局部等级视角下的东亚安全秩序与中美战略竞争

东亚秩序转型是冷战后国际关系学界争论的重要问题。在回顾既有争论的基础上,本文尝试从局部等级视角切入,分析东亚安全秩序的性质及其转型动力。局部等级体系由体系唯一超级大国领导的地区安全等级与区域内自助国家共同构成。冷战结束以来,东亚地区呈现出典型的局部等级体系特征,并在中国持续崛起的过程中逐步形成了以战略对冲为主要行为模式的安全秩序。尽管当前美国对华政策的对抗性不断增强,但是在局部等级体系下中国坚持战略对冲不但可以有效缓解自身面临的崛起困境,而且有助于防止中美陷入美苏冷战式的集团对抗,以战略对冲为核心特征的东亚安全秩序也将因此得以延续。这些发现一定程度上深化了地区安全秩序和大国竞争的理论研究,同时也有助于中美两国更为有效地管控其在东亚地区的战略竞争。     

安倍治下的日本对华政策:从战略制衡到战术避险

日本的对华外交深受国际体系和中美日三角关系的影响。由于中美两个大国在全球层面的战略竞争加剧,以2017年为分水岭,第二次安倍内阁领导下的日本的整体对华外交政策经历了从"战略制衡"向"战术避险"方向的转变。在2017年以前,日本为了联美对华实施"战略制衡",在外交方面,以"印太战略"孤立中国;在安全方面,加强岛屿防卫能力和强化日美同盟;在经济方面,大力支持"跨太平洋伙伴关系协定"和对"一带一路"倡议持冷淡态度。在2017年以后,在中美关系的不确定性增大的情况下,安倍领导下的日本对华实施"战术避险"。在外交方面,加强印太战略的开放性、领导人互访和对华自制;在安全方面,继续强化国防上的内部制衡;在经济方面,有条件地认同"一带一路"倡议并对华展开第三方市场合作。展望未来,令和时代的日本将是一个拥有部分战略自主的中等强国,在日美同盟框架下维持与中国有距离的交往,力图在瞬息万变的国际政治角力中实现日本国家利益的最大化。     

世界大变局与中美日三国战略选择

在世界大变局中,战后国际格局重大变化的主要标志是“世界老二”易位。苏联、日本皆不例外;21世纪以来欧盟也由盛转衰。未来国际格局可能有三种前景:1.中美两极对抗体制;2.中美竞争合作的“两极多元体制”;3.世界各大力量多元并存,构建多元一体的人类命运共同体。这要看世界潮流是走向和平多边主义还是暴力多边主义。中国实现伟大复兴后的战略选择是“济弱扶倾”,为世界可持续发展与可持续安全做贡献。日本面临的战略选择是:继续在《日本国宪法》下走和平发展道路,还是修改宪法,成为“能战国家”的一员,加入暴力强权的多边主义?坚持开放的地区主义与国际协调,还是搞排他经济集团,远交近攻,以中国为竞争对手?利用中美对立从中渔利,还是促进中美协调而避免在中美之间“选边站”?妥善处理中日两国围绕钓鱼岛归属认知争议和台湾问题,还是重走历史老路?囿于冷战思维和传统权力政治的现实主义决策逻辑,同中国搞战略对抗,还是树立共同、综合、合作、可持续安全的新安全观,与中国加强合作?这些战略选择将关乎未来30年的中日关系。     

AVOIDING TRAGEDY IN POWER POLITICS:

When and why do states adopt new grand strategies? According to a “neoclassical realist” model, changes in international conditions are the chief cause of long-term adjustments in grand strategy, while domestic political-military cultures help specify the precise grand strategies chosen by state officials. What results are outcomes that appear surprising or skewed from a realist perspective. I test the neoclassical realist model against the cases of u.s. strategic adjustment in 1918–1921 as well as 1945–1948 and find that the long-term trajectory of America's rise to world power is best explained by international pressures. The precise strategies chosen in each period, however, were heavily influenced by American political-military culture. The implication is that theoretically inclusive forms of realism can provide convincing explanations for changes in grand strategy; furthermore, states can remain somewhat “differentiated” in terms of their foreign policy behavior, for cultural reasons, and in spite of international pressures to the contrary.     

