Shambaugh revised and updated his popular edited collection on Asian international relations, which has served as an excellent student reference for many years. His masterful opus offers a nuanced approach to understanding the regional competition that forces many of Asia’s neighboring nations—China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and even Pakistan—to find ways to coexist peacefully. He identifies five particular variables, whose consequences most merit attention: China’s increasingly assertive “wolf warrior” diplomacy; the US-China power rivalry; the emergence of regional multilateralism; a dangerously nuclear Korean peninsula; and, most worrisome, Taiwan—a ticking time bomb…. Shambaugh wisely suggests changing the approach to Asian international relations from a country-by-country area studies strategy to a holistic analysis of the Indo-Pacific as a whole. Essential. Undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.
