In the 1990s there was a wave of multilateralism in the Asia Pacific, led primarily by ASEAN. Since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, however, many non-ASEAN states have attempted to seize the initiative, including the USA, Japan, China, South Korea, and Australia. Kai He and his contributors debate the reasons for this contested multilateralism and the impacts it will have on the region’s security and political challenges. Will the "Indo-Pacific turn" be a blessing or a curse for regional stability and prosperity? Using a diverse range of theoretical and empirical perspectives, these leading scholars contribute views on this question and on the diverse strategies of the great and middle powers in the region. This collection will be of great interest to scholars and students of international relations in the Asia Pacific and of great value to policy makers in the region and beyond.

The Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment 2021 provides insight into key regional strategic, geopolitical, economic, military and security topics. Among the topics explored are: US−China decoupling and its regional security implications; Japan’s security policy and China; India’s emerging grand strategy; Southeast Asia amid rising great-power rivalry; Australia’s new regional security posture; NATO’s evolving approach to China; The United Kingdom’s ‘tilt’ to the Indo-Pacific; and Emerging technologies and future conflict in the Asia-Pacific. Authors include leading regional analysts and academics Kanti Bajpai, Gordon Flake, Franz-Stefan Gady, Prashanth Parameswaran, Alessio Patalano, Samir Puri, Sarah Raine, Tan See Seng, Drew Thompson, Ashley Townshend, Joanne Wallis and Robert Ward.

This Handbook expertly explores the profound transformations in international relations in recent decades. Proliferating cross-border challenges, including global financial crises, climate change, environmental degradation, irregular migration, and COVID-19, require governance structures that transcend the nation state and take both global and regional interplay, as well as problem-solving capacities, into account. Contributing authors investigate the effectiveness of international cooperation and performance in a diverse range of policy fields.

This edited volume examines the multifaceted impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on peoples and states in East Asia. The book brings together selected case studies in Southeast Asia and the wider East Asian region that analyse how states in the region have responded to the pandemic and its multi-dimensional threats to human security, including risks of atrocity crimes. In the context of protecting human security and upholding the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the work analyses how such a consequential crisis has compounded socio-economic and political problems, exacerbated societal fault lines, and created new types of risks for people’s safety and security. Using the United Nations Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes: A Tool for Prevention, the book presents seven case studies that identify relevant risks factors confronting selected countries and the extent to which the global pandemic has magnified and/or exacerbated such risks for affected populations. It draws key lessons on how states should manage extant and emerging risks for atrocity crimes and how they can build and enhance their capabilities for preventing atrocities in both conflict-affected and relatively stable states, particularly within the context of Pillar 1 (prevention) and Pillar 2 (capacity building) of the R2P principle. This book will be of much interest to students of the Responsibility to Protect, humanitarian protection, Asian politics, International Relations, and Security studies.

The book assesses U.S. foreign relations in the Indo-Pacific during the Trump Administration, with a particular focus on the regional powers’ response to Trump's “America First” policy. The chapter authors draw on the theoretical insights from dominant International Relations theories – (Neo)Realism, Liberal Institutionalism, and Constructivism – to explain both continuities and discontinuities found in the regional powers’ security and foreign economic policies before and during the Trump Administration. The book will be of interest to new and advanced students of International Relations, Asian Studies, and U.S. foreign policy. The multi-national perspectives of the regional experts offer penetrating analyses of the likely legacy (or lack thereof) of the range of political, security, and trade policy initiatives launched by the Trump Administration and its implications for the balance of power, regional institutions, and national identity-informed approaches to international relations in the Indo-Pacific.

This Element introduces a preference-for-change model to explain the policy variations of states during the order transition. It suggests that policymakers will perceive a potential change in the international order through a cost-benefit prism.This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Between 2016 and 2020 Australia's foreign and security policies were significantly impacted by profound changes in geopolitics and geoeconomics, particularly as great power competition re-emerged between the United States and China. Australia in World Affairs 2016-2020: A Return to Great-Power Rivalry examines Australia's engagement on the international stage in light of these events. The thirteenth volume in the Australia in World Affairs series builds on the history of Australia's foreign policy covered in other volumes to identify patterns of continuity and change. It catalogues the key developments in this period of world history from an Australian perspective. Organised thematically, chapters cover Australia's foreign policy response to climate change, Australia's strengthened ties to the Indo-Pacific region, and its security interests in Southeast Asia. Australia's increasing security dependence on the US in an age of great-power rivalry is evident throughout.

This book assesses the important role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the management of regional political, security and economic relations. The author argues that ASEAN’s prominent role in the region, spanning 50 years, is largely due to the acquiescence of the great powers who endorsed ASEAN, accepted its regional position and accorded the institution a legitimacy and durability that, otherwise, it would not have. This text offers a key intervention into the debate regarding ASEAN and regional order by showing how ASEAN’s contribution to order management is part of a negotiated division of labour with the great powers. The author applies an innovative social roles analysis, which captures the dynamic interactions between ASEAN and the great powers from the Cold War to the present day.

This Open Access book explains ASEAN’s strategic role in managing great power politics in East Asia. Constructing a theory of institutional strategy, this book argues that the regional security institutions in Southeast Asia, ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions have devised their own institutional strategies vis-à-vis the South China Sea and navigated the great-power politics since the 1990s. ASEAN proliferated new security institutions in the 1990s and 2000s that assumed a different functionality, a different geopolitical scope, and thus a different institutional strategy. In so doing, ASEAN formed a “strategic institutional web” that nurtured a quasi-division of labor among the institutions to maintain relative stability in the South China Sea. Unlike the conventional analysis on ASEAN, this study disaggregates “ASEAN” as a collective regional actor into specific individual institutions—ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, ASEAN Summit, ASEAN-China dialogues, ASEAN Regional Forum, East Asia Summit, and ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting and ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting-Plus—and explains how each of these institutions has devised and/or shifted its institutional strategy to curb great powers’ ambition in dominating the South China Sea while navigating great power competition. The book sheds light on the strategic potential and limitations of ASEAN and ASEAN-led security institutions, offers implications for the future role of ASEAN in the Indo-Pacific region, and provides an alternative understanding of the strategic utilities of regional security institutions.

Rivalry and Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the most important strategic and economic region in the world. Asia-Pacific is a region that is undergoing a major transformation, largely as a consequence of the rise of China and its growing rivalry with the United States. Whatever happens in the Asia-Pacific will profoundly influence global events, not just regional ones. Looking ahead, the region's future direction — and even its name — is contested and uncertain.This two-volume reference work, by one of the world's leading analysts of regional affairs, places these events in historical context and considers what they may mean for future political, economic and strategic relations. By focusing on the United States, China and the region's most significant middle powers, the book explains why and how the Asia-Pacific has become the fulcrum of international events.