Beeson, Mark

Abstract
East Asia can be a puzzling place. For many observers, it is a region that is forever on the edge of conflict, a possibility primarily kept in check by what is invariably seen—by American observers, at least—as the largely benign and necessary strategic presence of the United States. Yet even this dominant realist reading of the region’s balance of power has been undermined of late by America’s relative decline on the one hand, and the apparently unstoppable “rise of China” on the other. What we can say is that there is growing consensus that while East Asia may have been surprisingly stable for the last few decades, that stability is under threat and may prove the historical exception to the rule of regional conflict and turmoil.
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