Suchergebnisse

This article appeared in Strategic Insights, v. 2 issue 1 (January 2003) ; The American war on terrorism since the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has presented Beijing with a dilemma. On one hand, Washington's call for international support in the war on terrorism gave Beijing an opportunity to improve bilateral relations with a new Bush Administration that previously had regarded ties with the PRC with a cool skepticism. On the other hand, Washington's conduct of the war on terrorism has given it new strategic assets and military relationships in Asia that, Beijing fears, may be used in the long term to contain China itself. With diverging key interests at stake, Beijing's view of the war on terrorism has been publicly collaborative but also increasingly ambivalent.

This article appeared in Strategic Insights (August 2002), v.1 no.6 ; That recent decades have been a time of transition in military affairs is by now a tired cliche. However, despite the profusion of theorists that have attempted to explain, define, and label the changing mode of warfare, the nature of this transition remains a subject of heated argument. Earlier this year, former Deputy Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, General Rupert Smith of the British Army, offered his take on this subject in The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World. The premise of Smith's book is that industrial war, the model which emerged from the French Revolution and which predominated until World War II, has declined in relevance because of the advent of nuclear weaponry, increasingly successful insurgencies, and its own high cost, and has thus effectively ceased to exist. Smith's book is lucid, plainly written, accessible to non-experts as well as specialists, and richly illustrated with specific cases. However, the story it tells is familiar to students of the issue. (Martin Van Creveld made a similar case in his 1991 book The Transformation of War and subsequent works, to name but one example.) What really sets Smith's book apart from the crowd is his analysis of those events, and the theory of contemporary warfare he derives from them: namely 'war amongst the people.'

This article appeared in Strategic Insights (September 2002), v.1 no.7 ; On July 16, Beijing and Moscow celebrated the first anniversary of their treaty of friendship and cooperation. The treaty codified agreement between the two sides to collaborate in diluting what each saw as American domination of the post-Cold War international order. Events in the year since the treaty's signing, however, have underscored how limited the basis for strategic collaboration between Russia and China actually is. The treaty, signed in Moscow last year by Russian President Vladimir Putin and PRC President Jiang Zemin, invites immediate comparison with the treaty between Beijing and Moscow in the early Cold War years. That treaty, signed in Moscow on February 14, 1950 by Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong, was a full-fledged security alliance, calling for each side to render military and other assistance with all means at its disposal to the other in the event of an attack by Japan or states allied with it--implicitly referring to the United States. This document examines the limits of Russian-Chinese strategic collaboration and the effects this has on the United States.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures and Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- China's Foreign and National Security Policy-Making Process: Is It Changing, and Does It Matter? -- The Central Leadership, Supraministry Coordinating Bodies, State Council Ministries, and Party Departments -- The Influence of the Gun: China's Central Military Commission and Its Relationship with the Military, Party, and State Decision-Making Systems -- The External Relations of China's Provinces -- The Foreign Policy Outlook of China's "Third Generation" Elite -- The Domestic Context of Chinese Foreign Policy: Does "Public Opinion'' Matter? -- Empowered and Restrained: Chinese Foreign Policy in the Age of Economic Interdependence -- The Impact of International Regimes on Chinese Foreign Policy- Making: Broadening Perspectives and Policies But Only to a Point -- Chinese Decision-Making Regarding Taiwan, 1979-2000 -- The Case of China's Accession to GATT/WTO -- The Making of China's Korea Policy in the Era of Reform -- Notes -- Contributors -- Index