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As the U.S.-China strategic rivalry has intensified, Washington has looked to its close allies and partners to counter Chinese clout in global technology leadership. With the Huawei ban as a proxy for the U.S.-China competition, the paper focuses on the concept of the alliance halo and analyzes how the three key U.S. allies in Asia—Australia, Japan, and South Korea—responded to Washington's expectations of mutual support on the decoupling of Chinese technology companies from global supply chains. We argue that given that the Huawei ban is about future risks associated with China's economy, as opposed to demonstrated military threats, it was more challenging to establish allied reliability within the U.S. alliance network as a whole. Our comparative analysis shows that Australia's reactions have been the most direct, banning Huawei before the United States, showing a contrast with South Korea's relatively muted responses. Japan's decision to ban Huawei was as decisive as Australia's but Tokyo sought to keep a low profile. Rather than the diplomatic pressure from the Trump administration, these allies' varied responses resulted from their own assessments of security risks associated with Huawei. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the varying intensity of political clash that South Korea has got involved in with Japan regarding the territorial dispute, Dokdo/Takeshima. Existing works are limited to acknowledging the role of nationalism as a key obstacle to the negotiation or settlement of the territorial dispute. However, democratically elected Korean leaders at times remained low key in the territorial problem and even sought collaboration with Japan despite the existence of nationalism. Specifically, South Korea employed both calm and hardline diplomatic choices in the territorial dispute. Why did South Korea choose disparate territorial policies despite the population's anti-Japanese sentiments? Under what circumstances did leaders in Korea employ dovish diplomacy that might cause a strong backlash from the public? Introducing the vulnerability-restraint theory, I argue that top decision makers' political vulnerability in domestic politics and the restraining pressure from the United States have impact on the final choice of foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]