Reporting over the last two years has indicated China’s interest in contesting the US military presence in places where China claims “historical connections.”[1] This has involved public statements as well as attempts to stir up local opposition to the US presence, and most recently, to a study by researchers at Tsinghua University who claimed that…
Tag: South Korea
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-55 on Henry, Reliability and Alliance Interdependence
The interdependence of alliance commitments, specifically the notions that the United States must continually demonstrate loyalty to allies and that a failure to back any ally (no matter how strategically insignificant or obstreperous) would surely lead other allies to question the credibility of US security guarantees, has long been conventional wisdom among policymakers in Washington,…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 97: Matray on Pardo, South Korea’s Grand Strategy
Seventy years ago this past July an armistice agreement ended fighting in the Korean War. This brutal conflict left both the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the north and the Republic of Korea (ROK) in the south in ruins, especially North Korea, which experienced devastation as a consequence of massive US aerial bombardment….
H-Diplo | RJISSF Article Review 159: Michel on Allcock, “Diplomacy, the Media, and a Search for Legitimacy”
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum Article Review 159 Thomas Tunstall Allcock, “Diplomacy, the Media, and a Search for Legitimacy: Reassessing Gerald Ford’s Pacific Tours.” Diplomacy & Statecraft 33:4 (Dec. 2022): 741-771. DOI: 10.1080/09592296.2022.2143119. Reviewed by Eddie Michel, University of Pretoria 2 June 2023| PDF: http://issforum.org/to/JAR-159 | Website: rjissf.org Editor: Diane Labrosse |…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable Review 14-18 on Lawrence, The End of Ambition
Mark Lawrence is a prominent, prize-winning historian of US foreign relations. The End of Ambition shows why. The book offers a brilliant interpretation of US policy towards the Third World in the 1960s. It shows how the decade’s early ambition gave way to cynicism and accommodations with reactionary regimes. Lawrence organizes his argument around five…
Roundtable 11-1 on The Evolution of the South Korea-United States Alliance
No president has cast as much uncertainty over American alliances as Donald Trump. Despite the assiduous damage control of his rotating secretaries of State and Defense and national security advisors, comments from the chief executive matter; uncertainty has increased. Moreover, the unexpected willingness of the president to undertake direct, high-level contacts with North Korean leader…
Article Review 123 on “Conflict and Chaos on the Korean Peninsula: Can China’s Military Help Secure North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons.”
Stability on the Korean Peninsula took a beating in 2017. The year began with Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s Address that declared North Korea had “entered the final stage of preparation for the test launch of [an] intercontinental ballistic missile”[2] and President-elect Donald Trump tweeted in response, “it won’t happen.”[3] The subsequent twelve months witnessed North…
Policy Series: “Inconsistent, Incoherent, and Unpredictable: U.S. Policies in East Asia under President Donald J. Trump”
On 8 March 2018, National Security Advisor Chung Eui-yong of the Republic of Korea (ROK) met with President Donald J. Trump at the White House to brief him on his recent talks with Kim Jong Un, leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), in Pyongyang. Trump learned that Kim had promised not to…
Roundtable 10-9 on Powerplay: The Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia
For alliance scholars who are interested in institutional design and U.S. foreign policy in Asia, Victor Cha’s 2010 International Security article, “Powerplay: The Origins of the U.S. Alliance System in Asia” is a valuable resource.[1] Cha has expanded his article-length treatment into a thoughtful and timely book, and in so doing has given us much…
Forum 11 on “The Great Game and Great Reforms of Asia, 1850-1950.”
The theme of the Great Game for this Special Issue of The Journal of American-East Asian Relations which focuses on colonialism and anti-colonialism in Central, East, and Southeast Asia, arises from the original Great Game, which involved a clash of the British and Russian Empires in Central Asia in the nineteenth century. There are…