Conventional wisdom holds that China's rise is disrupting the
global balance of power in unpredictable ways. However, China has
often deferred to the consensus of smaller neighboring countries on
...regional security rather than running roughshod over them. Why and
when does China exercise restraint-and how does this aspect of
Chinese statecraft challenge the assumptions of international
relations theory? In Power and Restraint in China's Rise ,
Chin-Hao Huang argues that a rising power's aspirations for
acceptance provide a key rationale for refraining from coercive
measures. He analyzes Chinese foreign policy conduct in the South
China Sea, showing how complying with regional norms and accepting
constraints improves external perceptions of China and advances
other states' recognition of China as a legitimate power. Huang
details how member states of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations have taken a collective approach to defusing tension in
maritime disputes, incentivizing China to support regional security
initiatives that it had previously resisted. Drawing on this
empirical analysis, Huang develops new theoretical perspectives on
why great powers eschew coercion in favor of restraint when they
seek legitimacy. His framework explains why a dominant state with
rising ambitions takes the views and interests of small states into
account, as well as how collective action can induce change in a
major power's behavior. Offering new insight into the causes and
consequences of change in recent Chinese foreign policy, this book
has significant implications for the future of engagement with
China.
Enacting the Security Community illuminates the central
role of discourse in the making of security communities through a
case study of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Despite ...decades of discussion, scholars of political science and
international relations have long struggled to identify what kind
of security community ASEAN is striving to become.
Talk about security, Stéphanie Martel argues in this innovative
study, is more than empty rhetoric. It is precisely through
discourse that ASEAN is brought into being as a security community.
Martel analyzes the epic narratives that state and non-state actors
tell about ASEAN's journey to becoming a security community,
featuring a colorful cast of heroes and monsters. Chapters address
a wide spectrum of current regional security concerns, from the
South China Sea disputes to the Rohingya crisis, and nontraditional
challenges like natural disasters and pandemics. Through fieldwork
and in-depth interviews with practitioners, Martel provides clear
evidence that discourse is key to sustaining regional organizations
like ASEAN.
Enacting the Security Community is an incisive
contribution to debates among scholars and practitioners about
security communities as well as the role of discourse in the study
of world politics, and essential reading for students of Southeast
Asian international relations, politics, and security.
Why are certain regions of the world mired in conflict? And how
did some regions in Eurasia emerge from the Cold War as peaceful
and resilient? Why do conflicts ignite in Bosnia, Donbas, and
...Damascus-once on the peripheries of mighty empires-yet other
postimperial peripheries like the Baltics or Central Europe enjoy
quiet stability?
Anna Ohanyan argues for the salience of the neighborhood effect:
the complex regional connectivity among ethnic-religious
communities that can form resilient regions. In an account of
Eurasian regional formation that stretches back long before the
nation-state, Ohanyan refutes the notion that stable regions are
the luxury of prosperous, stable, democratic states. She examines
case studies from regions once on the fringes of the Habsburg,
Ottoman, and Russian Empires to find the often-overlooked patterns
of bonding and bridging, or clustering and isolation of political
power and social resources, that are associated with regional
resilience or fracture in those regions today.
With comparative examples from Latin America and Africa, The
Neighborhood Effect offers a new explanation for the conflicts
we are likely to see emerge as the unipolar US-led order dissolves,
making the fractures in regional neighborhoods painfully evident.
And it points the way to the future of peacebuilding: making space
for the smaller links and connections that comprise a stable
neighborhood.
Troubled Waterslooks at four dynamics in the Persian Gulf that have contributed to making the region one of the most volatile and tension-filled spots in the world. Mehran Kamrava identifies the four ...dynamics as: the neglect of human dimensions of security, the inherent instability involved in reliance on the United States and the exclusion of Iraq and Iran, the international and security policies pursued by inside and outside actors, and a suite of overlapping security dilemmas. These four factors combine and interact to generate long-term volatility and ongoing tensions within the Persian Gulf.
Through insights from Kamrava's interviews with Gulf elites into policy decisions, the consequences of security dilemmas, the priorities of local players, and the neglect of identity and religion,Troubled Watersexamines the root causes of conflicts and crises that are currently unfolding in the region. As Kamrava demonstrates, each state in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Qatar, has embarked on vigorous security-producing efforts as part of foreign policy, flooding the area with more munitions-thereby increasing insecurity and causing more mistrust in a part of the world that needs no more tension.
The electricity sector faces significant risks from devastating cyber events that can exacerbate global and regional instabilities, amplifying economic and security vulnerabilities worldwide. These ...attacks directly impact countries’ electrical infrastructure, security policies, and everyday economic transactions. To comprehensively address these challenges, this study aims to conduct a thorough investigation into the politic implications of cyber threats within the realm of electrical energy, spanning both household use and production. The study concludes that the resilience of the electricity ecosystem remains low, indicating vulnerabilities. Furthermore, there’s an inadequacy in the availability of cyber personnel within the markets. Additionally, an established international cybersecurity culture is lacking, highlighting a need for collective efforts to strengthen global cybersecurity measures in the electricity sector. Therefore, countries have to identify weaknesses in electricity networks and develop strategies to safeguard their infrastructure, serving as a foundational basis for the formulation of national and international strategic policies.
The Israel-Palestine conflict is one of the world's most polarizing confrontations. Its current phase, Israel's "temporary" occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, turns a half century ...old in June 2017. This book shows what is the occupation, why has it lasted so long, and how has it transformed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
This book is an open access book. Many scholars have wondered if a non-Western theory of international politics founded on different premises, be it from Asia or from the “Global South,” could ...release international relations from the grip of a Western, “Westphalian” model. This book argues that a Buddhist approach to international relations could provide a genuine alternative. Because of its distinctive philosophical positions and its unique understanding of reality, human nature and political behavior, a Buddhist theory of IR offers a way out of this dilemma, a means for transcending the Westphalian predicament. The author explains this Buddhist IR model, beginning with its philosophical foundations up through its ideas about politics, economics and statecraft.
Noninterference is a foundational governance norm for international and regional organizations. In the United Nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the norm has long undergirded the ...practice of interstate governance in fundamental ways. However, the noninterference norm has been understood and enacted in disparate ways between these organizations and over time within them. While theories of norm diffusion and contestation have long examined the variable understanding of norms within different contexts, we argue that they are inadequate to analyze cases--like those we examine in this article--where divergent practices do not spring from a conscious desire to contest a norm's relevance, meaning, or requirements. To understand dynamics of norm change, we argue that the growing literature on international practices should be placed in dialogue with both traditional accounts of norm diffusion and existing scholarship on norm contestation. We build on these literatures to offer a novel and productive framework to explore shifting beliefs about the competent enactment of norms within disparate communities over time. Empirically, we center attention on the recent United Nations (UN) peace operation in Cote d'lvoire and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) response to the ongoing Rohingya crisis. In each case, we show that divergent interpretations of the noninterference norm are embedded in seemingly mundane practices that have the potential to transform that norm over the long term. We draw on detailed empirical evidence to illustrate the changing practice of the noninterference norm in each case, relying on seventy-six interviews with officials from both organizations.
