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MacFarlane argues that Russian perspectives on order and justice are deeply rooted and are basically inconsistent with liberal thinking. These perspectives strongly reflect the country's geographical and historical experiences. The leaders of the country have generally ignored solidarist ends and have remained wedded to the promotion of a state‐based order in which multipolarity prevails, multilateralism is to be avoided, and the Russian loss of status is recovered along with its material power. Russian leaders remain concerned with interstate justice in the context of a re‐established domestic and Russian‐led regional order.

What form of democracy is needed in the post‐national configuration? The EU is not a state and its power is limited. However, although the member states hold the means of legitimate violence in reserve, the EU has achieved competences and capabilities similar to authoritative government. The point of government is not state in its collectivistic, nationalistic reading, but democratic institutions. A non‐state entity can amount to government in so far as it performs the functions of authorized jurisdictions. In line with this, the Union can be considered as a state‐less government that finds part of its justification as a regional subset of a larger cosmopolitan order. The legitimacy requirement of such a governmental order must be different from that of a fully authorized power‐wielding polity. Nevertheless, due to the democratic deficit, it is not possible to establish the conditions under which a process of public justification is deemed legitimate.

Chapter 6 explores developments in Asia’s regional architecture under the Trump government and the rising influence of China under Xi Jinping. The chapter draws explicit connections between Asia’s current regional architecture and the future of Asian order. It makes the case that institutions in Asia, particularly US bilateral alliances, are more resilient than presumed. It then draws on the historical institutionalism and regime complexity literatures to describe how the complex patchwork both complicates and advances institutional cooperation. The chapter concludes by offering a more optimistic outlook regarding the complex patchwork and its potential for improving regional governance.

This chapter introduces the central questions and analytical framework of the book, which seeks to explain the causes and consequences of the regional understandings of the North Korean and Iranian challenges in East Asia and the Middle East. It argues that regional role conceptions (e.g., externally or internally shaped regional roles) in regional countries influence their understanding of threat and national interests vis-à-vis North Korea and Iran. The prevalence of a particular regional role in each country affects the way regional countries perceive and approach North Korea and Iran and responds to the global proliferation approach. As for regional order, the more congruent the externally and internally shaped regional roles become, a more stable and inclusive regional order emerges in the form of greater alliance cohesion and broader regional cooperation. Conversely, the greater the conflict between the two roles, a more conflictual and exclusive regional order ensues.

This chapter discusses whether and to what extent the internal political changes unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa since 2011 have triggered a shift in the subsystem’s regional order and its institutions. Drawing on the English School and constructivist theories of International Relations, it firstly discusses the impact of the Arab Spring on the ‘constitutional structure’ of the regional order. Next, it examines if we have witnessed a change in some of the fundamental institutions in place in the MENA region (alliances and amity/enmity cleavages, non-intervention, multilateralism and bilateralism, and great power management). It argues that slight changes in the fundamental institutions since the Arab Spring generally respond to a more fundamental systemic change that took place in the context of the 2003 war in Iraq. However, despite attempts to challenge it, the constitutional structure of the regional order remains intact.

This chapter concludes the book with a summary of findings and a discussion of theoretical and policy implications. By locating contested regional role conceptions at the center of analysis, this book explains both the varied regional responses to the global proliferation campaign and a lack of progress in building a cooperative regional order. The East Asian and Middle Eastern cases suggest that for proliferation strategy to be effective, the United States should pay greater attention to the regional understandings of the North Korean and Iranian challenges. This chapter also considers the extension of the regional role framework to other issue areas, such as the rise of China and Sino–U.S. relations in East Asia and the sources of discord concerning East Asian regionalism.

This book has explored how leading states have responded to power shifts in peripheral regions and why they have accommodated some rising regional powers (RRPs) but opposed others. It has introduced a new theory that explains why leading states differed in their responses to RRPs by emphasizing the interaction between the type of regional order preferred by a leading state and the type of power shift that it believes is taking place. The first step in the theory entails figuring out whether a leading state favors regional parity or regional primacy, or whether it is impartial between these alternative orders. The second step involves determining how an emerging regional power will alter the local status quo and whether the expected consequences of its rise are compatible with a leading state's preferences. This concluding chapter summarizes the book's arguments and evidence and discusses several implications for international relations theory. It also considers what the book's framework would suggest about the United States's relations with two contemporary regional powers: India and Iran.

