The Asia-Pacific has remained at peace for over forty years thanks to a combination of several factors that have discouraged interstate conflict and deepened economic interdependence.
While it is popular in Washington to attribute much or all of this to the stabilizing role of the United States, its alliances, and its forward-deployed military presence, that is not the whole story of why the peace has endured and it overlooks how the U.S. has sometimes been a bystander or a destabilizing force in Asian affairs.
This is the paradox that Van Jackson identifies in his new book, Pacific Power Paradox: American Statecraft and the Fate of the Asian Peace. It is an incisive and engaging account of how the U.S. has acted both to promote and undermine Asian peace and security since 1979. Policymakers in the United States would do well to read and learn from it to avoid taking the U.S. down the path of destructive rivalry and militarism that it is currently on. Läs presentationen