Robert Ross

Øystein Tunsjø

Peter Dutton

This book offers an assessment of the naval policies of emerging naval powers, and the implications for maritime security relations and the global maritime order. Since the end of the Cold War, China, Japan, India and Russia have begun to challenge the status quo with the acquisition of advanced naval capabilities. The emergence of rising naval powers is a cause for concern, as the potential for great power instability is exacerbated by the multiple maritime territorial disputes among new and established naval powers. This work explores the underlying sources of maritime ambition through an analysis of various historical cases of naval expansionism. It analyses both the sources and dynamics of international naval competition, and looks at the ways in which maritime stability and the widespread benefits of international commerce and maritime resource extraction can be sustained through the twenty-first century. This book will be of much interest to students of naval power, Asian security and politics, strategic studies, security studies and IR in general.

Cooperation and Conflict at Sea

Twenty-First Century Seapower

Dong Wang

Robert S. Ross

This book examines the power transition between the US and China, and the implications for Europe and Asia in a new era of uncertainty. The volume addresses the impact that the rise of China has on the United States, Europe, transatlantic relations, and East Asia. China is seeking to use its enhanced power position to promote new ambitions; the United States is adjusting to a new superpower rivalry; and the power shift from the West to the East is resulting in a more peripheral role for Europe in world affairs. Featuring essays by prominent Chinese and international experts, the book examines the US–China rivalry, the changing international system, grand strategies and geopolitics, foreign policy, geo-economics and institutions, and military and technological developments. The chapters examine how strategic, security, and military considerations in this triangular relationship are gradually undermining trade and economics, reversing the era of globalization, and contributing to the breakdown of the US-led liberal order and institutions that will be difficult to rebuild. The volume also examines whether the adversarial antagonism in US–China relations, the tension in transatlantic ties, and the increasing rivalry in Europe–China relations are primarily resulting from leaders’ ambitions or structural power shifts. This book will be of much interest to students of Asian security, US foreign policy, European politics, and International Relations in general.

Power Transition and its Implications for Europe and Asia

US–China Foreign Relations

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international system has been unipolar, centered on the United States. But the rise of China foreshadows a change in the distribution of power. Øystein Tunsjø shows that the international system is moving toward a U.S.-China standoff, bringing us back to bipolarity—a system in which no third power can challenge the top two. The Return of Bipolarity in World Politics surveys the new era of superpowers to argue that the combined effects of the narrowing power gap between China and the United States and the widening power gap between China and any third-ranking power portend a new bipolar system that will differ in crucial ways from that of the last century. Tunsjø expands Kenneth N. Waltz’s structural-realist theory to examine the new bipolarity within the context of geopolitics, which he calls “geostructural realism.” He considers how a new bipolar system will affect balancing and stability in U.S.-China relations, predicting that the new bipolarity will not be as prone to arms races as the previous era’s; that the risk of limited war between the two superpowers is likely to be higher in the coming bipolarity, especially since the two powers are primarily rivals at sea rather than on land; and that the superpowers are likely to be preoccupied with rivalry and conflict in East Asia instead of globally. Tunsjø presents a major challenge to how international relations understands superpowers in the twenty-first century.

Øystein Tunsjø

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