The American “Pivot” to Asia. Military and Political Challenges and Implications for the US and Pacific-Asia
The American “Pivot” to Asia. Military and Political Challenges and Implications for the US and Pacific-Asia

Author: Christian Rucker

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2016-04-26

Total Pages: 43

ISBN-13: 366820585X

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Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Politics - Political systems in general and in comparison, grade: 1,3, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (Institut für Politische Wissenschaft), course: Mastercourse: American Conflict and Crisis Management in the 21st Century, language: English, abstract: This paper aims to approach the subject of reorientation of the US foreign policy regarding the Pacific region. Priority will be set on military and alliance policy factors of main parties involved, first and foremost the USA. Moreover the issues of the strategy of reorientation in itself and problems that are involved will be addressed. In addition the following will be discussed: characteristics and implementation options and the question of relevance as to how this reorientation towards Asia means neglecting other regions like the Near East, and how the U.S. are to bring their global claim of validity in conformity with it. Tthe US have a strong presence of seaborne, airborne and ground-based facilities; numerous military materials, as well as personnel, are stationed in the state of Hawaii, Alaska and Guam. This includes troop concentrations in allied countries such as South Korea and Japan but also a rotating stationing of troops in some other partner countries within Pacific-Asia such as the Philippines and Australia. For some time past the USA have been turning towards the region of Southeast Asia and they are beginning to expand their political, economical and military engagement in this region of the world. There are diverse reasons for this such as an opening of new rising markets and the development of political and economical relations to significant emerging countries, and perhaps future industrialized countries of the 21st century. Another reason is China’s ascent as an important player regarding international relations which are significant to the US as well as to future relations of both countries.

Bucharest Diary
Bucharest Diary

Author: Alfred H. Moses

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2018-07-17

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 0815732732

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An insider's account of Romania's emergence from communism control In the 1970s American attorney Alfred H. Moses was approached on the streets of Bucharest by young Jews seeking help to emigrate to Israel. This became the author's mission until the communist regime fell in 1989. Before that Moses had met periodically with Romania's communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, to persuade him to allow increased Jewish emigration. This experience deepened Moses's interest in Romania—an interest that culminated in his serving as U.S. ambassador to the country from 1994 to 1997 during the Clinton administration. The ambassador's time of service in Romania came just a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. During this period Romania faced economic paralysis and was still buried in the rubble of communism. Over the next three years Moses helped nurture Romania's nascent democratic institutions, promoted privatization of Romania's economy, and shepherded Romania on the path toward full integration with Western institutions. Through frequent press conferences, speeches, and writings in the Romanian and Western press and in his meetings with Romanian officials at the highest level, he stated in plain language the steps Romania needed to take before it could be accepted in the West as a free and democratic country. Bucharest Diary: An American Ambassador's Journey is filled with firsthand stories, including colorful anecdotes, of the diplomacy, both public and private, that helped Romania recover from four decades of communist rule and, eventually, become a member of both NATO and the European Union. Romania still struggles today with the consequences of its history, but it has reached many of its post-communist goals, which Ambassador Moses championed at a crucial time. This book will be of special interest to readers of history and public affairs—in particular those interested in Jewish life under communist rule in Eastern Europe and how the United States and its Western partners helped rebuild an important country devastated by communism.

Obama's Challenge to China
Obama's Challenge to China

Author: Chi Wang

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 1317086384

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This book explores U.S.-China relations, the most important bilateral relationship in the world, under the leadership of President Barack Obama. Obama took office just as China’s rise to global power accelerated; his decisions set the stage for a new era in U.S.-China relations . In Part I, the book outlines Barack Obama’s own personal worldview and the backgrounds of the advisors that made up his China team, including Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, John Kerry, and Susan Rice. Part II chronologically details the major events in U.S.-China relations from 2009 to 2014, including such high-profile cases as Obama’s first China visit, the ’Pivot to Asia’, the story of blind lawyer Cheng Guangcheng, Xi Jinping’s rise to power, and Edward Snowden’s revelations on U.S. cyberespionage. Part III switches back to a topical organization, addressing Sino-U.S. relations and interactions with regards to various issues: economics, military relations, climate change, human rights, and multilateral cooperation in regional and international organizations such as the APEC, G20 and the United Nations. Finally, the book ends with timely suggestions for how to improve the U.S.-China relationship and ensure a peaceful future.

The Pivot
The Pivot

Author: Kurt Campbell

Publisher: Twelve

Published: 2016-06-07

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 1455568961

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From former assistant secretary of state Kurt M. Campbell comes the definitive analysis and explanation of the new major shift in American foreign policy, its interests and assets, to Asia. There is a quiet drama playing out in American foreign policy far from the dark contours of upheaval in the Middle East and South Asia and the hovering drone attacks of the war on terror. The United States is in the midst of a substantial and long-term national project, which is proceeding in fits and starts, to reorient its foreign policy to the East. The central tenet of this policy shift, aka the Pivot, is that the United States will need to do more with and in the Asia-Pacific hemisphere to help revitalize its own economy, to realize the full potential of the region's dramatic innovation, and to keep the peace in the world's most dynamic region where the lion's share of the history of the twenty-first century will be written. This book is about a necessary course correction for American diplomacy, commercial engagement, and military innovation during a time of unrelenting and largely unrewarding conflict. While the United States has intensified its focus on the Asia-Pacific arena relative to previous administrations, much more remains to be done. The Pivot is about that future. It explores how the United States should construct a strategy that will position it to maneuver across the East and offers a clarion call for cunning, dexterity, and ingenuity in the period ahead for American statecraft in the Asia-Pacific region.

