The Fall and Revival of Coercive Diplomacy: Security Partnerships and Sino-American Security Relations, 1972–2009
This chapter examines how, in the post-Cold War era, the United States' alignment with Taiwan and alliance with Japan again have figured prominently among issues affecting U.S.-China security relations. While they are far from being allies, the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) are not enemies either, but rather major economic partners who have also cooperated to some degree in addressing an increasing range of international problems. But there are still security tensions between the two sides over issues such as relations across the Taiwan Strait, and both nations practice coercive diplomacy toward the other, sometimes tacitly, sometimes less so. The chapter considers how the legacies of these Cold War alliances—particularly the U.S.–Taiwan relationship and the U.S.–Japan security treaty—have affected U.S.–China relations since the collapse of the Soviet Union.