Nuclear Escalation in a Taiwan Strait Crisis?

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Nuclear Escalation in a Taiwan Strait Crisis?

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Regional Defence

The chapter shows how the Japanese security policymaking elite utilised the North Korean Nuclear Crisis in 1993–4, the Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1996 and the Taepodong Crisis in 1999 to authorise the SDF to adopt a regional defence role within the US–Japan alliance.

What Allies Want: Reconsidering Loyalty, Reliability, and Alliance Interdependence

Leaders believe that if their state abandons one ally during a crisis, then their state's other allies will expect similar disloyalty in the future. Thus, a single instance of disloyalty can damage, or even destroy, alliances with other states. Because of this belief in interdependence—that developments in one alliance will also affect other alliances—the desire to demonstrate loyalty has exercised a tremendous influence on U.S. policy. But is indiscriminate loyalty what allies want? The First Taiwan Strait Crisis (1954–55) case study suggests that allies do not desire U.S. loyalty in all situations. Instead, they want the United States to be a reliable ally, posing no risk of abandonment or entrapment. In the First Taiwan Strait Crisis, several allies worried that U.S. loyalty to the Republic of China increased the risk of unwanted conflict, and as the crisis persisted, these allies sought to restrain the United States and thus reduce the likelihood of war. Although U.S. leaders were reluctant to coerce the Republic of China into backing down during this territorial dispute with the People's Republic of China, other U.S. allies actively encouraged such disloyalty. These findings have significance for theories of alliance politics and international reputation, as well as contemporary alliance management.

Conceptual Envelopment

This chapter discusses China’s evolution and adaptation since the Cold War, surveys the evolution of Chinese forces, offers case studies of the Sino-Vietnamese War and the South China Sea, introduces and analyzes the concept of conceptual envelopment as it relates to China, discusses the transformative effect of China’s emergence as a global oceanic and maritime power, and explores the concept of unrestricted warfare and China’s Three Warfares doctrine. It argues that, in the quarter century since 1993, China has learned by watching the West struggle in the post-Cold War era, and has taken advantage of Western preoccupation with terrorism since 2001. The 1991 Gulf War, the 1996 Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, and the 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade prompted strategists in Beijing to shift from a peacetime, concept-led adaptation process to a wartime, reactive approach that treats the United States as a “pacing threat.”

The Socialization of China’s Assertiveness: Examining Waltz’s Neorealist Mechanism of “Socialization” in China’s Regional Security Relations

This is a study of learning and socialization in China’s foreign security policy, examining how China has at times been more assertive and in other instances has taken a more accommodating approach in its foreign security policy behavior. This paper argues that China has been “socialized” by its international security environment by exploring Kenneth Waltz’s theoretical mechanism of the “socialization” of states in the international system. The 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis and the early 2000s, the Senkaku/Diaoyutai crises from 2012 to 2015, and the South China Sea in the mid-1990s are all instances in which China has employed force only to suffer strategically. This has eventually led to a less confrontational posture and contributed to the pursuit of a more cooperative engagement strategy with both Southeast Asia (from 1998 to 2008) and Taiwan ([Formula: see text]2006–2016). Variations in China’s assertiveness can be explained by the combination of domestic politics and signals from China’s international security environment.