PSCI193

Description

Section information text: The focus of this course will be on international relations of Asia broadly conceptualized from Afghanistan-Pakistan-India to China, Japan, Korea, and the smaller states of South-East Asia, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore. In this course we will examine the complex inter-linkages from South Asia through the Asia Pacific region focusing on such aspects as the conflict in the Korean Peninsula, particularly the impact of rogue behavior of North Korea on South Korea and Japan and its implications for U.S.-China, U.S.-Korea, and U.S.-Japan relations; cross-straits (China-Taiwan) relations, and we will especially examine the growing economic and military assertiveness of China both within and outside the Asian region. The triangular competitive relationship involving Pakistan-India-China will also be studied; in particular we will focus on how the complex set of relations in South Asia involving Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, United States, and China dynamics the international politics of the region. Beyond this dynamic, we also examine the implications of the emergence of China and India as major economic and military powers. In addition, we will always keep the focus on the intersection of foreign relations of Asian countries with the dominant superpower, the United States and to some extent on the European Union. Besides China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong (PRC), the Asia-Pacific region includes the ASEAN powers of Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, and Brunei, and the Indo-China states of Burma, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Increasingly the economic and political relations of Australia and New Zealand are intertwined with the fortunes of the Asia-Pacific region; so we will touch upon these issues in peripheral manner. In this course we will draw both from the theoretical as well as the empirical literature on international relations while keeping our focus on Asia.