巴西现代化进程与国际战略选择

国际战略选择在巴西现代化发展进程中起着至关重要的作用。从20世纪30年代至今,巴西各届政府根据现代化发展不同阶段面临的不同战略需求、国际环境、自身实力等因素,实施了四种战略:半自主战略、依附战略、自主战略、相对自主战略。每种战略都是基于巴西的国家利益,但却受制于多种因素。巴西国际战略选择的经验和教训是,像巴西这样的大国,虽然实施自主战略是一种必然的战略选择,但是在现代化发展的初期以及中期,应始终将经济发展作为优先目标,不要过早地追求权力及国际地位,而应尽可能地与中心霸权国保持合作或者说非对抗性关系,以及经济上的相互依存关系。在全球化不断深化的时代背景下,国际多边机制应成为其提升国际地位、谋求国家政治经济利益的重要外交舞台,推动地区一体化应成为其维持自主战略、谋求独立战略空间的必要条件。     

Threats at Home,Threats Abroad: Bargaining and War in the Shadow of Coups and Revolutions

I analyze a two-level game in which a leader bargains over the spoils of international bargaining with a domestic opposition that can threaten her with a coup or revolution. While fighting an international war shrinks the domestic pie, it also alters the distribution of domestic power. This has three main implications. First, if war will undermine the opposition, fighting may be so attractive that leaders demand more for peace than foreign states are willing to give, leading to war. Second, if war will bolster the opposition, leaders accept harsh terms to avoid fighting—strategic selection that has implications for the observed relationship between war and political survival. Finally, prospective shifts in the distribution of domestic power caused by war can reduce the effects of international asymmetric information, though the result may be to increase or decrease the chances of war.     

The Construction of Power in the Strategic Narratives of the BRICS

Rising powers, collectively joined in informal diplomatic groups such as the BRICS, aim to influence the meaning of the international order by means of “strategic narratives.” Together, the BRICS develop strategic narratives that support their aspiration for a fairer and more democratic multipolar world order and which produce a positive perception of the group. This paper evaluates how BRICS’s system and identity narratives combine geostrategic, economic and solidarity narratives. Narrative tension emerges due to their embeddedness in contradicting power constructions, namely a geostrategic perspective and a multipolar perspective. The synchronisation of these three narratives is undermined when there is a fall in perceived power, economic recession or a lack of accountability and transparency practices. Strategic narrative analysis helps to think about and analyze power in global politics.     

胁迫式外交:战略竞争时代美国对外战略的转型

以特朗普政府2017年《国家安全战略报告》和2018年《国防战略报告》为标志,世界进入美国启动的战略竞争新时期,地缘政治争夺和大国竞争再度成为世界政治的突出主题。美国重振和维护世界主导地位的目标未变,但"胁迫式外交"成为特朗普政府推行对外战略的常态,美国对外行为出现了冷战结束以来最为显著的变化,表现为重新激活战略军事威慑以压制战略军事竞争对手、以贸易热战和科技冷战方式打压战略经济竞争对手、以政治勒索方式逼盟友承担义务、以极限施压方式压制地区敌对国家、以退群和搅局方式阻挠多边外交。美国推行胁迫式外交与特朗普个人的执政风格相关,但根本性的原因是国际政治权力结构的重大变化和战略竞争时代的来临,推动美国对外权力输出发生了转型性变化。这也意味着美国对外权力输出方式正在发生从软实力向硬实力、从依赖制度优势向依赖实力优势的巨大偏转。美国所谓国际"领导力"正加速蜕变为维护美国特权的"胁迫力",美国权力输出的这种变化可能代表着未来美国外交发展的一种长期趋势。     

Status and Foreign Policy Change in Small States: Qatar’s Emergence in Perspective

ABSTRACT

Small states are just as easily seduced by status and glory as other states. When conceived as situated in a stratified international society, small states acquire an inherent tendency to overcome their disadvantage in conventional power terms through the pursuit of status. Hence, it is precisely because of their position in the international hierarchy, not in spite of it, that strategic ideas based on state size stimulate foreign policy change in small states. This mechanism provides an explanation to the question why the small state of Qatar has pursued such a high-profile diplomatic strategy since its emergence in the late 1990s.     

A Crude Bargain: Great Powers,Oil States,and Petro-Alignment

Abstract

Petro-alignment, a quid pro quo arrangement whereby great powers offer security in exchange for oil states’ friendly oil policies, is a widely used and yet undertheorized energy security strategy. One consequential aspect of this exchange is that great powers choose different levels of security commitment to keep oil producers friendly. With what criteria do great powers rank oil states? How do we conceptualize different types of petro-alignments? What exactly do great powers and oil producers exchange under each petro-alignment type? I posit that a mix of market power and geostrategic location determines the strategic value and vulnerability of individual client oil states, which then generates four corresponding types of petro-alignment—security guarantee, strategic alignment, strategic favor, and neglect. Two carefully selected case comparisons—Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 1970–91, and Azerbaijan and Ecuador in 1990–2013—show how great powers created, utilized, and maintained petro-alignments under the unique logic of oil markets and across varying geopolitical settings. The findings have important implications on great powers’ grand strategies, strategic behaviors of oil states, and the role of oil in international security.     

