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The origins of this book go back 30 years to the stimulation and interest generated by the political geography seminars led by John House at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. I was very fortunate to graduate among its extremely capable, sporty and enthusiastic "class of '68" from where several academic geographers emerged. Equally fortunately, some of them and their predecessors had already blazed a trail to undertake graduate studies in Canada. At the University of British Columbia I was supervised at different times by Julian Minghi and Victor Prescott, both of whom are not only extremely capable academics but are also very fine people. lowe an enormous debt to John, Julian and Victor and to the British and Canadian taxpayers who provided financial support for my University studies. In 1974, I began an academic career at the University of Western Australia where I have been ever since, save for a two-year period from 1991-3 as Professor of Australian Studies in the Department of International Relations at the University of Tokyo. Viewing Australia and the Asia-Pacific region from this different perspective within an extremely supportive Japanese environment had a profound impact. I am especially grateful for the support provided by so many Japanese academic colleagues and friends beginning as early as 1976. Three individuals deserve special mention for their help, guidance and enduring friendship - George Ohshima, Hiroshi Tanabe and Akihiro Kinda.
Today, the People’s Republic of China is North Korea’s only ally on the world stage, a tightly knit relationship that goes back decades. Both countries portray their partnership as one of “brotherly affection” based on shared political ideals—an alliance “as tight as lips to teeth”—even though relations have deteriorated in recent years due to China’s ascendance and North Korea’s intransigence. In A Misunderstood Friendship, leading diplomatic historians Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia draw on previously untapped primary source materials revealing tensions and rivalries to offer a unique account of the China–North Korea relationship. They unravel the twists and turns in high-level diplomacy between China and North Korea from the late 1940s to the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Through unprecedented access to Chinese government documents, Soviet and Eastern European archives, and in-depth interviews with former Chinese diplomats and North Korean defectors, Shen and Xia reveal that the tensions that currently plague the alliance between the two countries have been present from the very beginning of the relationship. They significantly revise existing narratives of the Korean War, China’s postwar aid to North Korea, Kim Il-sung’s ideological and strategic thinking, North Korea’s relations with the Soviet Union, and the importance of the Sino-U.S. rapprochement, among other issues. A Misunderstood Friendship adds new depth to our understanding of one of the most secretive and significant relationships of the Cold War, with increasing relevance to international affairs today.
Thailand, a long-standing defence partner of the United States and ASEAN’s second largest economy, occupies a geostrategically important position as a land bridge between China and maritime Southeast Asia. This book, based on extensive original research, explores the current state of US-Thai relations, paying particular attention to how the United States is perceived by a wide range of people in the Thai defence establishment and highlighting the importance of historical memory. The book outlines how the US-Thai relationship has been complicated and at times turbulent, discusses how Thailand is deeply embedded in multi-faceted relationships with many Asian states, not just China, and examines how far the United States is blind to the complexities of Asian international relations by focusing too much on China. The book concludes by assessing how US-Thai relations are likely to develop going forward. Additionally, the work contributes to alliance theory by showing how domestic politics shapes memory, which in turn affects perceptions of other states.
Australia's engagement with Asia from 1944 until the late 1960s was based on a sense of responsibility to the United Kingdom and its Southeast Asian colonies as they navigated a turbulent independence into the British Commonwealth. The circumstances of the early Cold War decades also provided for a mutual sense of solidarity with the non-communist states of East Asia, with which Australia mostly enjoyed close relationships. From 1967 into the early 1970s, however, Commonwealth Responsibility and Cold War Solidarity demonstrates that the framework for this deep Australian engagement with its region was progressively eroded by a series of compounding, external factors: the 1967 formation of ASEAN and its consolidation by the mid-1970s as the premier regional organisation surpassing the Asian and Pacific Council (ASPAC); Britain's withdrawal from East of Suez; Washington's de-escalation and gradual withdrawal from Vietnam after March 1968; the 1969 Nixon doctrine that America's Asia-Pacific allies must take up more of the burden of providing for their own security; and US rapprochement with China in 1972. The book shows that these profound changes marked the start of Australia's political distancing from the region during the 1970s despite the intentions, efforts and policies of governments from Whitlam onwards to foster deeper engagement. By 1974, Australia had been pushed to the margins of the region, with its engagement premised on a broadening but shallower transactional basis.