Deterrence In Asia Research Articles

The fuzzy limits of self-reliance: US extended deterrence and Australian strategic policy

As a close US ally, Australia is often seen as a recipient of US extended deterrence. This article argues that in recent decades, Australian strategic policy engaged with US extended deterrence at three different levels: locally, Australia eschews US combat support and deterrence under the policy of self-reliance; regionally, it supports US extended deterrence in Asia; globally, it relies on the US alliance against nuclear threats to Australia. The article argues that in none of these policy areas does the Australian posture conform to a situation of extended deterrence proper. Moreover, when the 2009 White Paper combines all three policies in relation to major power threats against Australia, serious inconsistencies result in Australia's strategic posture—a situation the government should seek to avoid in the White Paper being drafted at the time of writing.

Nuclear Deterrence in Asia and the Pacific

The Asia Pacific region includes six of the world’s nine nuclear-armed states, and in all of them relevant policymakers, still caught in a Cold War mindset, continue to believe in nuclear deterrence as a force for peace and stability, perceiving nuclear disarmament to be not only unachievable, but undesirable. But — whether the context is major powers seeking to neutralise threats from each other (United States, Russia, China and India), non-nuclear allies seeking nuclear protection from various threat contingencies (Japan, South Korea and Australia) or vulnerable states seeking a ‘strategic equaliser’ (Pakistan and North Korea) — the traditional strategic arguments for nuclear deterrence are much weaker than they may first seem. Whatever may have been the case for the Cold War years, in today’s world the risks associated with the acquisition or retention of nuclear weapons far outweigh any conceivable utility they may have. The financial arguments against them — that they are indefensibly costly — are strong. And the humanitarian arguments are overwhelming: nuclear weapons remain the most indiscriminately inhumane ever devised, and they should be outlawed as chemical and biological weapons have been. Making disarmament happen will never be easy, but — with the right political leadership — is not impossible. Focusing, realistically, in the first instance on minimization rather than elimination, practical steps can be taken to dramatically reduce nuclear weapon numbers, deployment and alert status, and doctrinal reliance on them. Doing so would dramatically reduce, both regionally and globally, the now ever-present risk of nuclear catastrophe.

Nuclear Proliferation and Deterrence in Asia: The View from Vladivostok

Nuclear Proliferation and Deterrence in Asia: The View from Vladivostok

New Directions in the Study of China’s Foreign Policy (review)

Reviewed by: New Directions in the Study of China's Foreign Policy Elizabeth Wishnick (bio) Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert S. Ross, editors. New Directions in the Study of China's Foreign Policy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. xvi, 482 pp. Paperback $24.95, ISBN 0-8047-5363-6. Hardcover $65.00, ISBN 0-8047-5362-8. This volume originated from a December 2002 conference at Harvard University honoring the important contribution Allen Whiting has made to the study of Chinese foreign policy, and the volume succeeds admirably at this primary task. Many of the chapters revisit the wide-ranging areas of Whiting's research-China's signaling behavior during the Korean War (Robert S. Ross, Thomas J. Christensen, and Avery Goldstein), deterrence and the 1962 Sino-Indian border war (John W. Garver), the role of perceptions in Sino-Japanese relations (Michael Yahuda), and Chinese nationalism (Peter Hays Gries). Although some of the [End Page 423] authors refer more explicitly to Allen Whiting's work than others, the volume attests to the great impact and enduring relevance his research has had on scholarship and public policy. Despite its title, New Directions in the Study of China's Foreign Policy, the book tends to highlight the continuities in the study of Chinese foreign policy across generations of scholars. A second task of the volume is to anchor research on Chinese foreign policy more securely in international relations theory, following the lead of earlier works, such as International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific, edited by G. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno (Columbia University Press, 2003), and Rethinking Security in East Asia, edited by J. J. Suh, Peter J. Katzenstein, and Allen Carlson (Stanford University Press, 2004). The authors of New Directions, more so than those of these earlier volumes, amply demonstrate that rigor and richness are mutually reinforcing in the study of Chinese foreign policy. Their theoretically informed chapters are based on extensive use of Chinese sources, interviews, and fieldwork, and those authors who test theory most explicitly (e.g., Peter Hays Gries, "Identity and Conflict in Sino-American Relations," and Alastair Iain Johnston, "The Correlates of Beijing Public Opinion Toward the United States, 1998-2004") could not have done so as profitably without a profound knowledge of China and Chinese language ability. The chapters are divided into three sections (Security Studies, China and Globalization, and Domestic Politics) corresponding to the three main schools of international relations theory: realism, liberalism, and constructivism. As in Rethinking Security in East Asia, most of the authors in New Directions seek "analytical eclecticism" within the boundaries of these three theoretical schools by reexamining theoretical debates from a different angle, taking advantage of newly available Chinese sources to revisit hypotheses, or finding a new twist on longstanding policy issues of interest. As in many conference volumes, the chapters in New Directions were written independently of one another and do not address each other directly. Nonetheless, the first two chapters provide contending views of the stability of deterrence in Asia. Although their chapters differ in their historical focus and selection of cases, Robert Ross ("Deterrence and the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan") and Thomas Christensen ("Trend Analysis and China's Use of Force") square off over the likelihood of conflict in the Taiwan Straits. Ross, basing his analysis on Thomas Schelling's concept of crisis escalation, downplays the likelihood of confrontation between the United States and China over Taiwan due to the presence of stable mutual deterrence. Conversely, Christensen argues, using concepts from studies of preemptive and preventive war, that deterrence might not be that easily maintained because China may take advantage of a window of opportunity or a vulnerability to change the status quo. Although there is no overall theme binding the chapters together, a number of them implicitly raise similar questions (though from different theoretical perspectives) [End Page 424] about the consequences of China's growing integration with the international community. Typically, analysts have focused on whether or not China's foreign policy behavior is becoming more moderate and consistent with global norms as it becomes more enmeshed with the global economy. In New Directions, several of the contributors address this question from new vantage...