Asianism and Universalism


Book Description

This collection of essays addresses the interplay of democratic norms and cultural identity within Asia. The overall question for the volume is how the dueling identities of Asianism (regional exceptionalism) and universalism (democratic norms) are shaping state discourse and behavior in Asia. This is based on a dialogue of scholars organized by CSIS to examine national perspectives on Asianism and universalism across the region, as well as the role of regional democracies in developing a common understanding of rules and norms as the foundation for a more stable regional order. The introduction provides context for these normative debates in the region and addresses the potential to prioritize democracy promotion in foreign policy strategy as segue to essays analyzing normative debates in Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, and the United States.




Enhancing Democratic Partnership in the Indo-Pacific Region


Book Description

This study builds on a report CSIS published in 2020 on ways the United States can partner with allies and partners to enhance democratic partnership in the Indo-Pacific region. This follow-on effort includes case studies on the democracy support efforts of Australia, Japan, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Taiwan; comparisons of democracy support strategies; data on official development assistance (ODA) funding related to democracy broadly defined; and recommendations for ways the United States can coordinate democracy support initiatives in the region with like-minded partners as well as regional networks and institutions.




India’s Foreign Policy and Economic Challenges


Book Description

This book provides a state-of-the-art analysis of India’s foreign and security policies, examining e.g. the country’s security, economic and trade ties and interactions with Pakistan, China, the United States, Japan, the Middle East and ASEAN. Furthermore, the contributors provide the reader with an overview and analysis of the quality and challenges of India’s regional and global trade and investment policies. While in the past India has been a reluctant and not particularly prominent foreign and security policy actor in East and Southeast Asia as well as globally, China’s resurgence and its assertive and increasingly aggressive regional security policies have led India’s policymakers to reconsider the country’s decades-old non-alignment policies and opt for expanding security and defence ties with the United States, Japan and others. The Indian-Chinese border clashes in 2020 and China’s unlawful occupation of disputed territories along the Indian-Chinese border in the Himalayas have convinced Delhi’s policymakers and the country’s security and defence elites that India is well advised to join and contribute to US-led China containment policies. The expansion of India’s security and defence ties with Japan over recent years in particular will continue to be instrumental to keeping Beijing’s territorial expansionism in Southeast and South Asia in check. This volume analyses India’s involvement and engagement in regional and global trade and investment structures and flows in great detail. Written by a team of prolific European and Indian scholars, the book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of international relations and security studies, as well as policymakers at governmental or international organizations.




A Brief History of the Present


Book Description

Present-day political discourse swings between two contrary positions on the issue of Muslims. Hindutva politics categorizes Muslims as a monolithic religious group to substantiate Hindu homogeneity. The liberals, on the other hand, claim to protect Muslims as a religious minority to defend Indian democracy (if not secularism!). In both cases, Muslim identity is envisioned as a one-dimensional phenomenon. A Brief History of the Present attempts to go beyond the obvious to rethink the role of minorities, specifically Muslims, in the ‘New India’ that has revealed itself since 2014. By diving deep into the complexities of Muslim identity and its role in everyday life while at the same time viewing the Muslim communities through a historical lens, the author attempts to provide a far more accurate picture of Indian Muslims than what is perceived currently. Through the author’s interpretation of a wide range of quantitative and qualitative sources and his long experience as an observer of the Indian political scenario for more than three decades, the book presents a deeply considered view of a burning question: the current status of Muslims in India.




Emerging Regional Human Rights Systems in Asia


Book Description

Analyses the emerging human rights norms, regional institutions and enforcement mechanisms in Asia.




Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931-1945


Book Description

The book explores the critical importance of Pan-Asianism in Japanese imperialism. Pan-Asianism was a cultural as well as political ideology that promoted Asian unity and recognition. The focus is on Pan-Asianism as a propeller behind Japan's expansionist policies from the Manchurian Incident until the end of the Pacific War.




Okakura Tenshin and Pan-Asianism


Book Description

This volume explores four key themes emanating from Okakura Tenshin’s philosophy and legacy: Okakura Tenshin and the Ideal of Pan-Asianism; Other Forms of Pan-Asianism (especially Islam and China); Art and Asia, and Ways of Defining Asia (up to the present day). Okakura Tenshin (1862-1913), art historian and ideologue driven by a notion of Asia bound by culture, is a significant figure in Japan’s modern intellectual history. His writings in both Japanese and English became part of a growing discourse that positioned Japan as the guardian and protector of Asia against the depredations, cultural as much as economic and political, of the West. At the outbreak of the Pacific War, the first line of Okakura’s 1903 book (‘Asia is One’), The Ideals of the East, was celebrated posthumously by the Japanese military as the most powerful expression of Japan’s goal of political ascendancy in Asia.




Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History


Book Description

Regionalism has played an increasingly important role in the changing international relations of East Asia in recent decades, with early signs of integration and growing regional cooperation. This in-depth volume analyzes various historical approaches to the construction of a regional order and a regional identity in East Asia. It explores the ideology of Pan-Asianism as a predecessor of contemporary Asian regionalism, which served as the basis for efforts at regional integration in East Asia, but also as a tool for legitimizing Japanese colonial rule. This mobilization of the Asian peoples occurred through a collective regional identity established from cohesive cultural factors such as language, religion, geography and race. In discussing Asian identity, the book succeeds in bringing historical perspective to bear on approaches to regional cooperation and integration, as well as analyzing various utilizations and manifestations of the pan-Asian ideology. Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History provides an illuminating and extensive account of the historical backgrounds of current debates surrounding Asian identity and essential information and analyses for anyone with an interest in history as well as Asian and Japanese studies.




The Last Utopia


Book Description

Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today’s idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal’s troubled present and uncertain future. For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post–World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity’s moral history, The Last Utopia shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.




Regions and Powers


Book Description

This book develops the idea that since decolonisation, regional patterns of security have become more prominent in international politics. The authors combine an operational theory of regional security with an empirical application across the whole of the international system. Individual chapters cover Africa, the Balkans, CIS Europe, East Asia, EU Europe, the Middle East, North America, South America, and South Asia. The main focus is on the post-Cold War period, but the history of each regional security complex is traced back to its beginnings. By relating the regional dynamics of security to current debates about the global power structure, the authors unfold a distinctive interpretation of post-Cold War international security, avoiding both the extreme oversimplifications of the unipolar view, and the extreme deterritorialisations of many globalist visions of a new world disorder. Their framework brings out the radical diversity of security dynamics in different parts of the world.