Power, Interest, and Identity in Military Alliances

• Published in: Journal of Asian studies Vol. 69; no. 3; pp. 930 - 931
• Main Author: Bong, Youngshik D.
• Format: Book Review Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Pittsburgh Cambridge University Press 01-08-2010; Duke University Press, NC & IL
• Subjects: Alliances; Asian studies; Bilateral relations; Cold War; Cultural heritage; Debates; Identity; Institutionalism; International relations; KOREA; Military alliances; Politics; Power relations; South Korea; Theory; Threats; U.S.A; South Korea; United States > US; Union of Soviet Socialist Republics > USSR; North Korea
• ISSN: 0021-9118; 1752-0401
• DOI: 10.1017/S0021911810001877

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) Conventional wisdom in international relations suggests that, given the anarchical nature of world politics, in which there is no central authority above individual states, international commitments are hard to make and harder to sustain. In his book Power, Interest, and Identity in Military Alliances, which examines the bilateral security alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) since the end of the Cold War, Jae-Jung Suh "develops, as an answer, a historical institutionalist explanation" that synthesizes the main variables in three schools of American international relations theory: power, interest, and identity (p. 8). According to Suh, the persistence of the U.S.-Korea alliance poses a difficult challenge to neorealists, who equate fluctuation in an alliance with change in military capability.