Nuclear Debates in Asia: The Role of Geopolitics and Domestic Processes

(Hardback)

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This important book analyzes nuclear weapon and energy policies in Asia, a region at risk for high-stakes military competition, conflict, and terrorism. The contributors explore the trajectory of debates over nuclear energy, security, and nonproliferation in key countriesChina, India, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and other states in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Arguing against conventional wisdom, the contributors make a convincing case that domestic variables are far more powerful than external factors in shaping nuclear decision making. The book explores what drives debates and how decisions are framed, the interplay between domestic dynamics and geopolitical calculations in the discourse, where the center of gravity of debates lies in each country, and what this means for regional cooperation or competition and U.S. nuclear energy and nonproliferation policy in Asia.

Reviews

Although of interest primarily to political scientists and those with a security studies focus in particular, Nuclear Debates in Asia provides a thorough introduction to the region and its nuclear concerns, potentially appealing to the historian, and perhaps even to the historian of science. Area specialists will also find much of interest.... [T]he volume offers a fresh rejoinder to the established wisdom on many of these issues, and in this respect, points the way towards potentially challenging a primarily Americanist, prescriptive approach to the nuclear issue. * Pacific Affairs *
For those of us struggling to understand and anticipate the future of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons programs in Asia, this deeply insightful and timely book reveals the critical role played by domestic forces in the region. Its contributors know well the domestic scene that is driving nuclear outcomes in each of the countries, and they make a persuasive case that these internal forces eclipse external geopolitical forces in shaping Asia's nuclear future. This essential volume sheds new light on the Asian nuclear landscape. -- Bruce Blair, Princeton University
This must-read book assembles a veritable whos who of nuclear experts on Asia. The volume skillfully opens the black box of domestic politics across Asian nations with nuclear energy and nuclear weapons programs, tracking the balance of Nationalists, Realists, and Globalists in each and analyzing how domestic political configurations affect the nuclear policies of these Asian nationsstates that comprise the most dynamic terrain in the global nuclear landscape. Each chapter should be read by anyone who cares not only about the respective states nuclear policies, but how it is in fact domestic politics driving them, a factor whose emphasis in these countries is long overdue. -- Vipin Narang, associate professor of political science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Warning against relying on state-centric assumptions that seem more a matter of faith than empirical evidence, the volume finds that elusive 'geopolitical' factors are not decisive. Domestic politics mediate their actual impact. A welcome corrective for improving our understanding of nuclear futures. -- Etel Solingen, University of California Irvine

Author Bio

Mike M. Mochizuki holds the Japan-U.S. Relations Chair in Memory of Gaston Sigur at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Deepa M. Ollapally is research professor of international affairs and the associate director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.