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U.S. alliances in the Asia-Pacific are increasingly viewed as more than just threat-centric policy instruments. Three core principles for alliance management underscore this reasoning: maintaining consensus about purpose and objectives; generating maximum alliance adaptability; and building capabilities to achieve full-spectrum deterrence. The interests that compel U.S. regional allies to cooperate with Washington are this special issue's analytical focus. Evolving U.S. security partnerships in the Asia-Pacific, the emergence of 'hybrid' forms of security alignment, and Sino-U.S. tensions complicate understanding the nature and politics of U.S. security alignments in the region. A Chinese 'shadow' is likely to confront U.S. alliances and partnerships in ways which will compound strategic competition and tensions in the region. This reality impels the United States and its regional collaborators to understand and to coordinate each other's motivations for security cooperation as effectively as possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ongoing reassessments in U.S. strategy in the Asia-Pacific have coincided with a major growth in Sino-Australian economic relations. The Australian-American alliance could be increasingly tested if U.S. policy planners are unsuccessful in generating more sensitive and proactive alliance security postures to ensure Australian support for key U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent changes of government in Australia and Japan, and a pending one in the United States, signifies a historical crossroads in these three allies' security politics in the Asia-Pacific region. In recent years, all three countries have tended to rationalize their strategic collaboration on the need to build innovative and competitive-oriented "strategic geometries" as a means to counter China's growing power and to meet new types of threats in the region. Yet the Australian Government under John Howard simultaneously pursued a hedging strategy, exploiting its growing economic relationship with China while strengthening its diplomatic and strategic profile with the United States. Despite Tokyo's own substantial economic relationship with Beijing, recent Japanese leaders were unable to pursue the same type of "dual track" strategy to the same extent as Howard. With Kevin Rudd's election as the new Australian Prime Minister and Yasuo Fukuda's ascent to power in Japan, prospects for Australia and Japan to cultivate more independent politico-security ties with Beijing have strengthened. If so, the evolving regional security postures of both these US allies may compel the United States to reassess its own traditional skepticism towards multilateral security groupings in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the latter half of the 1970s the People's Republic of China embarked upon a program of military modernization a central aspect of which is the acquisition of arms and military-related technology from the West. This strategy of 'xi wei zhong yong' ('making foreign things serve China') represents one component of Beijing's 'Four Modernization' campaign (agriculture, industry, science and technology, and defence). It also serves a political purpose, by reinforcing China's diplomatic efforts to tie the Western powers into a 'global antihegemony front' against the Soviet Union.
This study will provide an overview of China's efforts to gain access to Western arms and military-related technology since the end of the Cultural Revolution. We will also attempt to place this program in the context of Chinese domestic politics and foreign policy and in the broader geostrategic context of East-West competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Security regimes constitute an important test of the 'liberal' school of thought in contemporary international relations. In the Asia-Pacific, interest is growing over how they may contribute to that region's future order and stability. It is argued here, however, that Asia-Pacific security regimes cannot succeed unless 'realist' power-balancing strategies are first applied, affording time for patterns of structural leadership to shape enduring security norms and institutions. The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is arguably the region's first potential post-cold war security regime. Its fate, or that of its successor security regimes in the Asia-Pacific, depends upon satisfying four critical conditions for regime building and upon winning the acceptance of China and the United States, the region's two key 'structural leaders'. While the ARF does not at present seem close to satisfying these criteria, it may help to provide the breathing space necessary for a successful transition from a competitive cold war environment to a more cooperative climate in the Asia-Pacific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a foreword to the articles published in the November 2002 issue of 'Australian Journal of International Affairs,' vol. 56. Contributions of Chinese ambassador to Australia, Shi Chunlai, Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam and American China analyst, Robert Sutter, to the study of Sino-Australian relationship; Commentary on the work of Hedley Bull; Study on Islam and Society in South-Eastern Asia.