Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
At the turn of the century, the United States' postwar alliance network remains a key component of its international security policy. That policy is fundamentally based on maintaining military superiority over current and potential rivals in the Eurasian landmass.
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
At the height of the Cold War, the dominant Western theories of alliance building in interstate relations argued that alliances tend to be motivated more by an external need to confront a clearly defined common adversary than by the domestic attributes of alliance partners. The newly reinvigorated U.S.-Japan alliance, however, together with the newly expanded NATO, seems to depart from the conventional pattern by emphasizing shared democratic values and by maintaining a high degree of ambiguity regarding the goals and targets of the alliance. Although these new features of American-led military alliances provide an anchor in an other- wise highly fluid situation in the post–Cold War world, many Chinese foreign-and defense-policy analysts believe that U.S. alliances with Asian countries, particularly with Japan, pose a serious, long-term challenge, if not a threat, to China's national security, national unification, and modernization. The ambiguity of the revised U.S.-Japan security alliance means that it is at best searching for targets and at worst aiming at China.
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Impelled in large part by the nearly decade-long stagnation of the Japanese economy, institutions in Japan are undergoing fundamental changes. When Professors Masahiko Aoki, of the Stanford University Department of Economics, and Henry Rowen, director of the Asia/Pacific Research Center, were talking about these changes, they realized that an international conference on the subject would be useful and informative. With funding from the Asia/ Pacific Research Center and the Institute for International Studies, a distinguished group of speakers, commentators, and participants was brought together for a one-day conference to look at institutional changes in three distinct sectors of Japanese society: the political system, the bureaucracy, and corporations.
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
As Americans consider their options for protecting and advancing their interests in Asia in the twenty-first century, it is natural that there will be wide-ranging views and vigorous debate. Recent events such as the 1996 Taiwan crisis, the Asian economic meltdown in 1997, and the exchange of state visits by presidents Bill Clinton and Jiang Zemin in 1997 and 1998 have intensified, then moderated and redirected, much of the debate over a very short span of time. Two years ago, for example, the Chinese were worrying aloud about American efforts to “encircle” China. Now they talk about “building a constructive strategic partnership with the U.S.” Despite these ups and downs, however, the fundamental choices for the United States have remained largely the same.
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Contemporary discussions of virtually any aspect of Russian foreign and security policy must take as their point of departure the extraordinarily weakened condition of the Russian Federation. There is no comparable case of such a rapid and dramatic decline in the status of a great power during peacetime in modern history. The Russian economy has been in a virtual free fall for most of the 1990s. The World Bank estimated the Russian GNP in 1997, using fixed exchange rates not adjusted for purchasing power parity, at $403.5 billion, making Russia the twelfth-largest economy in the world, just ahead of the Netherlands and just behind South Korea. Russian per capita GNP of $2,740 ranked fifty-first in the world and was in the category of “low middle” income countries. In 1997 the Russian GNP was about 5 percent of that of the United States, 8 percent adjusted for purchasing power parity. The figures for 1998 will be even starker given the devaluation of the ruble to approximately 30 percent of its 1997 value and continuing overall economic decline. A back-of-the-envelope calculation would have Russian GNP at the end of 1998 at no more than $120 billion and per capita GNP at less than $1,000.
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Asia, South Korea, and Netherlands
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The alliances of the United States in East Asia are in a process of profound change (Okimoto 1998). The treaties with Japan and Korea are undergoing distinctive metamorphoses. These changes are the result of a number of forces that unfolded over the decades of the twentieth century, most notably the Cold War, globalization, and democratization (Inoguchi 1993, 1995; and Archibugi, Held, and Koehler 1996).
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
North Korea has recently exhibited some noteworthy changes. In September 1998 it amended its constitution to change the power structure and introduced a number of progressive clauses. It also began to use the slogan “A Strong and Prosperous Nation,” which emphasizes economic prosperity as well as political, ideological, and military strength.
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The American security alliances with Japan and South Korea have been a major concern of China's foreign and defense policies. China's position toward the alliances is determined by its foreign policy and security theories, doctrines, and principles; by its approach to a regional security mechanism in the Asia-Pacific region; by its bilateral relations with countries in Northeast Asia; and by incidental issues such as territorial disputes in Asia in which it is involved.
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The United States and China have vastly different official estimates of the bilateral trade imbalance. The U.S. figures show that the United States had a merchandise trade deficit of US$57 billion vis-à-vis China in 1998 whereas the Chinese figures show that China had a merchandise trade surplus of only US$21 billion vis-à-vis the United States. There is a difference of US$36 billion. Which set of figures is right?
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
While domestic politics helps to shape foreign policy, the two do not necessarily covary. That is to say, fundamental change in the former may not always trigger corresponding change in the latter. This is especially true of an alliance relationship, for a shared perception of an external threat that helps to sustain such a relationship is frequently unaffected by domestic political change.