Impact of Strategic Culture on U.S. Policies for East Asia


Book Description

The author, using examples from the Asia-Pacific region, illustrates the need for regional and, at times, subregional approaches to collective security. He concludes that treating these relationships from a global perspective, and thus ignoring local norms, can cause unnecessary friction. He provides a set of policy recommendations to achieve U.S. goals in the region.




China and Strategic Culture


Book Description

The author examines the impact of strategic culture on 21st century China. He contends that the People's Republic of China's security policies and its tendency to use military force are influenced not only by elite understandings of China's own strategic tradition, but also by their understandings of the strategic cultures of other states. Gaining a fuller appreciation for how Chinese strategists view the United States and Japan, our key ally in the Asia-Pacific, will better enable us to assess regional and global security issues.




Strategic Adjustment and the Rise of China


Book Description

Strategic Adjustment and the Rise of China demonstrates how structural and domestic variables influence how East Asian states adjust their strategy in light of the rise of China, including how China manages its own emerging role as a regional great power. The contributors note that the shifting regional balance of power has fueled escalating tensions in East Asia and suggest that adjustment challenges are exacerbated by the politics of policymaking. International and domestic pressures on policymaking are reflected in maritime territorial disputes and in the broader range of regional security issues created by the rise of China.Adjusting to power shifts and managing a new regional order in the face of inevitable domestic pressure, including nationalism, is a challenging process. Both the United States and China have had to adjust to China's expanded capabilities. China has sought an expanded influence in maritime East Asia; the United States has responded by consolidating its alliances and expanding its naval presence in East Asia. The region's smaller countries have also adjusted to the rise of China. They have sought greater cooperation with China, even as they try to sustain cooperation with the United States. As China continues to rise and challenge the regional security order, the contributors consider whether the region is destined to experience increased conflict and confrontation.ContributorsIan Bowers, Norwegian Defence University College and Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies Daniel W. Drezner, Tufts University, Brookings Institution, and Washington Post Taylor M. Fravel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Bjørn Elias Mikalsen Grønning, Norwegian Defence University College and Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies Chung-in Moon, Yonsei University and Chairman, Presidential Committee on Northeast Asia Cooperation Initiative, Republic of Korea James Reilly, University of Sydney Robert S. Ross, Boston College and Harvard University Randall L. Schweller, The Ohio State University ystein Tunsjø, Norwegian Defence University College and the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies Wang Dong, Peking University




American Grand Strategy and East Asian Security in the 21st Century


Book Description

David C. Kang tells an often overlooked story about East Asia's 'comprehensive security', arguing that American policy towards Asia should be based on economic and diplomatic initiatives rather than military strength.




Cultural Dimensions of Strategy and Policy


Book Description

There has been a growing recognition in the post-Cold War era that culture has increasingly become a factor in determining the course of today's complex and interconnected world. The U.S. experience in Afghanistan and Iraq extended this trend to national security and military operations. There is also a growing recognition by the national security community that culture is an important factor at the policy and strategy levels. Cultural proficiency at the policy and strategy levels means the ability to consider history, values, ideology, politics, religion, and other cultural dimensions and assess their potential effect on policy and strategy. The Analytical Cultural Framework for Strategy and Policy (ACFSP) is one systematic and analytical approach to the vital task of viewing the world through many lenses. The ACFSP identifies basic cultural dimensions that seem to be of fundamental importance in determining such behavior and thus are of importance in policy and strategy formulation and outcomes. These dimensions are (1) Identity, or the basis for defining identity and its linkage to interests; (2) Political Culture, or the structure of power and decisionmaking; and (3) Resilience, or the capacity or ability to resist, adapt or succumb to external forces. Identity is the most important, because it ultimately determines purpose, values and interests that form the foundation for policy and strategy to attain or preserve those interests.




Power and Order in Asia


Book Description

Asia stands out as the world’s most vibrant region, where rivalries and confrontation coincide with increased economic cooperation and community building. How should we interpret these two dynamics, and what are the implications for U.S. policy? With the support of the MacArthur Foundation, Asahi Shimbun, Joongang Ilbo, and China Times, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) collaborated with Opinion Dynamics Corporation on a survey of strategic elites in eleven Asia Pacific economies. This report presents key findings on the strategic landscape in Asia with respect to questions of power, norms, and regional institutions.




Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons


Book Description

Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.




The Paradox of Power


Book Description

The second half of the 20th century featured a strategic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. That competition avoided World War III in part because during the 1950s, scholars like Henry Kissinger, Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, and Albert Wohlstetter analyzed the fundamental nature of nuclear deterrence. Decades of arms control negotiations reinforced these early notions of stability and created a mutual understanding that allowed U.S.-Soviet competition to proceed without armed conflict. The first half of the 21st century will be dominated by the relationship between the United States and China. That relationship is likely to contain elements of both cooperation and competition. Territorial disputes such as those over Taiwan and the South China Sea will be an important feature of this competition, but both are traditional disputes, and traditional solutions suggest themselves. A more difficult set of issues relates to U.S.-Chinese competition and cooperation in three domains in which real strategic harm can be inflicted in the current era: nuclear, space, and cyber. Just as a clearer understanding of the fundamental principles of nuclear deterrence maintained adequate stability during the Cold War, a clearer understanding of the characteristics of these three domains can provide the underpinnings of strategic stability between the United States and China in the decades ahead. That is what this book is about.




Strategic Cultures and Security Policies in the Asia-Pacific


Book Description

This book shows how one of the most powerful tools of security studies—strategic culture—illuminates the origins and implications of the Asia-Pacific region’s difficult issues, from the rise of China and the American pivot, to the shifting calculations of many other actors. Strategic culture sometimes challenges and always enriches prevailing neo-realist presumptions about the region. It provides a bridge between material and ideational explanations of state behavior and helps capture the tension between neoclassical realist and constructivist approaches. The case studies in this book survey the role of strategic culture in the behaviors of Australia, China, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and the United States. They show the contrast between structural expectations and cultural predispositions, as realist geopolitical security threats and opportunities interact with domestic elite and popular interpretation of historical narratives and distinctive political-military cultures to influence security policies. The concluding chapter devotes special attention to methodological issues at the heart of strategic cultural studies, as well as how culture may impact the potential for future conflict or cooperation in the region. The result is a body of work that helps deepen our understanding of strategic cultures in the Asia-Pacific in comparative perspective and enrich security studies. This bookw as published as a special issue of Contemporary Security Policy.




China's Strategic Culture


Book Description

For the past 2 decades, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has made great gains in national development and economic growth and now stands as one of the most important states on the world scene. It is extremely important for U.S. policymakers to have a contextual understanding of what shapes Chinese thought and behavior thus driving Chinese political, economic, and military imperatives. With much of the American public accepting the "China Threat" theory, it is critical that the United States recognize the role of strategic culture in shaping China's domestic and external policies. This paper illustrates the key characteristics of Chinese strategic culture-philosophy, history, and domestic factors that, to a remarkable extent, structure the strategic objectives of China's formal foreign policy and explain how Chinese strategic interests are defined by modern Chinese pragmatic nationalism, its drive for modernization, and the desire for China to have a more prominent role in the Asian and world communities.