Is there a U.S.–China–India triangle? – Beijing’s official views

ABSTRACT

This research examines China’s official perspectives on, and interpretation of, U.S.-China-India relations by surveying official, quasi-official, and some most relevant scholarly publications. China’s official line has always emphasized the bilateral nature of the relationship between China and India fending off any third-party interference, including that from the United States. Neither Chinese leaders nor the regime’s official media outlets would speak of China–India relationship with a triangular framework (with a rare exception of the Russia–India–China triangle). In the context of the rapid evolvement of U.S.-India military cooperation, the Chinese official line remains unforthcoming about whether such developments have direct implication for China’s security or national interests. Chinese core official media has in fact minimized the popularization of the idea that containing China is the driving force behind any cooperation between India and the United States.     

Alignment Cooperation and Regional Security Architecture in the Indo-Pacific

ABSTRACT

Although the US-led system of formal alliances remains the main pillar of the regional security architecture in Asia, alignment cooperation – centred on the Indo-Pacific maritime conceptualisation of the region – has been on the rise. This includes informal bilateral and minilateral agreements for security collaboration between regional and extra-regional US treaty allies or close security partners, notably Japan, Australia, India, the United Kingdom and France. While the various alignments complement and address the deficiencies of the formal US-led alliances, the functional and informal characteristics of alignments allow countries to pursue security cooperation both in conjunction with the United States and independently of it. This leads to a more fluid security architecture that increasingly reflects the diversity of emerging regional ‘architects’, among which Japan is assuming a leading role, as much as the region’s array of new security challenges.     

Evidence of Russia's Bush Doctrine in the CIS1

Abstract

The article discusses the emergence of a Russian version of the Bush doctrine in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Russian officials’ conceptual stretching of the strategic culture embodied in the National Security Concept (NSC) and the Military Doctrine (MD) from 2000 onwards. While these documents seem to cherish multilateralism and United Nations (UN) primacy in questions of global and regional security, terrorist attacks on Russia proper have engendered a more assertive approach to regional security issues in the Caucasus and Central Asia and brought Russian officials to consider unilateral pre-emptive strikes against terrorist bases. In the case of the Caucasus, Russia has been striking against terrorist bases on Georgian territory and contributed to constructing a failed state, whereas in the Central Asian case, Russia has sought to revitalise the defunct CIS security framework and pledge assistance to ‘allies’ in the fight against terrorism. The article argues that the war against terrorism has given Russia a new footing in the CIS. The issue of security is more salient, as is the reliance on military force to facilitate it.     

思想·制度·工具——美国国家安全体系的一种分析框架

各国国家安全体系建设的相关经验,可以为总体国家安全观指导下的中国国家安全体系建设提供参考和借鉴。国家安全体系一般都有一些必不可少的基本构成要素,但由于各国历史文化、内外环境和发展需求等方面的差异,这些要素的演变历程、具体内容和实际作用可能大不相同。作为超级大国,美国拥有最为庞大、完备且富于自身特色的国家安全体系。这个体系主要由指导思想、法律制度和保障工具三类要素构成。其指导思想是维护全球性主导地位,并带有绝对安全倾向;决策机制既遵循一套完整的跨部门分级流程,也涉及各种非正式决策模式;法律制度与监管机制系统完备;保障工具与手段多样有力,包括超强的军事能力与联盟体系、强大的经济实力与情报体系以及广泛的社会基础。然而,作为一个在冷战中形成的"安全化国家",美国的安全目标与手段、资源之间存在持续张力;空前庞大的国家安全体系也会受到内外条件的制约,经常陷入能力捉襟见肘、行为进退失据的境地;尽管在国际体系中拥有显著的"权力优势",美国同样面临发展利益与安全利益之间的矛盾。     

Send Good Vibes,Guns, and Money: The Institutionalisation of United States Drug Diplomacy toward Mexico, 1969–1989

ABSTRACT

The State Department played a leading role in the struggle within the United States government to define and implement America’s foreign drug policy throughout the late twentieth century. After their participation in 1969’s Operation Intercept illustrated the central importance of Mexican national sovereignty in bilateral relations, United States diplomats worked to institutionalise an aversion to unilateral American action on drug issues south of the Rio Grande. Over time, both the co-operative framework cultivated between American and Mexican officials throughout 1970s and an especially turbulent chapter in bilateral relations during the 1980s helped to establish further the State Department’s highly conciliatory approach to drug diplomacy that today remains a defining characteristic of joint Mexican–American efforts to combat the production and traffic of illicit drugs.     

