The Strategic Quadrangle: Russia, China, Japan, and the United States in East Asia - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0876091680 ISBN 13: 9780876091685

Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1995

Synopsis

In The Strategic Quadrangle five experts on East Asia explore the new shape of power among the major players in the region - Russia, China, Japan, and the United States. The authors examine the web of alliances, historical rivalries, and conflicting worldviews that define the relations among these four powers and analyze how the interactions among them will affect East Asia and the international system as a whole. Robert Legvold, surveying the sweeping changes that have taken place in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union, contends that genuine integration into East Asia requires the kind of economic changes that have just begun in Russia and will take years to complete. David Lampton, in his chapter on China, examines the Chinese leadership's policy of military detente and economic cooperation with the other three powers in order to sustain the remarkable economic performance of the last two decades. In his chapter on Japan, Michael Mochizuki discusses the uncertainty that the end of the Soviet-American rivalry has produced in Japan's domestic politics and foreign policy. Michael Mandelbaum discusses the bilateral relationships between the United States and the three other countries and the differing issues that loom large for each: security, economics, and human rights. Finally, Richard Solomon attempts to answer the pivotal question of who will shape and wield power in the new East Asia.

About this title

About the Author:

Michael Mandelbaum is Christian A. Herter Professor of American Foreign Policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University.

From Booklist:

A number of scholars have been brought together in this collection to tackle the subtitled nations, and all dilate on the sudden shifting in the North Pacific power relations now that the single certainty in the region, Russia's antagonism toward China, Japan, and the U.S., no longer holds true. Now the U.S. tends to be seen as the pressure-builder, berating Japan to open its domestic market or hectoring China on human rights. In the shifting possibilities of future alignments, one of the analysts even foresees a U.S./China cold war. But most of the informed prognostication points to scenarios not quite so dire. All will have to accommodate an economically dynamic China that might, at last, advance to the front rank of nations, the relations between Japan and Russia in indefinite abeyance over the northern territories issue, and all four countries wary about a nuclear-armed Korea. As an issue-of-the-day pamphlet, these articles will have limited shelf life, but their sensibleness and their citations can be a boon to report writers needing background and essential facts on recent currents in this critical geopolitical region. Gilbert Taylor

About this edition

• Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0876091680
• ISBN 13: 9780876091685
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 232
• Editor: Mandelbaum Professor Of Political Science Michael