Product Description: The counterinsurgency (COIN) paradigm dominates military and political conduct in contemporary Western strategic thought. It assumes future wars will unfold as "low intensity" conflicts within rather than between states, requiring specialized military training and techniques...read more

'Khoo, Jones, and Smith have pulled off a remarkable balancing act, crafting a well-grounded and multifaceted survey of China s rise in the context of Asian security. In a field which is often marked more by scholarly effervescence than substance, the authors provide a refreshingly detailed portrait of the last two decades, and fair-mindedly point out evidence which might support both extremes of the debates they challenge with their own 'third way'.'- Frank 'Scott' Douglas, US Naval War College, US'Congratulations to the authors for a clearly argued and comprehensive treatment of China's post-Cold War rise and what it means for existing and future dynamics of the Asia-Pacific region. Effectively employing realist theory in a fair-minded treatment of regional developments, the volume shows how and why power realities are more important than non-material factors in determining the region's trajectory and thereby demonstrates that China's ascendance in Asia remains complicated and conflicted.'- Robert Sutter, George Washington University, USEast Asia is without question a region of huge economic, political and security significance. Asian Security and the Rise of China offers a comprehensive overview and assessment of the international politics of the Asia-Pacific since the end of the Cold War, seeking to address the overarching question of how we can most convincingly explain the central dynamics of Asia's international relations. Via a realist perspective on the dynamics and frictions associated with accommodating the rise of powerful states, this timely book addresses the core issue in contemporary Asian politics: the rise of China.The contributors expertly evaluate China's rise and the impact it has had on the dynamics of regional relations in North East and South East Asia. They demonstrate that China's economic development and its regional and international ambition increasingly conflict with the existing consensus-based regional arrangements such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and the East Asian Summit mechanism. As a consequence, smaller states in the region increasingly resort to hedging and balancing strategies in an attempt to mitigate Chinese hegemony. This leaves the region in the grip of a complex and potentially destabilizing security dilemma.The book offers a compelling analysis of the problem that China presents for its region that will enlighten undergraduate students of regional political studies and international relations. Postgraduate and Master's students on courses addressing East and South East Asia will also find plenty of information in this invaluable book.Contents: Introduction 1. Rocky Rise: US-China Relations in the Post-Cold War Era 2. Fear Factor: Northeast Asian Responses to China's Rise 3. ASEAN's Elusive Search for a Role in East Asian International Relations 4. Norms are what Strong States Make of Them: ASEAN in an Age of Volatility 5. Producing Security: State Power, Democracy and Southeast Asian Regionalism 6. Between Two Worlds: Australian Foreign Policy, the Rise of China and Middle-Power Responses to New and Old Security Dilemmas 7. The New Twenty Years' Crisis: East Asia and the Northern Financial Crisis Conclusion Bibliography Index

Product Description: Over the last decade, the notion of counter-insurgency (COIN) has risen to prominence as the dominant paradigm in American and British thinking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite the high level of attention paid to the subject by military analysts, the broader theoretical and historical factors which underpin counter-insurgency have received comparatively little critical scrutiny...read more

Product Description: Academic and accepted orthodoxy maintains that Southeast Asia, and Asia generally, is evolving into a distinctive East Asian regional order. This book questions this claim and reveals instead uncertainty and incoherence at the heart of ASEAN, the region's foremost institution...read more

Product Description: This rigorously analytical yet readable book examines trends in new terror - understood here to be the capacity of sub-state actors to secure religious or politically motivated objectives by violent means. The contributors argue that whilst the use of violence to achieve political ends is scarcely original, what distinguishes new terror is its potential for lethality...read more

Product Description: Academic and accepted orthodoxy maintains that Southeast Asia, and Asia generally, is evolving into a distinctive East Asian regional order. This book questions this claim and aims to reveal instead uncertainty and incoherence at the heart of ASEAN, the region's foremost institution...read more

Product Description: David Martin Jones examines how China has been portrayed in European and subsequently North American social and political thought and what, if anything, this depiction tells us about the character of this thought. Such a question immediately evokes the spectre of orientalism and subsequent chapters explore whether the identification of an orientalist project invalidates the knowledge claims of European and North American social and political thought as it evolved from the eighteenth to the twentieth century...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: During the Stuart monarchy oath taking became a means to enforce popular allegiance to the king (who had become head of both the church and the state during the previous Tudor reign). In an age increasingly preoccupied by conscience, this initially helped to strengthen the monarch's power...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This book provides a clear and accessible account of political and economic development in Pacific Asia. Adopting a comparative and historical approach, it examines the factors behind the 'East Asian Miracle' which has transformed the economies and societies of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia...read more

Product Description: This book challenges the view that liberal democracy is the inevitable outcome of economic modernization. Focusing on the stable and prosperous societies of Pacific Asia, it argues that contemporary political arrangements are legitimised by the values of hierarchy, familism and harmony...read more