The New US Strategy towards Asia
The New US Strategy towards Asia

Author: William T Tow

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-12-17

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1317586115

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Barack Obama’s "rebalancing" or "pivot" strategy, intended to demonstrate continued US commitment to the Asia-Pacific region in a variety of military, economic, and diplomatic contexts, was launched with much fanfare in 2011. Implicit in the new strategy is both a focus on China – engagement with, and containment of – and a heavy reliance by the United States on its existing friends and allies in the region in order to implement its strategy. This book explores the impact of the new strategy on America’s regional friends and allies. It shows how these governments are working with Washington to advance and protect their distinct national interests, while at the same time avoiding any direct confrontation with China. It also addresses the reasons why many of these regional actors harbour concerns about the ability of the US to sustain the pivot strategy in the long run. Overall, the book illustrates the deep complexities of the United States’ exercise of power and influence in the region.

Avoiding the Trap
Avoiding the Trap

Author: David Lai

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 9781584877769

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This U.S. Army War College report provides analysis and policy recommendations on topics regarding the instruments of national power, regional affairs, and key Asia-Pacific countries. The key findings are rooted in the following overarching concepts: Strategic Goal: Ensure American leadership, security, and prosperity; Strategic Task: Accommodate China's rise through competition without conflict;Strategic Vision: Economy by priority; enabled by military power; tempered by diplomacy.

The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power

Author: Thomas J. Christensen

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2015-06-08

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0393246612

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“A standout . . . a balanced, informative, and highly intelligent guide to dealing with China.”—Fareed Zakaria Many see China as a rival superpower to the United States and imagine the country’s rise to be a threat to U.S. leadership in Asia and beyond. Thomas J. Christensen argues against this zero-sum vision. Instead, he describes a new paradigm in which the real challenge lies in dissuading China from regional aggression while encouraging the country to contribute to the global order. Drawing on decades of scholarship and experience as a senior diplomat, Christensen offers a compelling new assessment of U.S.-China relations that is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of the globalized world. The China Challenge shows why China is nowhere near powerful enough to be considered a global “peer competitor” of the United States, but it is already strong enough to destabilize East Asia and to influence economic and political affairs worldwide. Despite China’s impressive achievements, the Chinese Communist Party faces enormous challenges. Christensen shows how nationalism and the threat of domestic instability influence the party’s decisions on issues like maritime sovereignty disputes, global financial management, control of the Internet, climate change, and policies toward Taiwan and Hong Kong. China benefits enormously from the current global order and has no intention of overthrowing it; but that is not enough. China’s active cooperation is essential to global governance. Never before has a developing country like China been asked to contribute so much to ensure international stability. If China obstructs international efforts to confront nuclear proliferation, civil conflicts, financial instability, and climate change, those efforts will falter, but even if China merely declines to support such efforts, the problems will grow vastly more complicated. Analyzing U.S.-China policy since the end of the Cold War, Christensen articulates a balanced strategic approach that explains why we should aim not to block China’s rise but rather to help shape its choices so as to deter regional aggression and encourage China’s active participation in international initiatives that benefit both nations.

Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons
Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons

Author: Dr. Jeffrey Record

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 105

ISBN-13: 1786252961

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Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.

Asia's New Battlefield
Asia's New Battlefield

Author: Richard Javad Heydarian

Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.

Published: 2015-11-15

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1783603151

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This compact, insightful book offers an up-to-the-minute guide to understanding the evolution of maritime territorial disputes in East Asia, exploring their legal, political-security and economic dimensions against the backdrop of a brewing Sino-American rivalry for hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region. It traces the decades-long evolution of Sino-American relations in Asia, and how this pivotal relationship has been central to prosperity and stability in one of the most dynamics regions of the world. It also looks at how middle powers – from Japan and Australia to India and South Korea – have joined the fray, trying to shape the trajectory of the territorial disputes in the Western Pacific, which can, in turn, alter the future of Asia – and ignite an international war that could re-configure the global order. The book examines how the maritime disputes have become a litmus test of China’s rise, whether it has and will be peaceful or not, and how smaller powers such as Vietnam and the Philippines have been resisting Beijing’s territorial ambitions. Drawing on extensive discussions and interviews with experts and policy-makers across the Asia-Pacific region, the book highlights the growing geopolitical significance of the East and South China Sea disputes to the future of Asia – providing insights into how the so-called Pacific century will shape up.

U.S. Strategy in the Asian Century
U.S. Strategy in the Asian Century

Author: Abraham M. Denmark

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2020-08-18

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0231552270

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As the Indo-Pacific emerges as the world’s most strategically consequential region and competition with China intensifies, the United States must adapt its approach if it seeks to preserve its power and sustain regional stability and prosperity. Yet as China grows more powerful and aggressive and the United States appears increasingly unreliable, the Indo-Pacific has become riven with uncertainty. These dynamics threaten to undermine the region’s unprecedented peace and prosperity. U.S. Strategy in the Asian Century offers vital perspective on the future of power dynamics in the Indo-Pacific, focusing on the critical roles that American allies and partners can play. Abraham M. Denmark argues that these alliances and partnerships represent indispensable strategic assets for the United States. They will be necessary in any effort by Washington to compete with China, promote prosperity, and preserve a liberal order in the Indo-Pacific. Blending academic rigor and practical policy experience, Denmark analyzes the future of major-power competition in the region, with an eye toward American security interests. He details a pragmatic approach for the United States to harness the power of its allies and partners to ensure long-term regional stability and successfully navigate the complexities of the new era.