Undermining Adversaries: Unipolarity,Threat Perception,and Negative Balancing Strategies after the Cold War

This paper engages the ongoing soft balancing debate by suggesting a new analytical framework for states’ countervailing strategies—a negative balancing model—to explain why states do not form alliances and conduct arms races to balance against power or threats as they previously did. Negative balancing refers to a state's strategies or diplomatic efforts aiming to undermine a rival's power. By contrast, positive balancing means to strengthen a state's own power in world politics. I argue that a state's balancing strategies are shaped by the level of threat perception regarding its rival. The higher the threat perception, the more likely it is for a state to choose positive balancing. The lower the threat perception, the more likely it is for a state to choose negative balancing. I suggest that the hegemon provides security as a public good to the international system in a unipolar world in which the relatively low-threat propensity of the system renders positive balancing strategies incompatible with state interests after the Cold War. Instead, states have employed various negative balancing strategies to undermine each other's power, especially when dealing with us primacy. China's negative balancing strategy against the United States and the us negative balancing strategy against Russia are two case studies that test the validity of the negative balancing model.     

Reassessing Hedging: The Logic of Alignment in East Asia

It is widely claimed that secondary states across East Asia are not purely balancing or bandwagoning, but rather hedging between the United States and China by combining policies of economic and political engagement with risk management. We argue that hedging behavior should not include costless activities that do not require states to face trade-offs in their security choices. We redefine hedging as signaling that generates ambiguity over the extent of a secondary state's shared security interests with great powers. This definition returns the focus to security relationships and better accounts for the trade-off between autonomy and alignment. Based on this definition, we argue that hedging occurs in far narrower (but arguably more interesting) circumstances than is widely believed. Many Asian states have existing treaty alliances with the United States or major territorial conflicts with China, creating path dependencies that reinforce balancing behavior rather than hedging. We therefore clarify cross-national variation in state behavior and contribute to the larger research project on regional responses to China's rise.     

Israel's Deterrence Strategy Revisited

During the 2001–2009 period when American foreign policy was internationally unpopular and perceived as unilateral, many states strengthened their security cooperation with the United States and facilitated the reach of the us military. This behavior spans a range of actions along a spectrum from reaffirming traditional alliances to far more subtle forms of alignment. This pattern is in large part driven by the actions of regional powers such as Russia and China whose rising power pushes neighboring states to seek the assurance of the United States, and it has distinct implications for the endurance of American hegemony. As those regional powers seek to expand their influence, secondary states may increase their contributions to the maintenance of American hegemony, thus helping to extend it well into the future. They are less prone to do so, however, if the United States follows a strategy of restraint that calls into question its willingness to defend its hegemony. Therefore, a policy focused on maintaining American military preeminence and the demonstrated willingness to use it may be what sustains the cooperation from second-tier states that helps to maintain American hegemony.     

Indo-Japanese Strategic Partnership and Power Transition in Asia

As the U.S.-led security order in Asia gradually comes under stress, regional powers such as India and Japan are formulating a strategic partnership to hedge against the vulnerabilities accruing out of the unfolding power transition in Asia. China’s unprecedented economic and military rise coupled with America’s perceived relative decline is drawing New Delhi and Tokyo into a strategic embrace. To insure their interests in this era of great power transition, New Delhi and Tokyo are keen to hedge against America’s possible failure in containing China’s growing assertiveness in Asia. This hedging strategy is evident in their growing strategic partnership which consists of a triple hedge: increasing bilateral defense partnership against fears of American retrenchment; economic engagement against an over-dependence on China; and a multilateral hedge against China’s growing influence in international and regional institutions. However, for Asia’s two prominent middle powers, transforming these nascent attempts into an effective strategic response to Asia’s current power transition would also require cooperation in the nuclear domain, an area where their policies continue to diverge.     

