This special issue of Contemporary Security Policy would not have been possible without the assistance and wisdom of a number of colleagues. Alex Burns of Monash University first contacted me in 2012 to suggest a conference panel on Asia-Pacific strategic cultures. We agreed it was time to revisit critical issues raised by academics before us, including Desmond Ball's seminal comparative project at the Australian National University (1993) and the study edited by Ken Booth and Russell Trood, Strategic Cultures in the Asia-Pacific Region (Palgrave Macmillan, 1999). Our panel at the 2013 International Studies Association conference in San Francisco built a fruitful collaboration, later expanded to include additional case studies and perspectives.
Since then the issues at the heart of the project – strategic culture and security challenges in the Asia-Pacific – have only grown in importance. So too has interest among scholars and policy-makers trying to make sense of these developments, including globalization, the ascendance of China, North Korean nuclear ambitions, and tensions over territory and resources. President Obama's trip to Asia in 2014 (which notably did not include a visit to China) underscored the American strategic ‘pivot’ to the region, an effort to balance political, economic, and security ties.
Case study articles in this collection survey the ideational and material foundations of the behaviours of Australia, China, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and the United States. They offer rich comparisons of ways in which structural changes, including geopolitics and new security threats and opportunities, interact with domestic factors, such as elite interpretation of historical narratives and distinctive political-military cultures, to influence security policies. A concluding article devotes special attention to methodological issues at the heart of strategic cultural studies, and how strategic culture impacts the potential for conflict or cooperation in the region.
This has been a rewarding project. I would like to thank our authors for their tireless efforts to craft innovative takes on security conditions, while capturing and analysing real-world developments unfolding in the region as we wrote. Especially helpful suggestions and encouragement for the project came from Alan Bloomfield, David Haglund, Jeffrey Knopf, Patrick Porter, Andrew Scobell, and Christopher Twomey. I also wish to thank the 27 anonymous reviewers who improved the accuracy and authoritative treatment of our articles.
Finally, heartfelt thanks go to our journal editors, Regina Karp and Aaron Karp, of Old Dominion University, who were incredibly helpful in the development of this special issue. We appreciate their interest, engagement, wisdom, responsiveness, and editorial acumen.