Addressing UN Sustainable Development Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, the books and journal articles we publish in this area focus on the impact of vast power differentials and the issues that need to be addressed as a threat to human rights and international security, including conflict-based migration and political instability.
Our aim is to publish innovative research that supports finding ways to protect groups that can be an easy target for violence and discrimination.
Bristol University Press and Policy Press are signed up to the UN SDG Publishers Compact. In Conflict, security and peace, we aim to address the following goal:
Conflict, Security and Peace
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The rivalry between the US and China has expanded beyond the borders of either state to include competing for influence abroad. In the past, great power rivalry played out in both constructive and destructive ways in the Global South. However, the starting point of this chapter is that in order to understand the extent to which US–China rivalry impacts Africa in negative or positive ways, it is important to unpack the main areas and tools of influence that China has advantage over the US in. This chapter focuses its analysis on party-to-party diplomacy as an area of China’s foreign policy making in Africa, which is characterized by a relational approach centering mechanisms of social/human capital and professional network-building. This relational, network-building, approach is one of the fundamental differences between China’s approach in Africa and that of the US. The latter’s presence in the continent has mostly been focused on counterterrorism efforts while China has invested in relations with elites, government officials, and civil servants. Even more, as scholars of relationality and guanxi have argued, building social capital and putting a premium on expanding personal and professional networks between Chinese elites and their African counterparts are vital to understanding both the advantages and pitfalls of Chinese foreign policy making in Africa. Taking into account the global picture of China–Africa relations and building on robust scholarly work done in the field, this chapter starts from the observation that China’s presence (its influence and power) in Africa comes not only from Chinese investments in physical infrastructure buildings (as seen in the construction of ports, parliaments, and presidential palaces) but that it is also produced and manufactured through the creation of platforms for exchanging expertise which also serve as elite capture mechanisms.
The nature of US–China relations is changing and evolving in a new direction, with past differences becoming more acute while new areas emerge, such as the Arctic region, intensifying the US–China security dilemma. The rapidly changing climate and subsequent “opening” of the Arctic has given rise to China’s emergence as a major influence within the region. This chapter discusses how abrupt climate change, in combination with Chinese actions in the Arctic, could create unpredictable black swan events that undermine US and regional security. This chapter provides an analysis of China’s Arctic objectives using black swan and weak signal theories as well as the methodology of horizon scanning technique. Finally, it highlights possible scenarios of China’s impact on the Arctic in the future
Over the last two decades, China has emerged as one of the most powerful state actors in the post-Cold War international system. This book provides a multifaceted and spatially oriented analysis of how China’s re-emergence as a global power impacts the dominance of the US as well as domestic state and non-state actors in various world-regions, including the Asia-Pacific, Africa, South America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Europe, and the Arctic. Chapters reflect on how and under which conditions competition (and cooperation) between the US and China vary across these regions and what such variations mean for the prospects of war and peace, universal human dignity, and global cooperation.
This chapter summarizes the volume’s findings concerning US–China bilateral relations and its varying impacts on various regions of the world, amidst crisis-ridden world politics. This chapter highlights several conclusions. First, the need to accumulate capital and crucial resources for continued economic growth are crucial factors in shaping the trajectory of the rivalry, although the precise conditions of such a need depends on where this economic conflict occurs. Second, intersubjective interpretations about physical geography and social relations play an important role in the trajectory of great power relations. Third, understanding how intersubjective meanings about physical geography change over time provides important insights in the analysis of US–China rivalry. Fourth, the manifestations of how physical geography emerges as the locus of contestation between great power could be investigated through the developments in institutional structures. Fifth, the formations and transformations of US–China rivalry ultimately depend on one’s positionality in a highly interdependent global order: across various world-regions, temporal conditions, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
This chapter analyzes Europe’s role and place in US–China competition with a focus on Huawei’s presence in Europe’s fifth generation (5G) wireless networks. This case reveals three broader features of Europe’s role in US–China competition. First, European countries’ desire to expand their economic links with China while continuing to depend on the US for their defense represents the central challenge they face in this new strategic environment. Second, while US and European views on China have converged in recent years, they are not identical, and European countries are unlikely to take as firm a position toward China as countries in Western Europe did against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Third, while internal divisions will prevent Europe from acting as a third power alongside the US and China in world politics, Europe will still be able to shape its regional environment and influence US–China competition in various ways.
Over the last two decades, China has emerged as one of the most powerful state actors in the post-Cold War international system. This book provides a multifaceted and spatially oriented analysis of how China’s re-emergence as a global power impacts the dominance of the US as well as domestic state and non-state actors in various world-regions, including the Asia-Pacific, Africa, South America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Europe, and the Arctic. Chapters reflect on how and under which conditions competition (and cooperation) between the US and China vary across these regions and what such variations mean for the prospects of war and peace, universal human dignity, and global cooperation.
Over the last two decades, China has emerged as one of the most powerful state actors in the post-Cold War international system. This book provides a multifaceted and spatially oriented analysis of how China’s re-emergence as a global power impacts the dominance of the US as well as domestic state and non-state actors in various world-regions, including the Asia-Pacific, Africa, South America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Europe, and the Arctic. Chapters reflect on how and under which conditions competition (and cooperation) between the US and China vary across these regions and what such variations mean for the prospects of war and peace, universal human dignity, and global cooperation.
The participation of most Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) countries in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) since 2018 illustrates how China has filled the void left by the US in its traditional sphere of influence. The BRI represents a vague cooperation platform for developing investment, infrastructure projects, and trade between China and its partners with dubious effects in the region but with certain diplomatic gains for China. The review of the literature and the examination of official documents points to two main factors for its achievement in LAC: the flexibility of choosing different degrees of involvement for each government and the mobilization of the connectivity rhetoric in a region affected by structural infrastructure deficits. This chapter suggests that the BRI should be considered a discursive strategy which has had a noticeable impact on the US–China rivalry in the region.
This chapter compares and explains the American and the Chinese foreign policies toward the Middle East through a conceptual lens of “path dependence.” Most importantly, taking a scalar and place-based approach toward global politics, this chapter examines how the iterative dialogical interactions between the US, China, and other actors in the Middle East and beyond have helped forge and maintain the different “paths” that the US and China have been taking in the region. Finally, this chapter also discusses whether and how the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 would bring about a new political and economic landscape in the Middle East and as a result create a “critical juncture” for China to move away from its non-interventionist path and become more assertive on the issues facing the region in order to protect and promote the growing interests it has there.
This chapter examines how geography has shaped China’s pursuit of great power status and what it means to other countries, especially the United States. It argues that geography serves as a social construct for Chinese national identity as well as a security concept for its interest. China’s geographical positioning is undergoing a transformation from imagining the country as a land-based yellow middle kingdom to a maritime blue superpower. This chapter stresses a spectrum view of tianxia (All under Heaven), a foundational Chinese worldview as well as a spatial-positioning concept. Various political actors offer competing interpretations of tianxia ranging from accommodation to domination. Political geography has shaped this debate—the more China’s physical positioning is highlighted, the more assertive one’s interpretation of China’s global aspiration would become. The Chinese government has been leaning toward an increasingly aggressive execution, interpreting the country’s rapid maritime expansion as a modern shift of tianxia from land to sea. This has caused anxiety among neighbors and confrontation with the US.
