In recent years the narrative surrounding China’s “peaceful rise” has given way to a more ominous story of friction, ambition, and great-power rivalry. As Chinese foreign policy has grown more nationalist and assertive, its intensifying competition with the U.S. has assumed center stage. The impact on China's neighbors, by contrast, and their evolving responses, have received comparatively less attention. The Realist theory of international relations suggests the rapid accumulation of power by one nation-state will prompt its neighbors and peers to adopt Balancing strategies. They will strive enhance their internal defense capabilities and forge new external security partnerships to hedge against this potential new threat. Have these predictions rung true? Are key Indo-Pacific capitals Balancing, and drawing closer to the U.S. as insurance against Chinese aggression? Or is China a new breed of rising power, challenging traditional theories of international relations in a newly-globalized, economically interdependent world? In Asia’s Quest for Balance: China’s Rise and Balancing in the Indo-Pacific leadingauthor-experts from Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam explore these questions and more, decoding China’s complex and evolving relationships with its neighbors and exploring how their responses are altering the security landscape of the region. Contributions by Jay L. Batongbacal, Elliot Brennan, Tetsuo Kotani, Evan A. Laksmana, Joseph Chinyong Liow, Hunter Marston, Rory Medcalf, Sylvia Mishra, C. Raja Mohan, Prashanth Parameswaran, Jeff M. Smith, Tran Truong Thuy, and Ha Anh Tuan

While the Iraq war and Middle East conflicts command the attention of the United States and most of the rest of the developed world, fundamental changes are occurring in East Asia. North Korea has tested nuclear weapons, even as it and South Korea have effectively entered a period of tepid détente; relations among China, Japan, and South Korea are a complex mixture of conflict and cooperation; and Japan is developing more forthright security policies, even as it deepens ties with the United States. Together, these developments pose vital questions for world stability and security. In East Asian Multilateralism, prominent international foreign affairs scholars examine the range of implications of shifting alignments in East Asia. The first part delves into the intraregional dynamics, and the second assesses current economic conditions and policies within individual East Asian states. The third section examines the challenge of regional cooperation from the perspectives of local players, while the fourth analyzes the implications for foreign policy in the United States and in Asia. This thorough review and assessment charts the preconditions and prospects for deeper multilateralism, poses tough questions about America's security and national interests in the region, and carries a plea for more serious institution-building in the North Pacific, using the ongoing six-party process in talks on North Korea as a point of departure.

The 2013-14 Strategic Asia volume examines the role of nuclear weapons in the grand strategies of key Asian states and assesses the impact of these capabilities—both established and latent—on regional and international stability. In each chapter, a leading expert explores the historical, strategic, and political factors that drive a country's calculations vis-a-vis nuclear weapons and draws implications for American interests.

This book examines the strategic interactions among China, the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asian States in the context of China’s rise and globalization after the cold war. Engaging the mainstream theoretical debates in international relations, the author introduces a new theoretical framework—institutional realism—to explain the institutionalization of world politics in the Asia-Pacific after the cold war. Institutional realism suggests that deepening economic interdependence creates a condition under which states are more likely to conduct a new balancing strategy—institutional balancing, i.e., countering pressures or threats through initiating, utilizing, and dominating multilateral institutions—to pursue security under anarchy. To test the validity of institutional realism, Kai He examines the foreign policies of the U.S., Japan, the ASEAN states, and China toward four major multilateral institutions, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN Plus Three (APT), and East Asian Summit (EAS). Challenging the popular pessimistic view regarding China’s rise, the book concludes that economic interdependence and structural constraints may well soften the "dragon’s teeth." China’s rise does not mean a dark future for the region. Institutional Balancing in the Asia Pacificwill be of great interest to policy makers and scholars of Asian security, international relations, Chinese foreign policy, and U.S. foreign policy.

This comprehensive Handbook tackles the increasingly urgent problem of the impact of climate change on conflict and human security. It analyses the ways in which scarcity of resources leads to food, water and health insecurities, resulting in population migration. Featuring contributions from leading international scholars, chapters cover how these contribute globally to societal insecurity and violent conflict in a growing number of regions.

Twelve-year-old Kevin Kim helps Chu-mong, a legendary king of ancient Korea, return to his own time.

Coming out of an established international graduate student conference organized by the East-West Center, this book presents selected papers written by graduate students from different fields of study. After identifying historical or contemporary issues in each field, these papers propose a framework for resolving these issues, whether through global commitment, regional cooperation, national policy, or local knowledge and practice. The unifying thread of this book is sustaining resilience in the Asia Pacific. We acknowledge this perseverance and try to sustain and disseminate it so that other communities may learn from these practices and experiences. Generally, a volume like this would address the challenge of this region from a security, economics or political perspective. This book hopes to add to the literature on resiliency by addressing these issues from a multidisciplinary and multilevel perspective.

The Elgar Companion to Managing People Across the Asia-Pacific provides a crucial exploration of current business and management research, touching upon topics such as leadership, employee motivation and politics, and innovation to provide a timely examination of management in the Asia-Pacific. It addresses how unique cultural, societal, and governance factors in the Asia-Pacific affect business practices.

By looking back to understand the contemporary political and economic landscape of Southeast Asia, these essays shed light on how modern Southeast Asia has evolved. Special focus centres on US engagement with the region, by both governmental and non-governmental organisations.