俄罗斯对美国战略认知的演变及其政策效应

俄罗斯对美国战略认知的演变过程分为友好合作、竞争凸显和激烈对抗三个阶段。俄罗斯的强势外交和安全政策,表现为俄罗斯对美国和北约的强硬战略姿态以及追求超出自身相对实力的外交和安全目标。俄罗斯战略认知的演变与俄美两国的利益冲突之间有着相互塑造的关系,但是俄罗斯战略认知的变化并不仅仅取决于利益考量。俄罗斯之所以把北约东扩、乌克兰走向、叙利亚局势等看得如此重要,不惜投入大量资源,这是与塑造俄罗斯战略认知的历史和心理因素是分不开的。美国采取的许多对俄政策和行为,正是因为忽略了这些因素,才被俄罗斯看作是“侮辱性”和“威胁性”的,从而导致了双方敌意的螺旋式上升。由于俄罗斯独特的历史记忆和大国情结,俄罗斯对俄美两国的利益冲突作出了激烈的回应,这些回应虽然不利于俄罗斯的国家实力和整体利益,但却是可以理解的。随着俄罗斯对美战略认知的逐步定型,俄美关系在短期内很难实现所谓的“重启”。从俄罗斯对美战略认知的案例分析可以看出,战略认知自身有其相对的独立性,在受到利益冲突影响的同时,也受到社会文化因素的深刻影响,从而使得国家的外交与安全政策未必完全遵循理性主义的路径。     

美国全球卫生安全战略及其对世界卫生安全体系的挑战

进入21世纪以来,新型冠状病毒、埃博拉、重症急性呼吸综合征以及甲流感等新发和复发传染病危机对全球卫生安全构成严重威胁,因此,如何促进全球卫生安全治理是当今国际社会亟待解决的问题。尽管美国曾经在全球卫生安全治理中发挥了重要作用,但尚未形成清晰的全球卫生安全治理政策。美国于2019年5月首次发布《全球卫生安全战略》,标志着特朗普政府全球卫生安全政策正式出台。该《全球卫生安全战略》以应对传染病威胁为核心,呈现出了以国家安全为导向和"全政府"路径的特点,充分体现了特朗普政府的"负担分担""美国优先"和反多边主义的思维。在全球卫生安全领域,各国已成为"因病相依"的全球命运共同体。有效的全球卫生安全治理需要全球多边主义,特朗普政府以国家安全为导向和以"美国优先"为原则的《全球卫生安全战略》与全球卫生安全的实现之间存在张力。特朗普政府的上述思维不仅侵蚀了全球卫生安全体系建构所必需的国际政治合作基础,也恶化了全球卫生安全的融资体系,因此对全球卫生安全体系构成了挑战。     

美国国家安全认知的新视阈：人工智能与国家安全

人工智能作为一种革命性技术,正在从根本上变革国际社会的发展进程及方式。面对这一发展趋势,美国已将人工智能提升到国家安全的高度。人工智能对美国国家安全的影响主要存在于三个方面:首先,人工智能是影响和塑造未来美国国家安全的核心变量。人工智能能够优化美国在国际政治格局中的力量配比,弥合并纠正美国社会内部的分裂和失序状况,并助推美国军事实力实现“跨越式”发展。其次,有效克服人工智能的负面效应是确保未来美国国家安全的关键。人工智能可能引发诸多社会和道德问题,其固有的缺陷也将增加战争决策的风险成本,还可能增加武装冲突的频率和强度。最后,美国强调中国人工智能的快速发展对未来美国国家安全构成严重“威胁”。中美在人工智能领域的竞争已无法避免,美国认为中国正在试图“挑战”美国在高新技术领域的领导地位;为应对美国在人工智能领域对华遏制政策,中国应制定和形成人工智能研发以及应用规则和规范;通过制度化协调与合作来规制中美关系,努力避免“科技冷战”的发生。     

Welcome home! Routines,ontological insecurity and the politics of US military reunion videos

Abstract

This article investigates the military ‘reunion’ videos that proliferated in the United States throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s. The typical video entails a returning soldier who surprises a family member, usually a child or female spouse, at a public event. I articulate the reunion video as a key feature of populism in contemporary US society. The videos can be considered examples of the ‘encounters’ theorized by both Anthony Giddens and Erving Goffman. Both private and public ‘social occasions’ with performative qualities of ‘day-to-day life’, the videos disclose the institutional and societal routines of not only a family but broader layers and circles of the US political community. They relate not only to loss but also to redemption. The article therefore investigates when and how, and provides a provisional argument for why, these videos have proliferated by consulting the everyday features of ontological security. It focuses on both the local and the international contexts within which they attend to, but also generate, US ontological insecurity.     

