Syllabus
1. Introduction to the course, requirements, literature, discussing seminar topics.
2. Geopolitics and East Asia, defining terms.
3. Geographical and historical contexts of the region.
4. Collapse of the traditional regional order.
5. Japan's growing ambitions and unstable balance.
6. Pacific War.
7. Beginning of the Cold War.
8. Deténte and big powers rapprochement.
9. End of the Cold War.
10. Competition for a new regional order?
11. Contemporary regional structure.
12. Summary.
Annotation
The 21st century is often denoted as the Asian or Asia-Pacific century, pointing to the growing global importance of the region. East Asia in its broad sense, encompassing Southeast and Northeast Asia, contains number of divergent countries with many potential points of conflict, spanning from disputed areas to the strategic issues of spread of weapons of mass destruction.
This seminar based course concentrates particularly on Northeast Asia (Chinas, Koreas, Japan and extra-regional key players), a region considered as strategically one of the most important in the Post-Cold War era. It also pays attention to the recent efforts to lay down basis for a new regional structure around the East Asian Summit.
What kind of Asia will emerge? Will it be an Asia with or without ?Caucasians?? Can every Asian state, including Taiwan, play its role in building this new project? In short, what kind of security structure is taking shape in the area and what are the grand strategies of its key players? All of these questions pose challenges to the US, and to less extent EU foreign policies. In order to explain complicated regional power relationship, we need to build a strategic map, based on understanding of regional geography, politics and history.
There have been many arguments that geopolitical analysis is condemnable or at least outdated. Yet it seems quite useful for the above mentioned task as long as geography exists in this material world.
This course first outlines the basic concepts of geopolitics and geographical realities of the region, then attempts to provide a clearer picture of regional evolution over the 20th century in interplay of geography and politics to explain basis for the formulation of the grand strategies in East Asia, and finally discusses contemporary strategic situation.