Open Lecture:

 Wedges and International Politics: Lessons from China’s Cold War Asia Policy

Speaker:  Nicolas Khoo

Moderate: Zhang Qingmin

Venue: SIS: 105

Time: 12:30 pm Dec. 11, Friday

Media: English

An exciting field of contemporary research in international relations theory concerns the use of wedge strategies to divide adversaries. Thus far, two approaches to dividing adversaries---selective accommodation and confrontation---have been developed. This lecture seeks to contribute to the debate. It evaluates the arguments on the effectiveness of various types of wedge strategies. It does so by examining China’s attempt to prevent the formation of a Soviet-Vietnamese Cold War era alliance, and when the effort did not succeed in 1978, to drive a wedge in that alliance from 1979-91. This case highlights two points. First, it strongly suggests the utility of consulting the historical record in Asia in developing IR theory. Second, further research is needed to examine the relative utility and inter-relationship of confrontation and selective accommodation wedges in world politics.

Nicholas Khoo (Ph.D., Political Science, Columbia University, M.A., International Relations, Johns Hopkins, B.A., Economics, University of California) is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, University of Otago in New Zealand. He is director of the M.A. degree in International Studies at Otago.

 Recent publications include: Collateral Damage: Sino-Soviet Rivalry and the Termination of the Sino-Vietnamese Alliance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), and Asian Security and the Rise of China: International Relations in an Age of Volatility (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2013), co-authored with David Martin Jones and Michael LR Smith. He is currently writing two books:  Return to Power: China in East Asia Since 1978, and Security At a Price: The International Politics of U.S. Missile Defense(co-authored with Reuben Steff).