From the editors

The rapid growth of China’s economic, military and political power since the 1990s has prompted a debate among strategic studies scholars and policymakers about its long-term implications and how other states should respond. This issue of The Journal of Strategic Studies addresses some of these scholarly and policy debates.¹

Since 2012, China’s claim to sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has raised the risk of a political–military crisis with Japan. The essay by Adam P. Liff of Indiana University and Andrew S. Erickson of the US Naval War College opens this issue by analysing key institutional reforms in Tokyo to cope with such a crisis, specifically the establishment of Japan’s National Security Council. These reforms, they point out, have markedly improved Tokyo’s capacity to manage a crisis, but significant shortcomings remain, above all the ability to communicate with Beijing via a crisis ‘hotline’.

A Sino-Japanese confrontation over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands is one among several scenarios that might escalate into a violent conflict between China and the US.² In the second article of this issue, Joshua Rovner of the Southern Methodist University weights up the likelihood of that conflict escalating into a nuclear war or a protracted conventional conflict. The effort to prevent a nuclear exchange, he argues, would make a protracted conventional war more likely, but in that scenario both sides would find it extremely difficult to bring the conflict to an acceptable conclusion.

In the third article in this issue, a study of China’s regional diplomacy, Hoo Tiang Boon of Nanyang Technological University discerns consistency behind China’s relations with its smaller neighbours. Boon shows that Chinese diplomacy in the region follows a two-pronged strategy. One approach is tough and uncompromising on issues that Beijing regards as its core interests. The other is more flexible and cooperative towards interests that, while significant, are of secondary importance. Aside from encouraging its neighbours to cooperate with it, Boon suggests that China’s two-pronged diplomatic strategy reflects the much larger goal of managing its rise peacefully.³

The next article in this issue by Li Chen of Renmin University offers an insight based on Chinese sources of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) doctrinal development in relation to the threat posed by the Soviet Union from 1969 to 1989. Li shows that the PLA found it difficult to break from its traditional operational modes to elaborate a new doctrine that could realistically cope with a Russian attack. He concludes that the PLA needs to address the intellectual, command and structural obstacles to realistic peacetime doctrinal development to fully realise the goals of China’s military modernisation.⁴

The final article, by Jack S. Levy of Rutgers University and William Mulligan of University College Dublin, examines the logic of preventive war before 1914. Although this article does not directly address the rise of China, many scholars look to 1914 as an intellectual laboratory to test theories about the potential causes of war in East Asia.⁵ The editors therefore decided to include it in this issue. If a rising great power has incentives to delay conflict until it is stronger, Levy and Mulligan ask, then why did Russia, a great power that was rising relative to Germany in terms of military and economic strength, not adopt a buying-time strategy? The answer they argue is that while German leaders saw Russia’s rising strength as an incentive to fight sooner rather than later, Russia’s leadership feared that diplomatic retreat over the crisis in the Balkans would be too costly a blow to its prestige and credibility to accept. These different strategic logics and conceptions of power, the authors demonstrate, underscore why scholars and policymakers need to consider how different perceptions of what is at stake in a crisis may shape the behaviour of key actors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ For relevant earlier articles in this volume see Yves-Heng Lim, ‘Expanding the Dragon’s Reach: The Rise of China’s Anti-access Naval Doctrine and Forces’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 40/1–2 (2017), 146–68; Joel Wuthnow, ‘A Brave New World for Chinese Joint Operations’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 40/1–2 (2017), 169–95; Paul Kallender and Christopher W. Hughes, ‘Japan’s Emerging Trajectory as a “Cyber Power”: From Securitization to Militarization of Cyberspace’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 40/1–2 (2017), 118–45.

² Phillip C. Saunders and Julia G. Bowie, ‘US–China military relations: Competition and cooperation’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 39/5–6 (2016), 662–84; Fintan Hoey, ‘Japan and Extended Nuclear Deterrence: Security and Non-proliferation’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 39/4 (2016), 484–501.

³ Also see Mingjiang Li, ‘The People’s Liberation Army and China’s Smart Power Quandary in Southeast Asia’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 38/3 (2015), 359–82.

⁴ On the development of the PLA also see James Char and Richard A. Bitzinger, ‘Reshaping the People’s Liberation Army since the 18th Party Congress: Politics, Policymaking, and Professionalism’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 39/5–6 (2016), 599–607; Kevin Pollpeter, ‘Space, the New Domain: Space Operations and Chinese Military Reforms’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 39/5–6 (2016), 709–27; Richard A. Bitzinger, ‘Reforming China’s Defense Industry’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 39/5–6 (2016), 762–89; Tai Ming Cheung, ‘Innovation in China’s Defense Technology Base: Foreign Technology and Military Capabilities’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 39/5–6 (2016), 728–61.

⁵ Francis J. Gavin, ‘History, Security Studies, and the July Crisis’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 37/2 (2014), 319–31; William Inboden, ‘Statecraft, Decision-Making, and the Varieties of Historical Experience: A Taxonomy’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 37/2 (2014), 291–318.