Sino-American Crisis Management and the U.S.-Japan Alliance

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Sino-American Crisis Management and the U.S.-Japan Alliance

An assessment of the degree to which Washington and Beijing are willing or able to implement crisis management principles like maintaining direct channels of communication and preserving military flexibility.

By Michael D. Swaine

Published on Jan 29, 2009

Source: In The Japan-U.S. Alliance and China-Taiwan Relations

An examination of “political-military crisis” and “crisis management” in the context of Sino-U.S. relations. Swaine identifies several key principles of successful crisis management: among them, maintain direct channels of communication and send signals that are clear, specific, and detailed; preserve limited objectives and limited means on behalf of such objectives, and sacrifice unlimited goals; and preserve military flexibility, escalate slowly, and respond symmetrically (in a “tit-for-tat” manner). It assess the degree to which Washington and Beijing are willing or able to implement these principles, and examines the difficulties involved in applying such principles to a Sino-U.S. crisis over Taiwan in particular. Swaine concludes with some observations on the implications of this analysis for the U.S.-Japan alliance and Japanese crisis behavior and offers some recommendations.

About the Author

Michael D. Swaine

Former Senior Fellow, Asia Program

Swaine was a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and one of the most prominent American analysts in Chinese security studies.

Recent Work

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North America United States East Asia China Taiwan Japan Political Reform Security Military Foreign Policy

Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

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