This edited volume examines the challenges and opportunities confronting the various powers that were and currently are active within the East China Sea and the Northeast Asia sub-region. For centuries, Northeast Asia has been a contested sub-region, first among the indigenous peoples and, later, among external powers. The security dynamics within the East China Sea and the Northeast Asia sub-region remain conditioned by historical memory, the heterogeneous nature of the sub-system, competition, and balance-of-power dynamics. This volume’s chapters are divided into three thematic sections. The first section deals with the historical context of security challenges and power configurations in the sub-region. The second section looks at contemporary challenges and opportunities in the sub-region. The third and final section analyses the contemporary national interests, objectives, and strategies of the sub-regional powers. The collective analyses and assessments that are examined in Part III of the book, framed against the material in Parts I and II, provide the basis for observations in the volume’s conclusion concerning the nature of the contemporary Northeast Asian sub-regional system, the power configuration, and the areas of conflicting and coinciding interests among the various powers active in the area. This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, Asian politics and history, and International Relations.