Jordan: Between the Arab Spring and the Gulf Cooperation Council

The Arab Spring has fundamentally shifted the strategic balance in the Middle East. As all sides rush to ensure that their interests will be secured, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has emerged as a key battleground between those who would like to see a more democratic region, and those who would like to maintain economic stability. On one side of this debate is the Gulf Cooperation Council, led by Saudi Arabia, that views democratic reform as a threat to economic stability. On the other side are the forces of the Arab Spring, which have called for political reform in states such as Egypt, Syria, and Libya, even if these reforms come at the expense of stability. This article examines the various forces, both domestic and international, that are attempting to influence Jordan, and through it, the balance of power in the Arab World.     

When Humanitarianism Matters: Liberalism and the Termination of Strategic Commitments

For all of the recent advances in the study of humanitarian norms in international relations, the prevailing sentiment remains that human rights are subordinate to other interests, especially strategic, in great power foreign policy making. This article seeks to lay the foundation to qualify this extant pessimism. It does so through a study of strategic commitments. Focusing specifically on security assistance in Latin America during the Cold War, this study assesses when and how humanitarian norms are most likely to lead democratic states to terminate these types of pledges. In so doing, it contributes to the growing literature on democratic commitments, furthers our understanding of non-governmental organization influence on international politics, and, most importantly, lays the theoretical basis for better assessing the extent to which humanitarian norms frame relationships between democracies and strategic partners.     

Defense Industries and Global Dependency

The global defense industrial sector is a remarkably accurate indicator of the distribution of power in the post-Cold War international system. However, the defense industrial sector as a policy tool has received relatively little scrutiny, even though it not only reflects the international order, but also provides the United States with the ability to influence the foreign policy behavior of other states. The defense industrial sector is a powerful, if undervalued, diplomatic tool in the United States’ political arsenal.     

The ‘Demand-Side’: Avoiding a Nuclear-Armed Iran

This article examines the historical record of “nuclear rollback” and the motivations for Iran's apparent pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability in order to identify the broad principles that should guide U.S. and international efforts to resolve the nuclear crisis with Iran.¹ The author argues that Iran, like all states, seeks security and respect. For many Iranians, the past three decades provide proof that such security and respect can only be attained with a strategic nuclear deterrent. In 2009, if the United States can show Tehran a genuine path to security and prestige that does not require nuclear weapons, Tehran might give it serious consideration. However, if the United States and the international community fail to address Iran's legitimate need for security or its desire for international respect, Bowman believes it may only be a matter of time until Iran obtains a nuclear weapons capability.     

Terrorism,counter‐terrorism and democracy: The assessment of national security threats

The development of radical Islamist strategic thinking and the impact of post-modern, Western styles of thought upon the ideology that informs that strategy is often overlooked in conventional discussions of homegrown threats from jihadist militants. The propensity to discount the ideology informing both al-Qaeda and nominally non-violent Islamist movements with an analogous political philosophy like Hizb ut-Tahrir neglects the influence that critical Western modes of thought exercise upon their strategic thinking especially in the context of homegrown radicalization. Drawing selectively on non-liberal tendencies in the Western ideological canon has, in fact, endowed Khilaafaism (caliphism) with both a distinctive theoretical style and strategic practice. In particular, it derives intellectual sustenance from a post-Marxist Frankfurt School of critical thinking that in combination with an “English” School of international relations idealism holds that epistemological claims are socially determined, subjective, and serve the interests of dominant power relations. This critical, normative, and constructivist approach to international relations seeks not only to explain the historical emergence of the global order, but also to transcend it. This transformative agenda bears comparison with radical Islamist critiques of Western ontology and is of interest to Islamism's political and strategic thinking. In this regard, the relativist and critical approaches that have come to dominate the academic social sciences since the 1990s not only reflect a loss of faith in Western values in a way that undermines the prospects for a liberal and pluralist polity, but also, through a critical process facilitated by much international relations orthodoxy, promotes the strategic and ideological agenda of radical Islam. It is this curious strategic and ideological evolution that this paper explores.     

Chinese Military Power: What Vexes the United States and Why?

The enhancement of Chinese military power over the past decade is generating ample debate over its meaning and consequences for American security interests. China's characterization in larger conceptions of U.S. national security strategy has experienced repeated shifts over the decades. China is now an arrived major power according to virtually all relevant power criteria, without U.S. policy makers conclusively resolving the implications of China's military modernization for American security interests. Comparable uncertainties bedevil Chinese thinking about American military power. The latent elements of strategic rivalry (if not outright confrontation) are beyond dispute, and could readily take deeper root in the bureaucratic processes of both countries. Without leaders in both systems fully imparting and communicating to one another their respective strategic equities in Asia and the Pacific, the emergence of a reconfigured regional security order fully accepted by both states remains very uncertain.