Is East Asia heading toward war? Throughout the 1990s, conventional wisdom among U.S. scholars of international relations held that institutionalized cooperation in Europe fosters peace, while its absence from East Asia portends conflict. Developments in Europe and Asia in the 1990s contradict the conventional wisdom without discrediting it. Explanations that derive from only one paradigm or research program have shortcomings beyond their inability to recognize important empirical anomalies. International relations research is better served by combining explanatory approaches from different research traditions. This book makes a case for a new theoretical approach (called "analytical eclecticism" by the authors) to the study of Asian security. It informs the analysis in subsequent chapters of central topics in East Asian security, with specific reference to China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. The authors conclude that the prospects for peace in East Asia look less dire than conventional—in many cases Eurocentric—theories of international relations suggest. At the same time, they point to a number of potentially destabilizing political developments.

Table of Contents:
Contents @toc4:Figures and Tables iii Contributors iii Preface iii @toc2:Chapter 1 Rethinking Asian Security: A Case for Analytical Eclecticism 1 @tocca:Peter J. Katzenstein and Rudra Sil @toc2:Chapter 2 Beijing's Security Behavior in the Asia- Pacific: Is China a Dissatisfied Power? 000 @tocca:Alastair Iain Johnston @toc2:Chapter 3 Japan and Asian-Pacific Security 000 @tocca:Peter J. Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara @toc2:Chapter 4 Bound to Last? The U.S.-Korea Alliance and Analytical Eclecticism 000 @tocca:J. J. Suh @toc2:Chapter 5 Coping with Strategic Uncertainty: The Role of Institutions and Soft Balancing in Southeast Asia's PostCold War Strategy 000 @tocca:Yuen Foong Khong @toc2:Chapter 6 The Value of Rethinking East Asian Security: Denaturalizing and Explaining a Complex Security Dynamic 000 @tocca:Allen Carlson and J. J. Suh @toc4:Bibliography 000 Index 000 @fmct:Figures and Tables @fmh1:Figures @fmli:Figure 1.1. Research Traditions and Points of Convergence Figure 1.2. The Possibilities of Eclecticism Figure 2.1. China's International Organization Memberships in Comparative Perspective, 19962000 Figure 2.2. China's Actual and Expected Memberships in International Organizations, 19972000 Figure 2.3. Comparative Reductions in Mean Tariff Rates, 19921997 Figure 2.4. Voting in the UN Commission on Human Rights on No-Action Motions on Resolutions Critical of the PRC, 19902001 Figure 2.5. Mean Similarity Index with Select Countries per Foreign Policy Period Figure 2.6. Chinese Estimates of Trends in Comprehensive National Power Figure 2.7. Frequency of International Relations Articles Using the Terms "Multipolarity" (duojihua) and "Globalization" (quanqiuhua) in Chinese Academic Journals, 19942001 Figure 2.8. Articles Mentioning "China Threat Theory" (Zhongguo weixie lun) in the Text as Percentage of All International Relations Articles, 19942002 Figure 4.1. Causal Arrows of the Institutionalist Theory of Alliance Persistence @fmh1:Table Table 4.1. Three-Stage Model of Institutionalization Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: East Asia Foreign relations, Security, International, National security East Asia