Press, 1991).
The authors thank Sergei Tikhonov for assistance with computer programming; Liv Mansfield for preparing the figures; Richard Betts, Miriam Fendius Elman, David Lake, Bruce Russett, Randall Schweller, David Spiro, Randall Stone, Celeste Wallander, and participants at seminars at Harvard and Columbia for helpful comments; and the Pew Charitable Trusts for financial support.
1. Michael Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 4 (December 1986), pp. 1151-1169; Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). For skeptical views, see David E. Spiro, "The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Fall 1994), pp. 50-86; and Christopher Layne, "Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Fall 1994), pp. 5-49. They are rebutted by Bruce Russett, "The Democratic Peace: 'And Yet It Moves'," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Spring 1995), pp. 164-175.
2. "Transcript of Clinton's Address," New York Times, January 26, 1994, p. A17; Anthony Lake, "The Reach of Democracy: Tying Power to Diplomacy," New York Times, September 23, 1994, p. A35.
3. Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett, "Normative and Structural Causes of the Democratic Peace, 1956-1986," American Political Science Review, Vol. 87, No. 3 (September 1993), pp. 630, 636; they note that newly created democracies, such as those in Eastern Europe today, may experience conflicts, insofar as their democratic rules and norms are not adequately established. See also Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, p. 134, on post-Soviet Georgia.
4. Asa Briggs, Victorian People, rev. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1970), chaps. 2-3; Geoff Eley, Reshaping the German Right (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980); Alain Plessis, De la fête impériale au mur des fédérés, 1852-1871 (Paris: Editions du seuil, 1973), translated as The Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 1852-1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), chaps. 3-5.
5. Hans Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire, 1871-1918 (Dover, N.H.: Berg, 1985); Jack S. Levy, "The Diversionary Theory of War: A Critique," in Manus Midlarsky, ed., Handbook of War Studies (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 259-288.
6. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 2d ed. (New York: Harper, 1947); Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), pp. 5-13, esp. p. 6; see also Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, pp. 16-18, and Michael Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," esp. p. 1164.
7. Ted Robert Gurr, Polity II: Political Structures and Regime Change, 1800-1986, Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research No. 9263 (1990).
8. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, p. 77; see also Maoz and Russett, "Normative and Structural Causes of the Democratic Peace, 1956-1986." This index is: PCON(DEM - AUT), where DEM is a state's score on the summary measure of democracy, AUT is a state's score on the summary measure of autocracy, and PCON is a measure of the extent to which power in a regime is monopolized by state authorities, which takes on values ranging from 0 to 10. This index therefore takes on values ranging from 100 (maximal democracy) to -100 (maximal autocracy).
9. More specifically, Russett classifies as democracies those states with values of the index of regime type described in footnote 8 ranging from 30 to 100, those with scores ranging from -25 to -100 as autocracies, and those with scores ranging from -24 to 29 as anocracies. See Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, p. 77; and Ted Robert Gurr, "Persistence and Change in Political Systems," American Political Science Review, Vol. 68, No. 4 (December 1974), pp. 1482-1504...
Aaron L. Friedberg is Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Director of the Research Program in International Security at Princeton's Center of International Studies.
The author wishes to thank Desaix Anderson, Henry Bienen, Thomas Christensen, and Min Xin Pei for their comments and Geoffrey Herrera for research assistance.
1. One recent study concludes similarly that "regional multipolar processes are likely to become a more and more important feature of international politics." Thomas J. Christensen and Jack Snyder, "Predicting Alliance Patterns," International Organization, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Spring 1990), p. 168. For another analysis that also foresees a movement toward regionalization see Joseph A. Camilleri, "Alliances in the Emerging Post-Cold War Security System" (unpublished manuscript), March 11, 1992.
2. See John Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War," International Security, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Summer 1990), pp. 5-56.
3. For explications of these views see: Stephen Van Evera, "Primed for Peace: Europe After the Cold War," International Security, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Winter 1990/91), pp. 7-57; Robert Jervis, "The Future of World Politics: Will It Resemble the Past?" International Security, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Winter 1991/92), pp. 39-73; Jack Snyder, "Averting Anarchy in the New Europe," International Security, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Spring 1990), pp. 5-41; James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, "Core and Periphery in the Post-Cold War Era," International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Spring 1992), pp. 467-491; Richard H. Ullman, Securing Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); and letters by Stanley Hoffmann and Robert Keohane in "Correspondence: Back to the Future, Part II: International Relations Theory and Post-Cold War Europe," International Security, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Fall 1990), pp. 191-194. Jervis and Goldgeier and McFaul make the same arguments more generally about the relations among the nations of the "developed world," i.e., Western Europe, the United States and Japan (Jervis), or the "great powers" of the advanced industrial "core" (Goldgeier and McFaul).
4. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, East Asia's economic output is likely to exceed that of both North America and the European Community. See Urban C. Lehner, "Belief in an Imminent Asian Century Is Gaining Sway," Wall Street Journal, May 17, 1993, p. A12.
