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In many areas of the natural and physical world, long periods of seeming stasis or small incremental changes are interrupted by large, sudden leaps. This book illustrates how similar processes characterize international relations. This book points to such occurrences, for example the collapse of the USSR, the unravelling of Napoleon's wartime alliance, and the possible future status of the US dollar; and it illustrates in greater detail the admission of China to the United Nations, the history of economic development of various countries, and the possible formation of a countervailing coalition against US primacy. Steve Chan investigates these instances and explains the dynamics governing these processes of lulls and lurches and illuminates how qualitative research can apply the Boolean logic to study systematically the danger of a possible future Sino-American conflict based on past episodes.
List of contents
1. Introduction: the perspective of punctuated equilibrium; 2. Punctuated equilibria: a review of political science literature; 3. Epochal Breaks in sino-American relations, and lulls and lurches; 4. Prospects of US intervention in a Taiwan crisis and the conjunctive logic; 5. War, uneven economic growth, and trees don't grow to the Sky; 6. Political entrepreneurship, narrative construction, and pitching the enemy image; 7. Conclusion: from sino-American relations to the evolving global picture.
About the author
Steve Chan's other recent books include Mobilizing the Past (Stanford, 2025); Fuses, Chains and Backlashes (Oxford, 2025); Geography and International Conflict (Routledge, 2025) with Weixing Hu; Taiwan and the Danger of a Sino-American War (Cambridge, 2025) and Culture, Economic Growth, and Interstate Power Shift (Cambridge, 2024).
