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1. The Myth of Entangling Alliances: Reassessing the Security Risks of U.S. Defense Pacts

Author:
Michael Beckley
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
A large literature assumes that alliances entangle the United States in military conflicts that it might otherwise avoid. Since 1945, however, there have been only five cases of what might be characterized as U.S. entanglement—the 1954 and 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crises, the Vietnam War, and the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s—and even these cases are far from clear-cut. U.S. entanglement is rare because the United States, as a superpower with many allies, is capable of exploiting loopholes in alliance agreements, sidestepping commitments that seriously imperil U.S. interests, playing the demands of various allies off of each other, and using alliances to deter adversaries and allies from initiating or escalating conflicts.
Topic:
Diplomacy, International Cooperation, and International Security
Political Geography:
United States, Bosnia, Vietnam, and Kosovo

2. Debating China's Rise and U.S. Decline

Author:
Michael Beckley and Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Michael Beckley's article deserves attention for challenging the view that the United States is declining because China is rising. Its ambiguous definition of decline, how - ever, sends the wrong impression about the distribution of economic and military power between the United States and China. Without being explicit, Beckley implies that the United States is not declining because the absolute difference of economic, military, and technological capabilities between the United States and China is growing. In contrast, both theory and history suggest that it is more important that the relative distribution of economic and military capabilities between the United States and China is falling: as I propose below, decline is best defined as a decrease in the ratio of economic and military capabilities between two great powers. As a result, even if the United States maintains a large advantage in absolute capabilities, the fact that U.S. capabilities are decreasing relative to China's means that China will find it easier to advance its interests where U.S. and Chinese goals diverge, while the United States' ability to pursue its own interests in world affairs will be increasingly constrained by Chinese power.
Political Geography:
United States and China

3. "China's Century? Why America's Edge Will Endure"

Author:
Michael Beckley
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
According to the Global Language Monitor, which tracks the top 50,000 media sources throughout the world, the "rise of China" has been the most read-about news story of the twenty-first century, surpassing the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Iraq War, the election of Barack Obama, and the British royal wedding. One reason for the story's popularity, presumably, is that the rise of China entails the decline of the United States. While China's economy grows at 9 percent annually, the United States reels from economic recession, costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and massive budget deficits. This divergence in fortunes has produced two pieces of conventional wisdom in U.S. and Chinese foreign policy debates. First, the United States is in decline relative to China. Second, much of this decline is the result of globalization-the integration of national economies and resultant diffusion of technology from developed to developing countries-and the hegemonic burdens the United States bears to sustain globalization.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, China, Iraq, and America