Research

Alliance Politics, Coercive Diplomacy, Japanese Foreign Policy

My academic research has focused extensively on alliance politics in Asia, including analyses of the U.S.-Japan alliance, the U.S.-ROK alliance, U.S. approach to alliance dilemmas, and the U.S.-ROK-Japan trilateral defense cooperation.

Book Project

Strategy of Alliance Management: Procedural Autonomy in U.S.-China Competition

When and how can a senior alliance partner manage and strengthen its alliances amidst its peacetime competition with a third-party rival? To flip the question, when and how can a third-party competitor weaken and paralyze an opposing alliance in peacetime? This book project, originally derived from my doctoral dissertation, addresses these questions by examining how U.S. alliance management efforts have competed with Chinese attempts to weaken U.S. alliances and shape U.S. allies’ alignment choices. I introduce a theory of procedural autonomy preservation to argue that the degree to which the United States or China demonstrates respect to a U.S. ally’s procedural autonomy—the freedom a state exercises in reaching and presenting a particular choice—alters the junior ally’s domestic political dynamics and critically shapes the ally’s alignment choices. Drawing from archival research and a number of semi-structured interviews with policymakers in multiple countries, I conduct detailed process tracing of the following case studies: 1) Japan’s alliance commitment toward the defense of Taiwan from 1969 to 1972, 2) Japan’s decisions to revise defense guidelines and develop the Theater Missile Defense system from 1994 to 1999, 3) South Korea’s position toward U.S. Forces Korea’s “strategic flexibility” from 2003 to 2006, and 4) South Korea’s choice to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system from 2014 to 2017.

Articles

• “Adhering, Distancing, or Waffling? Understanding a New Dilemma in the U.S.-Japan Alliance,” Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs, Vol. 2 (Spring/Summer 2015): 67-97 (Peer-reviewed)
• “外圧が育む日韓安全保障協力ー2012年日米韓合同軍事演習実現の要因分析 [The Japan-Republic of Korea Security Cooperation Nurtured by External Pressures]>,” Seijigaku Kenkyu, Vol. 49 (May 2013): 135-171
• “Japan’s Revolutionary Military Change: Explaining Why It Happened Under Kishida” With Ryo Sahashi (Forthcoming, Pacific Affairs)

Working Papers

• “History of the Taiwan Clause: How Diplomacy Saved Japan’s Link to Taiwan’s Defense” (Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Cold War Studies)
• “Infeasibility of Dual Deterrence in Grey Zone Conflicts: Assessing the East China Sea, 2008-2014” (Under review)
• “Reassessing the Impact of the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis: U.S.-Japan Alliance 1995-1996” (Work-in-progress)