Balancing Power without Weapons

Balancing Power without Weapons
Author: Ashley Thomas Lenihan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2018-03-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1316856909

Why do states block some foreign direct investment on national security grounds even when it originates from within their own security community? Government intervention into foreign takeovers of domestic companies is on the rise, and many observers find it surprising that states engage in such behaviour not only against their strategic and military competitors, but also against their closest allies. Ashley Lenihan argues that such puzzling behaviour can be explained by recognizing that states use intervention into cross-border mergers and acquisitions as a tool of statecraft to internally balance the economic and military power of other states through non-military means. This book tests this theory using quantitative and qualitative analysis of transactions in the United States, Russia, China, and fifteen European Union states. It deepens our understanding of why states intervene in foreign takeovers, the relationship between interdependence and conflict, the limits of globalization, and how states are balancing power in new ways. This title is also available as Open Access.

Balancing Power without Weapons

Balancing Power without Weapons
Author: Ashley Thomas Lenihan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2018-03-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107181860

This book focuses on the non-military military means through which states intervene to balance the economic and military power of other states. Also available as Open Access.

Balance of Power

Balance of Power
Author: T. V. Paul
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2004
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804750173

Since the sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union, many scholars have argued that the balance of power theory is losing its relevance. This text examines this viewpoint, as well as looking at systematic factors that may hinder or favour the return of balance of power politics.

Restraining Great Powers

Restraining Great Powers
Author: T. V. Paul
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2018-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0300228481

At the end of the Cold War, the United States emerged as the world's most powerful state, and then used that power to initiate wars against smaller countries in the Middle East and South Asia. According to balance-of-power theory--the bedrock of realism in international relations--other states should have joined together militarily to counterbalance the United States' rising power. Yet they did not. Nor have they united to oppose Chinese aggression in the South China Sea or Russian offensives along its western border. This does not mean balance-of-power politics is dead, argues renowned international relations scholar T. V. Paul; instead it has taken a different form. Rather than employ familiar strategies such as active military alliances and arms buildups, leading powers have engaged in "soft balancing," which seeks to restrain threatening powers through the use of international institutions, informal alignments, and economic sanctions. Paul places the evolution of balancing behavior in historical perspective, from the post-Napoleonic era to today's globalized world. This book offers an illuminating examination of how subtler forms of balance-of-power politics can help states achieve their goals against aggressive powers without wars or arms races.

The Tradition of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons

The Tradition of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons
Author: T.V. Paul
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 453
Release: 2009-01-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804771006

Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, no state has unleashed nuclear weapons. What explains this? According to the author, the answer lies in a prohibition inherent in the tradition of non-use, a time-honored obligation that has been adhered to by all nuclear states—thanks to a consensus view that use would have a catastrophic impact on humankind, the environment, and the reputation of the user. The book offers an in-depth analysis of the nuclear policies of the U.S., Russia, China, the UK, France, India, Israel, and Pakistan and assesses the contributions of these states to the rise and persistence of the tradition of nuclear non-use. It examines the influence of the tradition on the behavior of nuclear and non-nuclear states in crises and wars, and explores the tradition's implications for nuclear non-proliferation regimes, deterrence theory, and policy. And it concludes by discussing the future of the tradition in the current global security environment.

Unanswered Threats

Unanswered Threats
Author: Randall L. Schweller
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2010-12-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400837855

Why have states throughout history regularly underestimated dangers to their survival? Why have some states been able to mobilize their material resources effectively to balance against threats, while others have not been able to do so? The phenomenon of "underbalancing" is a common but woefully underexamined behavior in international politics. Underbalancing occurs when states fail to recognize dangerous threats, choose not to react to them, or respond in paltry and imprudent ways. It is a response that directly contradicts the core prediction of structural realism's balance-of-power theory--that states motivated to survive as autonomous entities are coherent actors that, when confronted by dangerous threats, act to restore the disrupted balance by creating alliances or increasing their military capabilities, or, in some cases, a combination of both. Consistent with the new wave of neoclassical realist research, Unanswered Threats offers a theory of underbalancing based on four domestic-level variables--elite consensus, elite cohesion, social cohesion, and regime/government vulnerability--that channel, mediate, and redirect policy responses to external pressures and incentives. The theory yields five causal schemes for underbalancing behavior, which are tested against the cases of interwar Britain and France, France from 1877 to 1913, and the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) that pitted tiny Paraguay against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Randall Schweller concludes that those most likely to underbalance are incoherent, fragmented states whose elites are constrained by political considerations.

The Long Shadow

The Long Shadow
Author: Muthiah Alagappa
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2008
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804760861

The Long Shadow investigates the purposes and roles of nuclear weapons in the new security environment, the nature and content of the national nuclear strategies of relevant states, and their implications for international security and stability in the Asian security region

EU and US Foreign Economic Policy Responses to China

EU and US Foreign Economic Policy Responses to China
Author: Joachim Schild
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2023-12-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 100382613X

This book examines EU and US bilateral trade and investment relations with China, their attempts to level the economic playing field and to narrow the ‘reciprocity gap’ in market openness. It explores the extent of EU and US policy change, the underlying factors accounting for this change and compares EU and US foreign economic policy answers to an adversary increasingly perceived as an unfair economic competitor and as a systemic rival. The book covers a broad range of policy areas from ‘trade wars’, trade defense instruments, their reform and use, investment screening, and export control to industrial policies. It makes eclectic use of different strands of International Relations, International Political Economy and Policy Analysis theorizing to account for the extent of, and differences in, the EU and US responses. The People’s Republic of China’s stellar economic and political rise combined with the resilience of its unfair trade practices, its reinforced authoritarian repression at home and its ever more assertive foreign (economic) policy has triggered a shift in perceptions of China, followed by equally profound policy change in the European Union and the US. This book expertly charts and explains this significant shift in stance. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in the fields of EU trade policymaking, US foreign/ foreign economic policy, EU-China-US economic relations, European political economy, and more broadly to European studies, Asian studies, International Relations, International Political Economy, and transatlantic relations.

China’s Global Energy Expansion

China’s Global Energy Expansion
Author: Xiaohan Gong
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2024-10-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1509966218

Should Chinese energy investments be excluded from the liberal economic system based on geopolitical assessments only? This book explores the potential regulatory control by the Chinese government over foreign energy investments to achieve their perceived strategic objectives. Host states in which Chinese energy companies make investments have increasingly opposed Chinese energy investments in their national security reviews, based on concerns that these investments have strategic objectives. The book analyses China's investment-related law, regulations, and energy policies to examine how overseas energy investment-making is governed. The book also explores the role of the Chinese government in energy investment promotion and protection. Uniquely, the examination of China's potential regulatory control provides an objective criterion, rather than geopolitical considerations, for host states to assess the nature of Chinese energy investments. The book helps readers to open the 'black box' of Chinese energy investments from a regulatory perspective. It is a useful resource for researchers as well as practising lawyers assisting their Chinese clients through national security reviews, or when trying to determine whether China's SOEs can bring cases before investor-state arbitration tribunals.