5. Throughout this essay I use the term "Asia" to refer to the region extending from Southwest Asia, across China to Northeast Asia and including the offlying islands at the western edge of the Pacific rim. (See map, p. 33.) The list of "poles" or "major powers" around which a new Asian sub-system will take shape includes, by virtue of their location and their actual and potential military capabilities, China, Japan, Russia, and perhaps India. Whether the United States remains an Asian power will depend on its willingness to continue to project some fraction of its military might into the region.
6. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley, 1979), p. 161.
7. For the first round in this debate see Karl W. Deutsch and J. David Singer, "Multipolar Power Systems and International Stability," World Politics, Vol. 16, No. 3 (April 1964), pp. 390-406; Kenneth N. Waltz, "The Stability of a Bipolar World," Daedalus, Vol. 93, No. 9 (Summer 1964), pp. 881-909. Waltz elaborates his position in Theory of International Politics, pp. 129-193. Similar views are expressed in Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future," pp. 13-18. For elaborations of the deductive arguments on all sides see Van Evera, "Primed for Peace," pp. 33-40; Richard Rosecrance, "Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and the Future," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 10, No. 3 (September 1966), pp. 314-327; Patrick James and Michael Brecher, "Stability and Polarity: New Paths for Inquiry," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 25, No. 1 (1988), pp. 31-42; Alvin M. Saperstein, "The 'Long Peace'—Result of a Bipolar Competitive World?" Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 35, No. 1 (March 1991), pp. 68-79. For efforts to resolve the question empirically see Michael Haas, "International Subsystems: Stability and Polarity," American Political Science Review, Vol. 64, No. 1 (1970), pp. 98-123; and Jack...
Saburo Ienaga was professor emeritus of education at Tokyo University of Education. Among his books are The Pacific War 1931-45, trans. Frank Baldwin (New York: Pantheon, 1978) (published in Tokyo as Taiheiyo Senso by Iwanami Shoten, 1968); and Senso sekinin (War responsibility) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1985).
The editors of International Security thank Frank Baldwin and the Asia Foundation, Tokyo, for translating this article from Japanese. For help in providing additional notes to English-language sources, all of which were approved by the author, the editors thank Barton Bernstein, John Dower, Ted Hopf, Marc Trachtenberg, and Stephen Van Evera.
1. E.H. Dance, History the Betrayer: A Study in Bias (London: Hutchinson, 1960; Westport, Conn: Greenwood, repr. 1970), p. 146.
2. Nationalism and the glorification of war in school texts and university teaching has been an issue in many countries. See, for example, Frances Fitzgerald, America Revised (Boston: Atlantic, Little Brown, 1979; new ed. 1992); Katherine Bishop, "Bill on Internees Raises New Alarm; Descendants of Japanese Fear Proposal in California on World War II Teaching," New York Times, August 28, 1990, p. A19; Paul M. Kennedy, "The Decline of Nationalistic History in the West, 1900-1970," Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 8, No. 1 (January 1973), pp. 77-100; and on Germany, Holger Herwig, "Clio Deceived: Patriotic Self-Censorship in Germany After the Great War," International Security, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Fall 1987), pp. 5-45; Richard J. Evans, In Hitler's Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past (New York: Pantheon, 1989); Peter Baldwin, ed., Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Historian's Debate (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990); Judith Miller, One, by One, by One: Facing the Holocaust (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990).
3. "Every detail of the school curriculum . . . is decided centrally by the Ministry of Education. . . . Textbooks must be approved by the ministry. . . . One of the most reactionary and secretive bits of the bureaucracy, this ministry has systematically tried to prevent schools teaching the grisly details of Japan's modern history. Textbooks have referred to the 'advance' into Manchuria, not its invasion; sometimes no reference at all is made to Japan's brutal rule of Korea between 1910 and 1945." "Japan's Schools: Why Can't Little Taro Think?" The Economist, April 21, 1990, pp. 21-24. The process of MOE review and certification is described in detail by Lawrence Ward Beer, Freedom of Expression in Japan: A Study in Comparative Law, Politics, and Society (New York: Kodansha/ Harper & Row, 1984), pp. 260-262.
4. Beer, Freedom of Expression in Japan, pp. 270, 271, 272.
5. "In a 1980 [Ienaga] text, the ministry ordered 240 changes and still rejected it as 'inappropriate' on 70 other points once revisions were made. The word 'aggression,' for instance, could not be used, and Ienaga's lengthy description of Japanese atrocities in China in the 1930s would have to go, regardless of protests from Beijing and Seoul." Patrick L. Smith, "A Textbook Warrior in Japan," International Herald Tribune, November 1, 1989, p. 18. See also Ienaga, "Teaching War," in Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History (New York: New Press, 1992), pp. 441-447; and David E. Sanger, "A Stickler for History, Even if It's Not Very Pretty," New York Times, May 27, 1993, p. A4.
6. Beer, Freedom of Expression in Japan, pp. 257, 258, notes that this textbook, "Kuni no Ayami (The progress of Japan) . . . propounded a new 'open world,' rationalist, social studies approach to Japan's past that has been influential ever since. Professor Ienaga, as one of the four authors, wrote the section on early Japanese history which 'defined the approached followed throughout the book and [was] later made explicit' in the Guiding Principles for Instruction (Gakushu shido yoryo) of the Ministry of Education. Though adopted under Occupation supervision of textbooks, 'the evidence shows that postwar values sprang not from American but Japanese sources.' There is poetic justice in the fact that, of all the politicians, scholars, teachers' union members, and social critics who have been alert to prevent educational drift back toward statism, Ienaga Saburo should be...
