Asia's Regional Architecture: Alliances and Institutions in the Pacific Century.

• Author: Tow, William T.

Asia's Regional Architecture: Alliances and Institutions in the Pacific Century. By Andrew Yeo. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2019. Hardcover: 243pp.

Asia -- and its broader nomenclature the "Indo-Pacific" -- has arguably emerged as the most important and dynamic region in the world. It is the vortex of global competition between the world's established superpower, the United States, and its rising one, China. Speculation is growing within official circles and among independent observers of international relations about what type of order--if any--is now emerging. Predicting a specific outcome of any order-building process seems hazardous at best, but especially so in an era of widespread populism, economic unpredictability and intensifying multipolarity. Yet what happens in this region will largely shape the next phase of world history. In an era of competition between President Donald Trump's "America First" and President Xi Jinping's "Chinese Dream", there seems to be little room for compromise and thus an inordinate danger for tragic strategic miscalculations which could precipitate existential crises and conflicts.

In this context, a book focusing on the evolution and nature of Asia's "regional architecture" would initially seem to be a somewhat abstract, if not largely outdated, enterprise. Not so argues its author, Andrew Yeo. He insists that applying insights of "historical institutionalism" will enable social scientists and others to better account for change and continuity in our time.

Yeo undertakes a highly ambitious and sophisticated analytical task, combining theoretical perspectives on liberal institutions and alliances with a comprehensive empirical analysis of bilateral and multilateral security politics in East Asia. He posits a liberal institutionalist argument: that the institutional arrangements found in this region are more powerful and resilient than the whims of any individual leader (i.e. Trump) and thus "reflect greater stability and continuity than perhaps recent political commentators have assumed" (p. 2). Nevertheless, he qualifies this approach by acknowledging that realists may well be correct in asserting that the Indo-Pacific currently is "rife with mistrust, nationalistic passions, and spiraling arms races" which could eventually lead to widespread regional fragmentation and instability (pp. 2-3). These two paradigms, however, are not mutually exclusive. Applying historical...