No abstract

No abstract

This article examines various theoretical viewpoints, assessing their success in explaining Japan’s current security policy towards China. With a variety of theoretically salient factors in place, including a dynamic balance of power, extant regional institutions, economic interdependence and a highly publicized pacifist identity, Japan’s China policy presents a prime opportunity to test different international relations theories. We review four theories of interest, structural realism, neoliberal institutionalism, liberal interdependence and constructivism, finding limited support for structural realist and constructivist predictions. We then offer a neoclassical realist model, building from a realist foundation but accounting for the influence of state structure, strategic culture and parochial interests of governing elites.

No abstract

Why have nuclear weapons not been used since 1945? Cold War studies of mutual deterrence have been challenged in recent years by constructivist notions of an evolutionary norm of nuclear non-use. Most famously characterized as the “nuclear taboo,” this argument asserts that the norm has become a constitutive component of civilized international society. Herein, I consider the underlying causal logic behind nuclear non-use, finding that it is more a product of rationalist security calculations (deterrence) and respect for the traditional norms of Just War Theory than it is an internalized redefinition of interest. With a new age of proliferation dawning, marked by both state and transnational actors who see value in shock for the sake of shock, I conclude that the norm of nuclear nonuse is under renewed threat.