Harsh Realities, Alliances, and Strategic Ambiguity: US Policy Choices in East Asia
Recent developments in the South China Sea and China’s emphasis on the modernization of its military raise important issues for the future of U.S. strategic manoeuvring in the region. What can be done to sustain future U.S. presence in Asia while tactfully maintaining a favourable position for its interests and the stability in the region?
Review – Mao’s Great Famine
In 1957 Chairman Mao Zedong launched a programme of rapid industrialisation with the ostensible aim of overtaking British steel production within 15 years. Over the following four years millions died in the greatest famine in history. Using recently opened archival material, Frank Dikötter has exposed the scale of this disaster in greater detail than any writer before and illustrates Mao’s central role in the suffering and devastation.
Review – Chinese Aerospace Power, Evolving Maritime Roles
With the large amount of scholarship that details Chinese aerospace technology and its application into military power, there is always a danger any edited volume could get lost in the crowd. This book clearly has no such troubles. The work assembles what constitutes an all-star cast of scholars to discuss one of the most timely security studies subjects of the 21st century.
Chinese Submarines and U.S. Anti-Submarine Warfare Capabilities
China’s military modernization has been a source of great concern for the United States and its allies in the Asia-Pacific region. Submarines, unsurprisingly, can be expected to play a significant role in Chinese asymmetric A2/AD strategies.The United States must invest to maintain the superiority of its undersea forces and to relearn and redevelop the core ASW capabilities it lost following the end of the Cold War.
South China Sea – Old Worries on The Rise
The territorial disputes concerning the Spratly and Paracel Islands and adjacent waters are still unresolved. Recently, incidents between Vietnamese seismic survey ships and Chinese coast patrols are a reminder of the conflict potential these border disputes inherit. After a phase of relative easiness among the claimants to the South China Sea islands, these newly heightened tensions cause rising worries in the region and abroad.
The Middle-Class and the Future of World Politics
While the western world is likely to turn inward as its middle-classes attempt to cope with the economic squeeze, the new middle-classes in the global south are less predictable and more likely to be a force for instability. The ability of governments in the global south to respond to the changing demands of their constituents and provide competent economic governance will profoundly influence the future, both domestically and globally.
An End in Sight? The War on Terror and the Future of World Order
Western democracies must accept China as an equal partner in managing the global order, an order that has until recently borne the distinctive imprint of Western interests. The task of accommodating China will form the defining challenge of the 21st century.
Review – A Contest For Supremacy
Friedberg’s thesis is two-fold. First, he argues the United States and China are locked in a quiet but increasingly intense struggle for power and influence in Asia and across the globe, which will only become more acute as China continues to accumulate more power. Second, the emerging rivalry is not the result of easily erased misperceptions, but driven by power politics and differing ideologies
Don’t Fear the Air/Sea Battle Concept
Much has been made recently in multiple publications about the possible escalatory nature of fighting Chinese anti-access tactics with a concept of “Air/Sea Battle”. Very little exact information about the plan is known to the public, yet speculation has remained rampant. The concept at its core is attempting to create synergy between armed forces in combining their offensive capabilities as seamlessly as possible. This is not a new idea.
Review – The Future of Power
In ‘The Future of Power’, Joseph S. Nye outlines a synthesis of his more than two decades of scholarship on the future of world power politics. Nye explains how power works and how it is changing under the conditions of a burgeoning revolution in information technology, globalization, and the return of Asia in the 21st century.