The author thanks Michael Desch, Charles Glaser, Stanley Hoffmann, Andrew Kydd, John Mearsheimer, Daniel Philpott, Bradley Thayer, Karen Turato, Stephen Van Evera, Celeste Wallander, participants in a seminar at the Center for International Relations, University of California at Los Angeles, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this article. An earlier version of this article was delivered at the 1995 Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Chicago, Illinois, 21–25 February 1995.
International anarchy and the resulting security dilemma (i.e., policies which increase one state's security tend to decrease that of others) make it difficult for states to realize their common interests. Two approaches are used to show when and why this dilemma operates less strongly and cooperation is more likely. First, the model of the Prisoner's Dilemma is used to demonstrate that cooperation is more likely when the costs of being exploited and the gains of exploiting others are low, when the gains from mutual cooperation and the costs of mutual noncooperation are high, and when each side expects the other to cooperate. Second, the security dilemma is ameliorated when the defense has the advantage over the offense and when defensive postures differ from offensive ones. These two variables, which can generate four possible security worlds, are influenced by geography and technology.
Richard K. Betts is Professor of Political Science, Director of International Security Policy Studies in the School of International and Public Affairs, and member of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University.
This paper was written for the Conference on Asia in Transition sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation at the East-West Center, Honolulu, in January 1993, and was also presented in seminars at the University of Chicago Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security; MIT Center for International Studies; Columbia East Asian Institute; and Harvard Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. The author is grateful to discussants in those sessions, especially Allen Whiting, Robert Ross, Andrew Wallace, and Charles Lipson. For criticisms of various drafts he also thanks Thomas Bernstein, Frederick Brown, Evelyn Colbert, Joseph Collins, Michael Chambers, Thomas Christensen, Gerald Curtis, Francis Fukuyama, Germaine Hoston, Robert Jervis, Chalmers Johnson, Thomas McNaugher, Masashi Nishihara, William Odom, Michel Oksenberg, Jonathan Pollack, Alan Romberg, Randall Schweller, David Shambaugh, Jack Snyder, Yoshihide Soeya, Arthur Waldron, Kenneth Waltz, and Ren Yue. Another version will appear in a volume edited by Robert Ross.
1. This article considers the area from Japan to Burma. South Asia is not discussed, although India may come to figure more in the East Asian balance of power. India has always been underestimated and too often ignored in U.S. strategic studies, but since it is still peripheral to East Asian strategic interactions, it is excluded in order to keep the analytical scope manageable.
2. Ambivalence about how the security situation in Asia should be assessed can be found even among seasoned experts. For example: "The United States and Russia have a growing community of interests. . . . China is fully preoccupied with its domestic problems. Japan, an economic superpower, is only beginning to apply that power for political purposes. . . . In sum the risk of a major power conflict in Asia is at its lowest point in this century"; but, "On the political front one worrisome fact emerges. For the first time in the twentieth century, U.S. relations with China and Japan are troubled simultaneously;" and, "given the likely power relationships in East Asia, U.S. policy can proceed with minimal concern about new hostile coalitions," yet "the current leaders of the People's Republic of China are telling both Russia and Japan that there must be closer cooperation to block a hegemonic America." Robert Scalapino, "The United States and Asia: Future Prospects," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 5 (Winter 1991/92), pp. 26, 32, 36.
3. In the 1960s, Beijing was seen as an independent threat, but otherwise its role in U.S. strategy depended on its relation to Soviet power and trans-national Leninism. Washington opposed China in the 1950s largely because of its alliance with the USSR, and courted it in the 1970s and 1980s because of its enmity against the USSR.
4. This is the sense in which I use "balance of power" unless otherwise indicated. The term is notoriously ambiguous in common usage, referring variously to any distribution of power, a roughly equal (usually multipolar) distribution, international stability or equilibrium, deliberate policies to create or maintain equilibrium, automatic equilibrating tendencies in the international system, and other things. See Ernst Haas, "The Balance of Power: Prescription, Concept, or Propaganda?" World Politics, Vol. 5, No. 4 (July 1953); Inis L. Claude, Jr., Power and International Relations (New York: Random House, 1962), chap. 2; and Martin Wight, "The Balance of Power," in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, eds., Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968).
5. All choices cannot be lumped under this dichotomy, which does not subsume serious alternatives such as Marxism-Leninism; however, since Marxism-Leninism never influenced American policymaking, and now exerts scant influence in other countries, that alternative is ignored here. For thinking about international conflict, moreover, Marx and Lenin shared many assumptions with the other schools. If classes are substituted for states, their view of conflict as natural and inevitable is quite similar to realism. Leninist regimes that twisted doctrine to support nationalism had quite realist foreign policies. Pure Marxism, though, believes in progress. When class conflict resolves with the arrival...
