The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

What is likely to be the future character of the relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China? Will it be marked by convergence toward deepening cooperation, stability,...

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The Future of U.S.-China Relations: Is Conflict Inevitable?

Charles I concentrated his energies on the construction of a new royal palace at Whitehall. Designed in the classical style by John Webb, the new Whitehall was to be the fulallment of the king’s lifelong dream to replace the sprawling and obsolete palace that he had inherited from the Tudors with one that would match the splendor and majesty of the Louvre or the Escorial. Charles I desired nothing else than that his surroundings should reoect the magniacence of his rule: “Here, at last, would be a seat of government appropriate to the system of ‘Personal Rule’ Charles I had established since dispensing with Parliament in 1629. At least until 1639, it was from here that Charles could expect to govern his realms, resplendent amid Webb’s Baroque courtyards and colonnades, during the next decade and beyond.”1 In making such ambitious plans, Charles I displayed supreme conadence that his regime would not only survive but thrive well into the future. Unfortunately for the king, his reign did not last out the 1630s. If the conventional historical wisdom that “the collapse of Charles I’s regime during the 1630s appeared ‘inevitable’” is correct, then Charles obviously suffered from selfdelusion—an unreality all too characteristic of remote and isolated rulers.2 International politics, too, has seen many instances of this type of folly, where threatened countries have failed to recognize a clear and present danger or, more typically, have simply not reacted to it or, more typically still, have responded in paltry and imprudent ways. This behavior, which I call “underbalancing,” runs directly contrary to the core prediction of structural realist

Unanswered Threats: A Neoclassical Realist Theory of Underbalancing

For nearly a quarter-century the military balance in the Pacific rested on the clearly perceived parameters of the cold war, namely parallel Soviet and Chinese anti-imperialism and American containment policies which compelled the smaller states to align themselves with one or other of the opposing blocs. One of the more beneficial Nixon shocks reopened the traditional American 'Open Door* policy toward China. This single move granted the United States important diplomatic initiative in the Far East, shifted the fulcrum of political and military attention from southeast Asia to the northwest Pacific, and destroyed the main pillar of Moscow's Asian policy which rested on indefinite ChineseAmerican animosity. This realignment of the Pacific power configuration also raised fundamental questions about the future military balance in this theatre. The purpose of this essay is to analyse the present military postures of the principal actors and to develop several questions about future problems. An assessment of comparative military strengths and strategies must be predicated upon presumptions of political policy and orientation. Let us turn first therefore to some assumptions about the political Dositions of the various national actors in the Pacific region.

The Military Balance

Strategic Force Modernization

https://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/10945/43140/1/Glosny_Debating_China%27s_2010.pdf

Correspondence: Debating China's Naval Nationalism

(2002). Recent developments in China's export controls: New regulations and new challenges. The Nonproliferation Review: Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 153-167.

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Recent developments in China's export controls: New regulations and new challenges

: This article seeks to illuminate the future force structure of the PLAAF by exploring the different ways of thinking about the role of the air force within overall PLA modernization plans, as well as the potential roles it will play in future PLA missions. It begins with a concise breakdown of the PLAAF as it stands now and is shaping for the future. It then shifts to the potential influences and missions that Beijing will weigh in making determinations for modernization. These influences are already affecting PLAAF transformation.

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Phillip C. Saunders

Papers

Strategic Force Modernization

Correspondence: Debating China's Naval Nationalism

Recent developments in China's export controls: New regulations and new challenges

China's Air Force Modernization

Chinese Military Transparency: Evaluating the 2010 Defense White Paper