RAS BOOK CLUB
Monday, 21 April 2014 at 6:30 pm
Venue: Venue: RAS Library, Sino-British College
The RAS Book Club will meet to discuss:
A CONTEST FOR SUPREMACY:
China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia
by Aaron L. Friedberg
Published by: W.W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393068285
Publication Date: 15 August 2011
384 pages
Copies of the book will be available at RAS events prior to this meeting. You may also obtain a copy of the book by contacting the RAS Book Club (see below).
Entrance: RMB 70.00 (RAS Members) and RMB 100.00 (non-members) including a drink (tea, coffee, soft drink, or glass of wine). Those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption, prior to this RAS Book Club event. Member applications and membership renewals will be available at this event.
N.B. RESERVATIONS ESSENTIAL AS SPACE IS LIMITED AT THIS EVENT.
THE BOOK (www.good reads.com)
There may be no denying China's growing economic strength, but its impact on the global balance of power remains hotly contested.
Political scientist Aaron L. Friedberg argues that our nation's leaders are failing to act expeditiously enough to counter China's growing strength. He explains how the United States and China define their goals and reveals the strategies each is now employing to achieve its ends.
Friedberg demonstrates in this provocative book that the ultimate aim of Chinese policymakers is to "win without fighting," displacing the United States as the leading power in Asia while avoiding direct confrontation. The United States, on the other hand, sends misleading signals about our commitments and resolve, putting us at risk for a war that might otherwise have been avoided.
A much-needed wake-up call to U.S. leaders and policymakers, A Contest for Supremacy is a compelling interpretation of a rivalry that will go far to determine the shape of the twenty-first century.
THE AUTHOR (from Wikipedia)
Aaron Louis Friedberg (born April 16, 1956) served from 2003 to 2005 in the office of the Vice President of the United States as deputy assistant for national-security affairs and director of policy planning.
After receiving his PhD in Politics from Harvard, Friedberg joined the Princeton University faculty in 1987 and was appointed professor of politics and international affairs in 1999. He has served as Director of Princeton's Research Program in International Security at the Woodrow Wilson School as well as Acting Director of the Center of International Studies at Princeton. Friedberg is a former fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of Counselors for the National Bureau of Asian Research's Pyle Center for Northeast Asian Studies.
IAlthough Friedberg's international relations philosophy is rooted in concern for the structural organization of power characteristic of the realist school of international relations, he draws from many of the traditions of liberal institutionalism, resulting in what scholar Thomas Christensen has termed a "positive-sum" stance on international relations. Hence, unlike his more pessimistic realist scholars, Friedberg, in a seminal article published in International Security in 1993, advocated continued U.S. engagement in East Asia to serve as a stabilizing force until regional economic integration and multilateral institutions had time to develop. Thus, in contrast to traditional realpolitik scholars, Friedberg believes that conflict is not inevitable in East Asia as China continues to develop as long as multilateral institutions and economic integration are used as tools to manage security dilemmas.
Other books written by Friedberg:
The Weary Titan: Britain and The Experience of Relative Decline, 1895-1905 (Princeton University Press, 1988)
In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America's Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy (Princeton University Press, 2000)