Getting Beyond Taiwan? Chinese Foreign Policy and PLA Modernization

Key Points: Deeper rapprochement across the Taiwan Strait would remove a longstanding source of regional tension and the most likely source of war between the United States and China. Cross-strait rapprochement would also lead to new frictions and new worries among regional countries and the United States that a China no longer focused on Taiwan will use its increased power to challenge their interests elsewhere in Asia. Stabilizing the cross-strait political situation will free up resources previously devoted to military preparations for Taiwan contingencies and allow the People’s Liberation army (PLa) to undertake new missions and reassess priorities. The direction of PLA modernization can help alleviate or further exacerbate the concerns about a rising China that will become more powerful but also less constrained by Taiwan

Enhancing US-Japan-Taiwan Cooperation/Deterrence Efforts for Potential Taiwan Contingencies

NPS NRP Executive SummaryAs the balance of military power across the Taiwan Strait increasingly favors China, and with China's increased coercive aircraft incursions across the mid-line of the Taiwan Strait, many military leaders and policy analysts have grown more concerned about a potential Chinese attack against Taiwan in the near-term. The U.S.-Japan alliance remains one of the strongest pillars for peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific, but ambiguities in the policies of both countries regarding responses in Taiwan contingencies and insufficient coordination between the U.S., Japan, and Taiwan may undermine deterrence and encourage beliefs in Beijing that military operations may succeed. The purpose of this project is to identify areas of potential deeper cooperation and coordination between the U.S., Japan, and Taiwan in Taiwan contingencies, to provide recommendations on how the U.S. military and U.S. Navy can enhance deterrence towards China and improve integration in case of conflict. Drawing on deep expertise in Asia and U.S. Naval strategy and operations in the Indo-Pacific, this project will examine these relations to provide recommendations on the best areas to deepen coordination and enhance deterrence of China.N3/N5 - Plans & StrategyThis research is supported by funding from the Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Program (PE 0605853N/2098). https://nps.edu/nrpChief of Naval Operations (CNO)Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.

Implications of Russian Strategic Changes on China

NPS NRP Executive SummaryImplications of Russian Strategic Changes on ChinaN3/N5 - Information, Plans & StrategyThis research is supported by funding from the Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Program (PE 0605853N/2098). https://nps.edu/nrpChief of Naval Operations (CNO)Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.

Chinese Security Cooperation with Southeast Asian Countries: Implications for U.S. Naval Operations

NPS NRP Executive SummaryChinese Security Cooperation with Southeast Asian Countries: Implications for U.S. Naval OperationsN3/N5 - Information, Plans & StrategyThis research is supported by funding from the Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Program (PE 0605853N/2098). https://nps.edu/nrpChief of Naval Operations (CNO)Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.

Re-Examining China’s Charm Offensive Toward Asia: How Much Reshaping of Regional Order?

Drawing mostly on Chinese-language sources, this article examines Chinese assessments of the effectiveness of China’s earlier “charm offensive” in increasing China’s regional influence and reshaping the regional order according to its preferences. The main argument is that China achieved mixed success. China was successful in preventing others from adopting hostile anti-China balancing postures, and especially before 2005, successful in attaining support and momentum for its preferred vision of East Asian regional cooperation and regional trade liberalization. China was less successful, however, in shaping the regional security order, although experts recognized the incremental improvements in what would be a gradual process in minimizing the dominance of U.S. alliances. Around 2005, however, Chinese experts noted increased resistance to China’s preferred vision for regionalism and regional economic cooperation. The article concludes by examining analytical themes that enabled China to successfully exert regional influence or represented challenges to its efforts to reshape the region

Chinese Security Cooperation with Southeast Asian Countries: Implications for U.S. Naval Operations

NPS NRP Project PosterChinese Security Cooperation with Southeast Asian Countries: Implications for U.S. Naval OperationsN3/N5 - Information, Plans & StrategyThis research is supported by funding from the Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Program (PE 0605853N/2098). https://nps.edu/nrpChief of Naval Operations (CNO)Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.

Implications of Russian Strategic Changes on China

NPS NRP Project PosterImplications of Russian Strategic Changes on ChinaN3/N5 - Information, Plans & StrategyThis research is supported by funding from the Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Program (PE 0605853N/2098). https://nps.edu/nrpChief of Naval Operations (CNO)Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.

The grand strategies of rising powers: reassurance, coercion, and balancing responses

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 491-547).This dissertation asks: what explains variation in how other great powers respond to rising powers? It tries to explain why the emergence of a rising power sometimes leads to tension, rivalry, and war, and other times leads to less competitive responses. This project analyzes the effect of the rising power's grand strategy-whether it is reassurance or coercion--on the severity of the balancing response by the other major powers. I develop a theory of successful reassurance that shows how a rising power can prevent or minimize the severity of the balancing response by other great powers. Reassurance can limit the balancing response through two causal mechanisms: 1) reduced estimates that rising power is a threat; and 2) reaping the benefits from a rising power. I also develop a theory of coercion backfire that shows how a rising power that implements a grand strategy of coercion is more likely to make others feel especially threatened, and therefore more likely to provoke an early and especially firm response, exacerbating the severity of the balancing response. I apply this theory to explain the balancing responses to the rise of Germany from 1871 to 1907 and the rise of China in the post-Cold War world. The empirical tests and process tracing evidence demonstrate that rising powers, contrary to the expectations of most realist balance of power and rationalist accounts, have considerable agency to affect the balancing response. In the cases of the rising powers of contemporary China and Bismarckian Germany, grand strategies of reassurance convinced states to minimize the severity of their balancing responses, even as the rising power's material power continued to grow. In contrast, Wilhelmine Germany's grand strategy of coercion antagonized the other powers and pushed them to respond by balancing very severely. For the contemporary case of the rise of China, I use a variety of sources such as Chinese-language materials and extensive interviews from over two years of field work in China and Asia to examine China's grand strategy of reassurance and its effect on the responses by the United States, Japan, Russia, and India.by Michael A. Glosny.Ph.D