Conflict and Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific Region: A Strategic Net Assessment
Abstract
In 2013, the Asia Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in collaboration with several outside scholars, published a large report on the long-term future impact of Chinese military modernization on the U.S.-Japan alliance. The report, China s Military and the U.S.-Japan Alliance in 2030: A Strategic Net Assessment, by Michael D. Swaine, Mike M. Mochizuki, Michael L. Brown, Paul S. Giarra, Douglas H. Paal, Rachel Esplin Odell, Raymond Lu, Oliver Palmer, and Xu Ren, examined a wide array of political, economic, social, and military trends influencing the evolving strategic relationship between Beijing and the alliance, presented a range of possible future security environments in Northeast Asia that could emerge out of various combinations of those factors, assessed the probability of each environment under certain conditions, and laid out several possible alliance responses. That report generated considerable attention both inside and outside the U.S. government, eventually resulting in a request from the Pentagon s Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment (SMA) group under the J-3 (Directorate of Operations) to produce a similar report as part of a much larger effort sponsored by the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM). Specifically, the request to Carnegie s Asia Program was to produce a strategic net assessment for the entire area of responsibility covered by PACOM (extending between India and the continental United States), over a longer time frame (the next twenty-five to thirty years), and focusing on the forces that could generate greater or lesser security-related cooperation or conflict. Such a request reflected PACOM s clear recognition of not only the need to gain a greater understanding of the highly dynamic nature of change in the Asia-Pacific region, but also the fact that growing contention and eventual conflict notably between the United States and China is by no means inevitable.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2015
- Accession Number
- ADA615984
Entities
People
- Alan D. Romberg
- Albert Keidel
- Audrye Wong
- Eleanor Freund
- Evans J. Revere
- M. T. Fravel
- Michael D. Swaine
- Mikkal Herberg
- Nicholas Eberstadt
- Rachel E. Odell
Organizations
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace