During the Cold War, the U.S. built a series of alliances with Asian nations to erect a bulwark against the spread of communism and provide security to the region. Despite pressure to end bilateral ...alliances in the post-Cold War world, they persist to this day, even as new multilateral institutions have sprung up around them. The resulting architecture may aggravate rivalries as the U.S., China, and others compete for influence. However, Andrew Yeo demonstrates how Asia's complex array of bilateral and multilateral agreements may ultimately bring greater stability and order to a region fraught with underlying tensions.
Asia's Regional Architecture transcends traditional international relations models. It investigates change and continuity in Asia through the lens of historical institutionalism. Refuting claims regarding the demise of the liberal international order, Yeo reveals how overlapping institutions can promote regional governance and reduce uncertainty in a global context. In addition to considering established institutions such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, he discusses newer regional arrangements including the East Asia Summit, Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Belt and Road Initiative. This book has important implications for how policymakers think about institutional design and regionalism in Asia and beyond.
Abstract
After a decade of vibrant scholarly and political discourse regarding the prospects of East Asian integration, the narrative of regionalism has lost its luster in favor of a darker regional ...narrative. Has the idea of East Asian regionalism come to pass, and if so, what explains the decline in the narrative of Asian regionalism both as a policy idea and as a research program? After providing empirical evidence tracking the rise and decline in scholarly publications and news articles regarding Asian regionalism, I present several plausible reasons explaining this decline. Among them, the perceived shift in Chinese strategic behavior, and in turn, the adoption of more pragmatic interpretations of Asian security practices – one defined by power balancing and institutional rivalry rather than community building – appears to have struck a major blow to the East Asia regional project.
Anti-U.S. base protests, played out in parliaments and the streets of host nations, continue to arise in different parts of the world. In a novel approach, this book examines the impact of anti-base ...movements and the important role bilateral alliance relationships play in shaping movement outcomes. The author explains not only when and how anti-base movements matter, but also how host governments balance between domestic and international pressure on base-related issues. Drawing on interviews with activists, politicians, policy makers and U.S. base officials in the Philippines, Japan (Okinawa), Ecuador, Italy and South Korea, the author finds that the security and foreign policy ideas held by host government elites act as a political opportunity or barrier for anti-base movements, influencing their ability to challenge overseas U.S. basing policies.
The evidentiary weight of North Korean defectors' testimony depicting crimes against humanity has drawn considerable attention from the international community in recent years. Despite the attention ...to North Korean human rights, what remains unexamined is the rise of the transnational advocacy network, which drew attention to the issue in the first place. Andrew Yeo and Danielle Chubb explore the 'hard case' that is North Korea and challenge existing conceptions of transnational human rights networks, how they operate, and why they provoke a response from even the most recalcitrant regimes. In this volume, leading experts and activists assemble original data from multiple language sources, including North Korean sources, and adopt a range of sophisticated methodologies to provide valuable insight into the politics, strategy, and policy objectives of North Korean human rights activism.
Once considered severely under-institutionalized, East Asia has experienced a rapid process of institution-building since the end of the Cold War resulting in a significant degree of organizational ...overlap, both in membership and mandate. This paper examines the drivers and potential effects of institutional overlap in East Asia. It argues that the informal nature of Asian institutions coupled with competing visions of regionalism among member states make the region especially prone to overlapping regionalism. The consequences of such overlap for the time being have been positive. However, Asian policymakers must consider issues of institutional design to avoid steering the regional architecture in a direction which fosters regional rivalries and institutional competition in the long run. To illustrate the process of institutional overlap, I draw examples from a sub-set of regional organizations emerging out of the ASEAN family of institutions: the ASEAN+3, the East Asia Summit, and the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat.
How do allies successfully manage their alliance partnership in times of political crisis? We argue that the procedural norm of political contestation and the substantive norm of security consensus ...set the parameters for non-detrimental disagreement among democratic alliance partners. Rather than interpreting sharp disagreements with the US as signs of soft-balancing or alliance decline, we explain the seeming contradictions in alliance behavior — maintenance of the alliance versus sharp disagreements within the alliance — by drawing norms and institutions into the power equation. We use within- and cross-regional case comparisons of alliance disputes in East Asia and Europe to test our argument in both bilateral and multilateral contexts, respectively.
Capsule endoscopes are widely used to diagnose gut-related problems, but they are passive in nature and cannot actively move inside the gut. This paper details the design process and development of ...an anchoring mechanism and actuation system to hold a capsule in place within the small intestine. The design centres around the mechanical structure of the anchor that makes use of compliant Sarrus linkage legs, which extend to make contact with the intestine, holding the capsule in place. Three variants with 2 legs, 3 legs and 4 legs of the anchoring mechanism were tested using a shape memory alloy spring actuator (5 mm × ϕ 3.4 mm). The experiments determine that all the variants can anchor at the target site and resist peristaltic forces of 346 mN. The proposed design is well suited for an intestine with a diameter of 19 mm. The proposed design allows the capsule endoscopes to anchor at the target site for a better and more thorough examination of the targeted region. The proposed anchoring mechanism has the potential to become a vital apparatus for clinicians to use with capsule endoscopes in the future.
A review essay covering books by 1) Geoffrey F. Gresh, Gulf Security and the U.S. Military: Regime Survival and the Politics of Basing (2015), 2) Amy Austin Holmes, Social Unrest and American ...Military Bases in Turkey and Germany since 1945 (2014) and 3) Yuko Kawato, Protests against U.S. Military Base Policy in Asia: Persuasion and Its Limits (2015).
Although North Korea remains one of the most isolated countries in the world, hundreds of foreign actors continue to work quietly inside the country. What is the size and scope of foreign engagement ...inside the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)? What types of activities do nongovernmental organizations, businesses, and other private actors conduct? What has been the experience and impact of those working inside the DPRK? Relying on an original data set and interviews with sixteen organizational field representatives and staff members with experience working inside the DPRK, I uncover basic trends related to people-to-people engagement in areas such as humanitarian relief, development assistance, educational assistance, professional training, and business interaction. Although impressive growth has taken place in foreign engagement in the DPRK, its potential impact remains unclear due to ongoing internal and external constraints.
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