The Israeli defense forces and unconventional warfare: The Palestinian factor and Israeli national security doctrine

The basic premises of the Israeli national security doctrine were laid down by the first Prime Minister, David Ben‐Gurion, who emphasized the decisive role of the neighboring sovereign states as the crucial enemy. This view continues to guide the architects of Israeli strategic thought despite the growing importance of a non‐state actor, that is, the Palestinian national liberation movement.     

Navigating two Asias: how Washington deals with the Indo-Pacific’s rising powers

ABSTRACT

The United States has sought over the last two decades to facilitate India’s rise as a means of balancing against China’s ambitions. Notwithstanding the rich literature that has emerged on Sino-Indian dynamics and the U.S.-India-China triad, there has been remarkably little examination of the ways in which the United States navigates its relationships with these two rising powers. This study poses a simple question: to what extent has the United States’ pursuit of its interests with India meant that it has accepted trade-offs with respect to its interests with China? Drawing on government documents, interviews with current and former U.S. officials, and an array of case studies between 2005 and early 2019, this study argues first that the U.S. bureaucracy has long been structured in such a way as to heavily compartment policy decision-making related to South Asia and East Asia, respectively, and to produce a pronounced but largely explicable structural bias toward East Asia; second, that relatively few policy matters have arisen since 2005 that have forced the United States to consider meaningful trade-offs between its India and China equities; and third, that new challenges may arise for Washington as its deals with an increasingly inter-connected Indo-Pacific region, and manages the bureaucratic and policy implications of its renewed emphasis on great power competition.     

Strategy,Security, and War in Iraq: The United States and the Gulf in the 21st Century

Over the course of events taking place in and around the Persian Gulf over the last three years, the United States has used force to replace a despotic dictator who once served Western interests, placed considerable distance between itself and its erstwhile regional partner Saudi Arabia, and reduced its role as arbiter in the Arab–Israeli dispute. Operation Iraqi Freedom would seem to reveal that the United States has chosen a broader vision for the role that force could play as part of a more aggressive security strategy. The Gulf littoral's forward-deployed footprint, set into place during the first Gulf War, enabled effects-based capabilities to be tested in Iraq that have come online since the 1990s, enabling the US military to begin to operationalise what was initially dubbed the ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ and now is called ‘Transformation’. As such, the Gulf infrastructure provides the US with a model to emulate around the world as it seeks to realign its forces to better address new threats in the global theatre. The Gulf facilities will become central hubs in the network of bases stretching throughout Central and South Asia and the Horn of Africa which will perform missions associated with the global war on terror. Operation Iraqi Freedom represents only the beginning of this phenomenon in an emerging new global defense strategy that may see forward-deployed forces around the world used with increased frequency to manage an uncertain security environment.     

Populism,ontological insecurity and Hindutva: Modi and the masculinization of Indian politics

Abstract

In an era increasingly defined by insecurity and populist politics, India has emerged as a forceful ontological security provider under the leadership of Marendra Modi. If ontological security is about finding a safe (imagined) haven, then ontological insecurity is about the lack of such a space in narrative terms. Drawing on Lacanian understandings of ‘the imaginary’ as something that can fill and naturalize this lack of space, the article is concerned with how memories, places and symbols of narrative identity constructions are used in populist discourse. More specifically, it attempts to understand the relationship between ontological insecurity and the imaginaries of populist politics in India. In so doing, it argues that the re-invention of ‘nationhood’, ‘religion’ and ‘Hindu masculinity’ along gendered lines has created a foundation for governing practices aimed at ‘healing’ a number of ontological insecurities manifest in Indian society. It specifically looks at how the Modi doctrine has formulated and expanded its foreign policy discourse into one that privileges populist narratives of nativism, nationalism and religion as forms of ontological security provision at home and abroad, but also how everyday practices can challenge such narratives, thus allowing different imaginaries of the Indian state.     

Public Opinion,Foreign Policy,and the Security Balance in the Taiwan Strait

The delicate security balance in the Taiwan Strait is threatened on several fronts. In Taiwan, democratization has placed Taiwan independence as one of the most salient issues in its domestic politics, and the rise of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party to power has created uncertainty regarding Taiwan's future policy on the Taiwan independence-unification issue. In this paper, we investigate whether external factors such as China's military threat and the United States' security commitment to Taiwan can affect the development of the Taiwan independence movement. An interesting finding from our analysis is approximately one-third of the people in Taiwan can agree simultaneously on two seemingly contradictory issues: to unite with China if China becomes democratic and to declare independence if China will not use force and peace can be maintained. Voters in Taiwan with conditional preferences create opportunities for China and the United States to formulate foreign policy that will restrain Taiwan's drive toward independence.     

