The Nexus of Economics, Security, and International Relations in East Asia

Book excerpt: While, over the last 30 years, the global economy's center of gravity has shifted to East Asia, the region has remained surprisingly free of interstate military conflict. Yet this era of peace and growth has been punctuated by periodic reminders of enduring security problems in the region—from China's military modernization, to unresolved territorial disputes, to persistent tensions on the Korean peninsula. This volume is one of the first to treat these issues of economics and security as interconnected rather than separate. Its authors—leading scholars from the U.S. and China—shed new light on this important nexus by applying insights from a rich variety of approaches to explore and explain the dynamics of a region whose importance for students of both international political economy and international security has grown dramatically. They show that both economic and security 'fundamentals' matter if one is to understand the reasons for, and evaluate the durability of, East Asia's recent peace and prosperity.