Rebalanced Transatlantic Policy Toward The Asia Pacific Region

In 2014, the CSIS Europe and Southeast Asia Programs embarked on a two-year initiative to create a new and enduring EU-U.S. collaborative mechanism to enhance transatlantic Asia-Pacific policy coordination and understanding. This report is the culmination of this two-year study and presents the findings of the research while also offering actionable recommendations for U.S. and EU policymakers.

This book examines the success of the US rebalancing (or pivot) strategy towards Asia, placing the US pivot in a historical context while highlighting its policy content and management dilemmas. Further, the contributors discuss the challenges and opportunities that each regional state confronts in responding to the US rebalancing strategy. In 2011, President Barack Obama laid out the framework for a strategic pivot of US policy towards the Asia Pacific region. Writers in this volume focus specifically on Asian perception of the strategy. Among the topics they explore are: China’s desire to be seen as equal to the US while maintaining foreign policy initiatives independent of the US strategic rebalance; the strengthening of Japan’s alliance with the US through its security policies; the use of US-China competition by South Korea to negotiate its influence in the region; and Australia’s embrace of the strategy as a result of foreign direct investment that provides economic benefits to the country.

This book provides a multifaceted analysis of the so-called US 'rebalance' (or 'pivot') toward Asia by focusing on the diplomatic, military, and economic dimensions of the American policy shift in the Asia Pacific region.

This book offers a systematic study of China's great-power diplomacy under President Xi Jinping. It critically applies the Chinese concept of 'strategic opportunity', which is defined by the national ambitions as set by the ruling communist party leadership, the opportunities and risks presented in the international environment, and the policy instruments at the nation's disposal. Applying the dynamic concept, the book identifies key Chinese beliefs that seek to best match its resources with its policy ends and investigates policy patterns in China's management of competition with the United States, the Belt and Road Initiative, economic statecraft, regional and global institutional orders, and its multipolar diplomacy. Taking seriously China's choice, Yong Deng challenges the mainstream structural analysis in International Relations that focuses merely on rising powers' insecurity and discontent in the international system. His study shows how the world's leading contender to, and major stakeholder in, the world order actually evaluates, and actively seeks to control, its international environment.

Russia has cultivated an opaque web of economic and political patronage across the Central and Eastern European region that the Kremlin uses to influence and direct decisionmaking. This report from the CSIS Europe Program, in partnership with the Bulgarian Center for the Study of Democracy, is the result of a 16-month study on the nature of Russian influence in five case countries: Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Serbia.

This volume brings together a number of scholars from a variety of disciplines to examine the phenomenon of the transformation of Poland within the context of regional and global power relations, focusing in particular on analyses of the country’s political and social development within the area of transatlantic relations. It provides a distinct view on the current dynamics and future perspectives of the transatlantic alliance. At a time when the story of Poland as the shining example of post-Communist success and European integration has been interrupted, several other leading narratives of the Western world also appear to be in danger: western values cannot be considered to be universal, the message of globalization has lost its power, and the structure of the international order is described in increasingly delusional terms. The study sheds light on features of Poland’s performance on the regional scene and will stimulate discussion about the lessons that may be learned from the Polish experience by other states facing the challenges of transformation. The last 25 years of Polish history represent the unquestioned success of this political concept. Poland has become an independent actor able to take responsibility for its own future, thanks to the favorable configuration of global powers and the support provided by international leaders. Was this merely a historical episode that created an opportunity for one actor? Can this scenario be repeated? Under what conditions?

Today, the debate on world order is intense. As is always the case in times of transition, the global restructuring of international affairs is generating a deep reflection on how the world is, and how it should be reorganized. After the long frozen period of the cold war and the subsequent years marked by US unipolarism, the world has begun the new millennium with profound shifts. The relative decline of the USA, the crisis in the European Union, the consolidation of the BRIC emerging economies, and the diffusion of the power to non-state actors all constitute significant elements that demand a new conceptualization of the rules of the global game. In this pluralist and changing context, a number of different narratives are presented by the key actors in the international system. This book analyses these narratives in comparative terms by putting them in the wider framework of the transformation in global governance.