Asia has emerged as the centre of international conflict and change in the post-war era. In Europe the post-cold war approach is to adjust East-West power relationships without disturbing the territorial status quo, and to conduct foreign policy according to classical European principles of compromise and compensation. Asians are newcomers in world affairs. Asian diplomatic traditions differ from European ones, and there are many border disputes and power rivalries. The idea of 'Asia' was created by Europeans for Europeans and it led to Western dominance of Asia. From colonial subjects, Asians have become important players in military, economic and diplomatic affairs. To understand the Asian dimension of contemporary world affairs we need to take a fresh look at Asian diplomatic ideas and practices. This volume brings together recognised experts to explain the imperatives and external policies of different types of Asian states.

The book explores diplomatic style and its use as a means to provide analytical insight into a state’s foreign policy, with a specific focus on South Korea. Diplomatic style attracts scant attention from scholars. It is dismissed as irrelevant in the context of diplomacy’s universalism; misconstrued as a component of foreign policy; alluded to perfunctorily amidst broader considerations of foreign policy; or wholly absented from discussions in which it should comprise an important component. In contrast to these views, practitioners maintain a faith-like confidence in diplomatic style. They assume it plays an important role in providing analytical insight, giving them advantage over scholars in the analysis of foreign policy. This book explores diplomatic style and its use as a means to provide analytical insight into foreign policy, using South Korea as a case study. It determines that style remains important to diplomatic practitioners, and provides analytical insight into a state’s foreign policy by highlighting phenomena of policy relevance, which narrows the range of information an analyst must cover. The book demonstrates how South Korea’s diplomatic style – which has a tendency towards emotionalism, and is affected by status, generational change, cosmopolitanism, and estrangement from international society – can be a guide to understanding South Korea’s contemporary foreign policy. This book will be of much interest to students of diplomacy studies, foreign policy, Asian politics, and International Relations in general.

The chapters in this volume analyse issues relating to political governance, national identity, economic development and regional security that have preoccupied the states of South Asia in the fifty years following independence. India has been faced with the challenge of developing effective democratic structures in the world's most diverse and populous society. It confronts tensions in its efforts to carry out economic reforms in a competitive resource-scarce context, and to maintain its commitment to secularism in the face of the growing influence of Hindu nationalism. The role of the military and of religion have complicated the task of stabilising democratic structures and socio-economic development in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Sri Lanka's political problems have escalated due to the failures of its leadership, unsuccessful constitutional experiments, and unresolved ethnic differences. The transition of Nepal from a centralised monarchy to a participatory political system has generated stresses in its traditional social relations and group rankings. The essays by an international groups of scholars explore these themes with a view to highlighting the complex processes of political change and development that are underway in the South Asian states.

This book provides a comparative assessment of the material and ideational contributions of five countries to the regional architecture of post-Cold War Asia. In contrast to the usual emphasis placed on the role and centrality of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Asia’s multilateral architecture and its component institutions, this book argues that the four non-ASEAN countries of interest here 3⁄4 Australia, Japan, China and the United States 3⁄4 and Indonesia have played and continue to play an influential part in determining the shape and substance of Asian multilateralism from its pre-inception to the present. The work does not contend that existing scholarship overstates ASEAN’s significance to the successes and failures of Asia’s multilateral enterprise. Rather, it claims that the impact of non-ASEAN stakeholders in innovating multilateral architecture in Asia has been understated. Whether ASEAN has fared well or poorly as a custodian of Asia’s regional architecture, the fact remains that the countries considered here, notwithstanding their present discontent over the state of that architecture, are key to understanding the evolution of Asian multilateralism. This book will be of much interest to students of Asian politics, international organisations, security studies and IR more generally.

This book examines India’s relationship with Iran since the post-World War II period and its unique search for meaningful bilateral ties in the West Asian region in the context of the changing regional and international scenarios. The four chapters highlight the achievements and constraints on the development of Indo-Iranian relations during the Cold War era; opportunities and limitations in bilateral engagements between India and Iran in the aftermath of the Cold War; impact of the ‘US factor’ on the development of crucial Indo-Iranian energy ties and the limitation imposed by India’s relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia on the India–Iran ties. More specifically, the four chapters touch on the central drivers—energy imports, access to Central Asia, cooperation in Afghanistan, mutual trade and economic investments and security ties—of India’s Iran policy, and how they structure India’s interaction with the other countries of the region and impact on the articulation of national interests. Combining a rich interplay of facts and figures with nuanced analyses, this volume will be a valuable resource for scholars, policymakers, diplomats and any interested reader desirous of knowing more about Indo-Iranian relations in particular and India’s West Asia policy in general. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

An important comparative study of scientists' place in the twentieth-century state

This volume brings together original essays by internationally renowned scholars who provide a wide-ranging examination of national security in India. They discuss strategic and foreign policy issues that lie at the heart of India's security concerns in today's world order. The book charts India's growth from a poor, developing country to a middle-ranking nuclear power and examines its position in a US-dominated world order. It then looks at India's relations with its nuclear neighbours--China and Pakistan and explores possibilities of nuclear risk-reduction in the South Asian region. The volume ends with two essays on Subrahmanyam's contribution to the security debate and a select bibliography of his writings.

Domestic and international development strategies often focus on private ownership as a crucial anchor for long-term investment; the security of property rights provides a foundation for capitalist expansion. In recent years, Thailand's policies have been hailed as a prime example of how granting formal land rights to poor farmers in low-income countries can result in economic benefits. But the country provides a puzzle: Thailand faced major security threats from colonial powers in the nineteenth century and from communism in the twentieth century, yet only in the latter case did the government respond with pro-development tactics. In Land and Loyalty, Tomas Larsson argues that institutional underdevelopment may prove, under certain circumstances, a strategic advantage rather than a weakness and that external threats play an important role in shaping the development of property regimes. Security concerns, he find, often guide economic policy. The domestic legacies, legal and socioeconomic, resulting from state responses to the outside world shape and limit the strategies available to politicians. While Larsson’s extensive archival research findings are drawn from Thai sources, he situates the experiences of Thailand in comparative perspective by contrasting them with the trajectory of property rights in Japan, Burma, and the Philippines.

With the resurgence of ethnic nationalism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the need to bring the study of ethnicity and nationalism more closely together has become even plainer. The views expressed here represent several of the main lines of enquiry in the current study of ethnicity and nationalism. Contents: Anthony D. Smith, 'Ethnicity and Nationalism.' James Mayall and Mark Simpson, 'Ethnicity is not Enough: Reflections on Protracted Secessionism in the Third World.' Sammy Smooha and Theodor Hanf, 'The Diverse Modes of Conflict Regulation in Deeply Divided Societies.' Walker Connor, 'The Nation and its Myth.' Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and the Historians.' Sylvia Walby, 'Women and Nation.' John Hutchinson, 'Moral Innovators and the Politics of Regeneration: the Distinctive Role of Cultural Nationalists in Nation Building.' Donald L. Horowitz, 'Irredentas and Secessions: Adjacent Phenomena, Neglected Connections.'

This book asks whether women in the Middle East and North Africa benefit from development, and if so, in what ways. The answers are developed in a series of essays on Afghanistan, Palestine/Israel, Iran, Algeria, Iraq, Suadi Arabia, Morocco, and Egypt. The authors are an international group of social scientists.