Nuclear Debates in Asia: The Role of Geopolitics and Domestic Processes [Hardcover]

This important book analyzes nuclear weapon and energy policies in Asia, a region at risk for high-stakes military competition, conflict, and terrorism. The contributors explore the trajectory of debates over nuclear energy, security, and nonproliferation in key countriesChina, India, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and other states in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Arguing against conventional wisdom, the contributors make a convincing case that domestic variables are far more powerful than external factors in shaping nuclear decision making. The book explores what drives debates and how decisions are framed, the interplay between domestic dynamics and geopolitical calculations in the discourse, where the center of gravity of debates lies in each country, and what this means for regional cooperation or competition and U.S. nuclear energy and nonproliferation policy in Asia.

Mike M. Mochizuki holds the Japan-U.S. Relations Chair in Memory of Gaston Sigur at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.
Deepa M. Ollapally is research professor of international affairs and the associate director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.

Although of interest primarily to political scientists and those with a security studies focus in particular, Nuclear Debates in Asia provides a thorough introduction to the region and its nuclear concerns, potentially appealing to the historian, and perhaps even to the historian of science. Area specialists will also find much of interest.... [T]he volume offers a fresh rejoinder to the established wisdom on many of these issues, and in this respect, points the way towards potentially challenging a primarily Americanist, prescriptive approach to the nuclear issue. Pacific Affairs

For those of us struggling to understand and anticipate the future of nuclear energy alã+