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Asia Pacific in World Politics.

Article Excerpt
Asia Pacific in World Politics. By Derek McDougall. Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007. Softcover: 370pp.

As the global "centre of gravity" shifts from the Euro-Atlantic to the Asia Pacific, the need to comprehend Asia-Pacific dynamics becomes fundamental to a fuller understanding of world politics. Thus, on the basis of its subject matter alone, the book under review fills an important niche on the personal and institutional bookshelf. Cogently written, it provides an excellent introduction to East and Southeast Asia and will therefore surely feature on many undergraduate course lists from the coming academic year itself. Indeed, the book has the "feel" of an introductory course on Asia Pacific International Relations: it comes as no surprise that the author in his Preface refers to the course he teaches at the University of Melbourne. The book also recalls in part the author's earlier work, The International Politics of the New Asia Pacific (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997). I would like in this review to highlight three pleasing features of the book and then put forward one major reservation.

The first positive feature of the book is its chapter plan. The introductory chapter defines the scope of the book, places the subject matter in a historical context and highlights the most important political, economic, social, and cultural features of the states and societies of the region. The six chapters that follow in Part 1 focus on the major powers in the region, the United States, China, and Japan: the first three lay out the respective national contexts in which the Asia-Pacific policies of the United States, China, and Japan have evolved, while the latter three focus on the cardinal bilateral...