AUKUS Pact in the Perspective of Security Dilemma

Indo-Pacific is one of strategic region with complex political interest because of huge area and many involved country including major countries such as China and United States. The increase of China’s power in the region caused security dilemma for other countries. United States is one of major power that feels threatened with the rise of China. United States have a lot of cooperation with other major countries and the newest one is trilateral cooperation with Australia and United Kingdom in AUKUS Pact. AUKUS Pact caused a different reaction from countries in Indo-Pacific region. In the perspective of security dilemma, AUKUS Pact is one of United States’s security dilemma because of the rise of China. The AUKUS Pact point is help Australia to have a nuclear submarines. AUKUS Pact is not an arms race but at some point AUKUS Pact can escalated arms race in Indo-Pacific region.

How Does Japan Perceives China as an Adversary?

A China-Japan grim relationship has been marked by conflicts, and other political security tensions for a long time. One of which is the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands dispute occurring since 2012, it will become an issue for both countries that is difficult to be ironed out. The dispute has occurred since the Japanese government nationalized the islets, which China also claimed. It led to both countries' expansion of military power and a clash in East Asia. This essay aims to analyze how Japan perceives China by focusing on the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands dispute. This article argues Japan perceives China as a threat due to China’s military penetration over Diaoyu/Senkaku islands leading to a strategic distrust of Japan and its uncertain behavior as an international relations actor led to a moral distrust of Japan. This phenomenon will likely raise the tension in the region and enhance the escalation possibility due to the security dilemma effect.

THE RISE OF CHINA: IMPACT ON INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

The article examines manifestations of China’s rise and the attendant risks for the international security system. The author draws on a set of key approaches to measuring state power in his analysis of China’s hard and soft power as well as its structural capabilities. It has been demonstrated that China is closing the gap on the USA on key power indicators – the economic capabilities and military resources. However, a number of factors are slowing down its progress. With regard to the structural power, soft power and potential to engage allies the USA continues to hold significant advantages. China’s hegemonic aspirations bring about considerable structural transformations into international politics and impact international security. Redistribution of power and influence would reconfigure alliances, and impose new limitations on the actions and expectations of states. The rise of China and growing tensions between China and the USA would cause a complex and large-scale impact on the security of not only those two states, but the rest of the world as well. At both global and bilateral levels, security institutions and structures will undergo changes. The rise of bipolarity will escalate the standoff. The USA and China may become hostages to Thucydides Trap, whereby steps to maximize one’s security will lead to a greater threat – and eventually to a devastating conflict – as the other party will also try to reciprocate. China's rise may also pose a security dilemma for potential allies of both countries, weaken international institutions of cooperation and security, and engender a deep crisis of confidence. Scenarios of how the system of international security could respond are examined from the perspective of a security dilemma, power transition theory, and hegemonic stability theory. While both theories view the situation as challenging, they differ in their analysis of the sources and scale of risks.

The Intermarium in Ukrainian and Polish Foreign Policy Discourse

The ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict, crises in the European Union (EU), and armed conflicts in the EU neighbourhood have influenced the prospects of future development in eastern and central Europe. A search for new security architecture on the margins of the EU and regional collaborations that prevail across formal EU borders have forced national elites in Poland and Ukraine to redefine their efforts regarding regional and security co-operation. Rationales for joining an Intermarium (a regional, transnational project involving successor states of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth countries) are based on the perception of a threat coming from Russia. This article analyzes the Intermarium concept, first, from the perspective of “geopolitical imaginary” with emphasis on periphery-centre relations and, second, in the light of regional “security dilemma” as it appears in attempt of “smaller” states to counteract Russian threats.

Inadvertent escalation in the age of intelligence machines: A new model for nuclear risk in the digital age

Will AI-enabled capabilities increase inadvertent escalation risk? This article revisits Cold War-era thinking about inadvertent escalation to consider how Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology (especially AI augmentation of advanced conventional weapons) through various mechanisms and pathways could affect inadvertent escalation risk between nuclear-armed adversaries during a conventional crisis or conflict. How might AI be incorporated into nuclear and conventional operations in ways that affect escalation risk? It unpacks the psychological and cognitive features of escalation theorising (the security dilemma, the ‘fog of war’, and military doctrine and strategy) to examine whether and how the characteristics of AI technology, against the backdrop of a broader political-societal dynamic of the digital information ecosystem, might increase inadvertent escalation risk. Are existing notions of inadvertent escalation still relevant in the digital age? The article speaks to the broader scholarship in International Relations – notably ‘bargaining theories of war’ – that argues that the impact of technology on the cause of war occurs through its political effects, rather than tactical or operational battlefield alterations. In this way, it addresses a gap in the literature about the strategic and theoretical implications of the AI-nuclear dilemma.

Separatists, state subjectivity, and fundamental ontological (in)security in international relations

Ontological security studies (OSS) in International Relations (IR) emphasize the role of identity, anxiety, and a sense of self in world politics. Yet suggesting that states act in certain ways because of ‘who they are’ also assumes that they are in fact states. In this article, I problematize the presupposition of state subjects in the context of separatist conflicts in which claims to statehood compete and overlap. Where unrecognized de facto states are pitted against their unyielding parent states, the two threaten each other’s very state personhood, thereby presenting a more radical challenge to their existence than traditional ‘physical’ and ‘ontological’ security threats. Separatist conflicts thus reveal a widely overlooked dimension of fundamental ontological security, provided by the constitution and recognition of states as such. Moreover, because of the exclusiveness of state subjects in the modern international order, any third parties attempting to resolve such conflicts inevitably face a meta-security dilemma whereby reassuring one side by confirming its claim to statehood simultaneously renders the other side radically insecure. Thus, rather than regarding particular state subjects as merely the starting point of quests for ontological security in international relations, they should also be understood as already their result.