

24 May 2023 | Amy King, Manjeet Pardesi, Na Young Lee| Panel Discussion: Power and Ideas in Global Order
What shapes our understanding of international order? What is the role of power and ideas in the making of international orders? We discuss these and many more interesting questions with our three panellists in this event.
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21 February 2023| Rohan Mukherjee and Darren Lim| Book Discussion - Ascending Order: Rising Powers and the Politics of Status in International Institutions.
Ascending Order offers the first comprehensive study of conflict and cooperation as new powers join the global arena. Using original and robust archival evidence, the book examines these dynamics in three cases: the United States and the maritime laws of war in the mid-nineteenth century; Japan and naval arms control in the interwar period; and India and nuclear non-proliferation in the Cold War. This study shows that the future of contemporary international order depends on the ability of international institutions to address the status ambitions of rising powers such as China and India.
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19 October 2022| Yusuke Ishihara| Renegotiating Japan’s Post-War Bargains: The Transformation of Japan's Foreign Policy and the Pluralisation of U.S. Hegemonic Order in the 1970s.
The 1970s witnessed significant changes to the post-war international order: the rise and fall of U.S.-Soviet détente, Sino-U.S. rapprochement, the crisis of the Bretton-Woods system/the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and shifts to a multilateral landscape in East Asia. In this research seminar, Yusuke Ishihara shows that Japan made major and important decisions on these geopolitical, economic, and regional-political processes. His PhD research explains the evolution of Japan’s post-war international standing, including how and why the vital post-war bargains that were embraced in the 1950s, when Japan was occupied by the U.S., were renegotiated by Tokyo during the 1970s.

20 October 2021 | Maria Tanyag | Cultures of Crisis: How the Asia-Pacific Can Lead Global Peace and Security
The Asia Pacific is predicted to have the greatest proportion of people already exposed and vulnerable to concurrent extreme weather events and the intensification of climate change-related security risks. What can we learn from Asia Pacific women’s regional networks in ensuring existing risk mapping and analyses are ‘fit for purpose’ as simultaneous catastrophes become endemic globally? Drawing on feminist and postcolonial approaches, this research seeks to examine how and why women’s regional networks in the Asia Pacific develop distinct perspectives and practices in responding to a multiplicity of crises.

23 September 2021| Kyuri Park | The Evolution of an Asia-Pacific Security Cooperation Network: Joint Military Exercises Involving China
Park presents a new dataset of joint military exercises in the Asia-Pacific from 1970 to 2019 and examines variations in security cooperation patterns using network analysis and case studies. The key finding is that US allies and strategic partners increased joint military exercise with China after the 2000s.

5 August 2021 | Nicola Leveringhaus | The Politics of Nuclear Commemoration in Asia: The China Case.
In contrast to many other nuclear weapons states, China has largely been quiet about its nuclear past. Only over the past decade or so has China started to commemorate its nuclear weapons development more seriously. Leveringhaus examines the nature and timing of this commemoration within China, and the wider implications of nuclear commemoration for international security.

16 June 2021 | Rosemary Foot and Courtney Fung | A Tale in Two Books: China and the United Nations.
Join us for an interactive discussion with the authors of two important recent books:
Rosemary Foot, China, the UN, and Human Protection: Beliefs, Power, Image (OUP, 2020); and
Courtney Fung, China and Intervention at the UN Security Council: Reconciling Status (OUP, 2019).

29 April 2021 | Helen Nesadurai, Lorraine Elliott, and Pichamon Yeophantong | What’s So Special about Asian Security? Dealing with Non-state Actors and Non- traditional Security
Are the security landscape and dynamics in Asia significantly different compared to those in other world regions? Is there anything ‘special’ about Asian security that necessitates alterations or additions to the theories, concepts or methods of standard international relations or security studies research? This Roundtable explores two potent themes that could make Asia’s security order and practices distinctive: the plurality of actors – including many types of non-state and trans-state actors – and the wide range of so-called ‘non-traditional’ security challenges that preoccupy regional policy-makers.

25 February 2021 | Krista Wiegand | Power Projection and Deterrence: South China Sea Disputants as Pawns in the U.S.-China Rivalry
In the past decade, China has pursued consistent low-level provocations against disputants to seize or prevent other states’ access to islands, maritime features, and waters in the South China Sea. China could significantly benefit from access to oil, natural gas, seabed resources, and maritime trade lanes by controlling these features.

2 December 2020 | Oriana Skylar Mastro | Posing problems without shackling up: Prospects for a Sino-Russian alliance and implications for Asia-Pacific security
Is China forming a balancing coalition against the United States, in particular with Russia? The most recent scholarship does not address China’s balancing strategy because it focuses on explaining secondary states’ response to China’s rise. Work in the realist tradition does predict China will ally with other nations but does not provide insights into security behaviour short of alliances, which more accurately characterizes Beijing’s strategy to date.
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20 April 2023 | Evelyn Goh, Taylor Fravel, Alvin Camba and Emirza Adi Syailendra| Panel Discussion: China’s economic statecraft as a tool of international influence
While economic diplomacy has been a key feature of China's foreign policy in the past, recent initiatives have led to the development of a more proactive form of economic statecraft. Chinese projects as part of the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative and its economic investments in regional infrastructure projects have generated significant interest. Join us for a discussion on China's economic statecraft with our four panelists.
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27 February 2017 | ANU-USC GRADNAS Exchange II: Graduate Workshop
Dr. Evelyn Goh (ANU) will share her own work and interact with USC graduate students as part of our recurring KSI series on graduate student mentoring with a particular focus on East Asia.
28 November 2016 | Iain Henry - PhD Seminar | Reliability and Interdependence in America’s Asian Alliance System
This Seminar presented the findings of a newly-completed PhD thesis showing that US Cold War allies in Asia were unconcerned about American loyalty to other allied states. Counterintuitively, US disloyalty to one ally might be welcomed by other allies if Washington could show that it remained a reliable security partner for the others.

14 March 2016 | ANU-USC GRADNAS Exchange I: International Security in Asia Workshop
During this event Evelyn Goh (ANU) and Chin-Hao Huang (Yale-NUS) will lead a presentation on "Emerging U.S. Security Partnerships in Southeast Asia”, followed by working paper discussions.