‘At least 2001’: US security policy and exit strategy in Bosnia

This article describes and analyzes the United States’ security conduct in Bosnia since the Dayton Accords of November 1995, and its involvement in the multilateral conflict resolution and peacebuilding effort. From this analysis, the conclusion is that it will be difficult for the US to exit from its engagement in Bosnia. Various explanations are offered for the formulation of American policy: norms and values, alliance politics and the role of NATO, bureaucratic and congressional influence, as well as presidential leadership. The most important factor remains affirmation of US leadership to make the peacebuilding mission in Bosnia a successful one.     

Conceptions of National Security and American Entry into World War II

During World War II, official definitions of the requirements of United States national security were extended beyond the defense of the western hemisphere to include preventing any single power dominating Eurasia. This article challenges the commonly expressed view that this change was due to a belief that a strategy of continental defense would no longer suffice to protect the physical safety of the United States. The focus is on the period between Munich and Pearl Harbor when U.S policy moved away from the principle of non-involvement embodied in the neutrality legislation of 1935–37. The role in this process of the argument that America’s own safety was dependent upon the European balance of power, particularly because of the dangers posed by the development of aviation and the possible suborning of Latin America, is critically examined. It is argued that the broader conception of America’s security requirements reflected both a consciousness of the unique power of the United States to determine the outcome of the war and an implicit belief that the values and interests for which the nation should be prepared to fight extended beyond physical security.     

Rising to the Challenge: Europe’s Security Policy in East Asia amid US-China Rivalry

ABSTRACT

China’s growing power and assertiveness towards its smaller and weaker neighbours has been a wakeup call for the European Union and its member states which, as a result, have stepped up their involvement in East Asia. EU security policy in the region shows many elements of alignment with the United States, but also differences. In North East Asia, the EU has adopted harsh sanctions against North Korea but, contrary to the Trump administration which continues to seek regime change, has left the door open for dialogue. Moreover, the EU supports the process of trilateral cooperation among China, Japan and South Korea, while Washington has traditionally been lukewarm towards a process that excludes the US and risks being dominated by Beijing. The transatlantic allies also show differing approaches with regard to maritime disputes in the South China Sea. While EU security policy in East Asia is largely complementary to that of Washington, in some cases Europe tends – albeit inadvertently – to favour Beijing.     

Trump and the End of an Era? The Liberal International Order in Perspective

ABSTRACT

The liberal international economic and political order which the United States created from the ashes of World War II and has since led is in trouble. To United States President Donald Trump, the order which provided the framework under which sovereign states agreed to follow a rules-based system of economic and political cooperation and shared multilateral governance, has not only allowed other nations (in particular, China) to take advantage of US ‘magnanimity’, but also weakened the United States economically, while asymmetric alliances compromised its military advantages. Given the sustained assault this cosmopolitan order is facing, many fear that it may not survive if Trump is re-elected in November 2020. Indeed, if the United States response to the COVID-19 pandemic is any guide, an ‘America First’ agenda, especially a hard-line approach to China, will shape US policy if Trump wins a second term.     

GCC-US Alliance-Making Reconsidered: The Travails of Dependency

ABSTRACT

Donald Trump’s presidency may have altered less in relations between the United States and the Gulf Cooperation Council than recent accounts suggest. Instead, power relations between the US and its Gulf allies have long been, and continue to be, asymmetrical. Dependency theory and postcolonial analysis illustrate the ways in which the US global hegemon exhibits hierarchy, exerting control over Gulf economic resources (oil) and extending its ‘security umbrella’ (e.g. weapons sales and bases) – all in highly unequal dynamics. A critical discourse analysis of American and Saudi speeches during the 2017 Riyadh summit further confirms this assessment. This raises questions about alliance-making and alliance-maintenance norms of promise-keeping and reciprocity.     

The Two Halves of Sports-Diplomacy

ABSTRACT

What strategies does the United States pursue when it no longer perceives overt military intervention as politically viable or desirable but the problems or issues for which it was formerly undertaken remain? This analysis identifies three such periods in American foreign policy since the United States became a World Power and draws from the work of Peter Hall to develop a typology of strategies according to the magnitude of policy change. These range from adjustment in the settings of interventionism – persistence; the substitution of alternative instruments of foreign policy – ameliorism; and the principled rejection of interventionism in conjunction with a more systematic critique of prevailing foreign policy assumptions – transformationalism. Yet each approach is beset by certain structural limits and contradictions arising from the domestic politics and constitutional-institutional system of the United States that are important in understandiing and appreciating more fully the challenges – and opportunities – of the period ‘after interventionism’.