South Korea’s Strategy toward a Rising China, Security Dynamics in East Asia, and International Relations Theory

Asian Survey ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 707-730 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min-hyung Kim

This article contends that South Korea’s behaviors toward China since 1992 can be fully understood when the structural variables of the strategic environment—i.e., economic interdependence, the US-centered hub-and-spoke system, and the North Korean threat—are combined with the domestic variable of Seoul’s leadership change and its perception of threat.

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 681-711 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICOLAS GUILHOT

In the disciplines of political science and international relations, Machiavelli is unanimously considered to be “the first modern realist.” This essay argues that the idea of a realist tradition going from the Renaissance to postwar realism founders when one considers the disrepute of Machiavelli among early international relations theorists. It suggests that the transformation of Machiavelli into a realist thinker took place subsequently, when new historical scholarship, informed by strategic and political considerations related to the transformation of the US into a global power, generated a new picture of the Renaissance. Focusing on the work of Felix Gilbert, and in particular hisMachiavelli and Guicciardini, the essay shows how this new interpretation of Machiavelli was shaped by the crisis of the 1930s, the emergence of security studies, and the philanthropic sponsorship of international relations theory.


Author(s):  
D. V. Dorofeev

The research is devoted to the study of the origin of the historiography of the topic of the genesis of the US foreign policy. The key thesis of the work challenges the established position in the scientific literature about the fundamental role of the work of T. Lyman, Jr. «The diplomacy of the United States: being an account of the foreign relations of the country, from the first treaty with France, in 1778, to the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, with Great Britain», published in 1826. The article puts forward an alternative hypothesis: the emergence of the historiography of the genesis of the foreign policy of the United States occurred before the beginning of the second quarter of the XIX century – during the colonial period and the first fifty years of the North American state. A study of the works of thirty-five authors who worked during the 1610s and 1820s showed that amater historians expressed a common opinion about North America’s belonging to the Eurocentric system of international relations; they were sure that both the colonists and the founding fathers perceived international processes on the basis of raison d’être. The conceptualization of the intellectual heritage of non-professional historians allowed us to distinguish three interpretations of the origin of the United States foreign policy: «Autochthonous» – focused on purely North American reasons; «Atlantic» – postulated the borrowing of European practice of international relations by means of the system of relations that developed in the Atlantic in the XVII–XVIII centuries; «Imperial» – stated the adaptation of the British experience. The obtained data refute the provisions of scientific thought of the XX–XXI centuries and create new guidelines for further study of the topic.


2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (8) ◽  
pp. 1202-1218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min-hyung Kim

This article seeks to critically assess the relevance of International Relations Theory (IRT) for East Asia International Relations (IR). After identifying the shortcomings of IRT in explaining East Asia IR, the article provides several ways to modify it with a goal to make it more suitable for East Asia IR. Its central claim is that the IRT’s bias toward European experiences and great power politics generates unsatisfactory accounts for and inaccurate predictions about East Asia IR. This does not mean, however, that we should treat IRT as completely irrelevant and develop an indigenous theory of East Asia IR. Given that no single theory is complete and perfectly relevant across time and space and that many core concepts and key variables of IRT are also pertinent for East Asia IR, our efforts should instead be made to refine the existing IRT and make it more suitable for East Asia IR by problematising its major assumptions and central claims on the basis of East Asian experiences. This will save IRT from being a region-specific and a country-specific theory of IR.


2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANTHONY PAYNE

United States–Caribbean relations over the period of the last thirty or forty years have rarely—if ever—been analysed in a thoroughly satisfying way. It is a strange omission in the international relations literature given the proximity of the United States to the Caribbean, and vice versa. But the fact is that most accounts of the relationship have fallen prey to a powerful, but ultimately misleading, mythology by which small, poor, weak, dependent entities in the Caribbean have either created trouble for, or alternatively been confronted by, the ‘colossus to the north’ that is the United States in whose ‘backyard’ they unfortunately have to reside. Virtually all analysts of the US–Caribbean relationship have thus drawn a picture marked at heart by the notion of an inherently unequal struggle between forces of a different order and scale. Within this broad metaphor the only major difference of interpretation has reflected the competing theories of power in the international system developed by the realist and structuralist schools.


2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (Special-Issue) ◽  
pp. 29-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Ann Richey

Abstract Global communication about HIV/AIDS requires the creation of new communities that can bridge distances and distinctions of nationality, language, class, race, gendered-identities and other forms of local identification on a disease that is associated with the realm usually understood as private (sexuality). Global AIDS, characterized as ‘the disease of our time’, is responsible for spawning an entire industry devoted to the prevention, detection, treatment, and potential cure of HIV/AIDS. In terms of scale, this industry works primarily cross-nationally, with donors from the North funding programs for AIDS prevention and care in the South. Anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs), typically produced as generics by manufacturers in India or South Africa and purchased by aid funding, are central to global AIDS programs. Yet, mobilizing for global AIDS treatment embodies the logic of marketing, in which Africans with AIDS are sold as lives to be saved. This article will draw from international relations theory, sociology and anthropology to offer an interdisciplinary perspective on mobilizing communication globally.


Res Publica ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-574
Author(s):  
Michèle Schmiegelow

Long considered as an economic giant and a political dwarf, Japan begins to solve this paradox by acquiring a political weight on the international scene. lts diplomacy remains non-assertive and its military role limited. But it has an increasing influence on the structure of the world economy by the size of its GNP, the composition and spread of its external economy and its capital ftows, and by the impact of its industrial policy on the international division of labour. The growing macroeconomic and financial interdependence between the US and Japan has an incidence on defence high technology and on the transfert of resources to the Third World. Japan's new status as a world power is acknowledged even by Gorbachov's « Eastern » policy. Japan's case weakens the assumption of the realist paradigm of international relations theory that power and interdependence are incompatible.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Min-Hua Chiang

This article studies the US hegemony with particular focus on its dominant role in East Asia and compares conventional thoughts with different views provided by the two books reviewed. Reich and Lebow considered that American hegemony has started to erode when other nations regained their economic strength and political stability during the postwar decades. Acharya’s main argument is focusing on the decline of the American world order, rather than the decline of the US. Authors from the two books jumped out from the conventional zero-sum game between the rising China and the declining US power and consider other regional players in constructing the world order. However, this article argued that if China was not able to challenge the US power presence, there is no reason to assume the IS power decline. The establishment of the institutionalized network with involvement of several countries would only to strengthen the US dominance, rather than to weaken it.


2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-175
Author(s):  
Richard Javad Heydarian

The paper examines the evolution of the Asian regional security architecture in the past three decades, evaluating relations between China and its neighbors, and considering various approaches in International Relations theory. First, the paper examines the assumptions of liberal institutionalism in the context of “econophoria,” assessing its merits in East Asia. Second, the paper addresses China and its relations with the East Asian neighborhood in the latter decades of the 20th century. Third, the paper examines growing territorial tensions between China and its neighbors in the past decade -- and how this undermines regional security and regional integration. Lastly, the paper evaluates the contributions of alternative IR theories such as realism and constructivism in providing a better understanding of China’s new assertiveness.


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