This chapter extends the analytical framework of the book to the Middle East. It explores how the different regional role considerations and regional visions of Middle Eastern countries shaped their understandings of and policies toward Iran. As seen in the East Asian case, Iran’s neighbors thought more about regional order, both in security and economic terms, than about the nuclear dimension. With an empirical focus on Turkey, Israel, and several Persian Gulf States, the chapter examines the regional understandings of Iran and the links to regional role conceptions. It then demonstrates the impact of regional role conceptions on the regional order in the Middle East by examining U.S. alliance dynamics and regional cooperation through the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). As with the North Korean case, focusing narrowly on the nuclear dimension and overlooking a larger shift in the regional strategic landscape was detrimental for both U.S. Middle East strategy and regional stability.

This book examines how leading states—great powers that occupy a unique position thanks to the sources of their wealth, the types of armed forces they build, and the responsibilities they assume—respond to power shifts in peripheral regions. More specifically, it considers how a leading state reacts when a rising power in the periphery challenges the prevailing regional order. Drawing on a theory that borrows insights from the two main schools of realist theory, balance-of-power realism and preponderance-of-power realism, the book explains why a leading state has accommodated some rising regional powers (RRPs) but opposed others, especially when local power shifts have led to war. It also employs qualitative case studies to elucidate how leading states in different historical eras have responded to RRPs across the globe, with particular emphasis on Great Britain and the United States.

This chapter traces the Clinton administration’s approach toward North Korea during the North Korean missile crisis and suspected nuclear activities in the 1990s and analyzes the nature of interaction between the United States and the regional countries at that time, which in turn affected the regional order in East Asia. Specifically, this chapter documents how externally and internally shaped regional roles became compatible during the so-called Perry Process. The role congruence expanded alliance ties and promoted regional cooperation. This chapter demonstrates patterns of alliance coordination among the United States, South Korea, and Japan in the forms of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) and Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG) and examines the nature of regionalism during this period. The virtuous circle between the United States and regional approaches not only helped to reduce the tension on the Korean Peninsula but also shaped an expanded and cooperative regional order in East Asia.

This chapter examines how the Bush administration’s approach toward North Korea interacted with regional role conceptions in China, Japan, and South Korea. It demonstrates the impact of the role conflict prompted by the Bush Doctrine on alliance relations and regionalism in East Asia. Specifically, during the second North Korean nuclear crisis, America’s alliance mechanisms in East Asia became strained as the United States and South Korea clashed over the North Korean question and South Korea’s relations with China markedly improved. As a consequence, the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG) among the United States, Japan, and South Korea ceased to function. The role conflict also intensified domestic contestation over North Korea, pitting domestic actors against one another and making regional cooperation among the East Asian states more difficult. It resulted in a narrowed and conflictual regional order in East Asia.

Chapter 7 recaps the book’s finding that processes of continuity and change have occurred simultaneously, transforming an under-institutionalized region into a complex patchwork of overlapping institutions. The chapter then draws lessons from historical institutionalism for international relations theory and its significance for Asia policy and strategy. The book concludes with recommendations for US policy makers given rising tensions in US-Sino relations and potential institutional competition between Beijing and Washington. In particular, it advocates policy makers to adopt a zero-sum framework and continue building and supporting the regional architecture in ways which reinforce, but also look beyond its bilateral alliances.

This chapter examines the United States's response to the emergence of Iraq as a rising power and its policy toward Southwest Asia during the period 1979–1991. It discusses U.S. policy toward Southwest Asia during the administrations of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. In particular, it analyzes the changes in U.S. stance toward Iran and Iraq and argues that this variation can be explained by the United States's preferred regional order and the direction of the power shifts that took place. It also considers Washington's concerns about the risk of containment failure in relation to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the risk of access denial with regards to Iranian and Iraqi struggle to dominate their neighborhood. Under these conditions, the chapter argues that the United States's preference for regional primacy gave way to a preference for regional parity.

The USA is still the only power with the capability to have a major impact—for better or for worse—on the security orders in all major geographical regions of the world, most notably the Near/Middle East, East Asia, and Europe. A review of the major dynamics in regional orders shows that seven decades of American hegemony have always been short of the liberal ideal-type expectations—well before Donald Trump entered the scene. However, the Trump administration sees the international and regional security orders primarily as arenas for power competition in which economic and military might are the most relevant currencies. While the erosion of regional security orders is not primarily the result of the deeds and omissions in Washington, the missing liberal hegemon will make it much harder to reverse the trend and to rebuild these orders from within and from the outside.

Lacking strong multilateral institutions, the East Asian regional order essentially seems to function along the lines suggested by realist perspectives on international relations. However, growing economic interdependence has transformed the conflictual landscape in ways that facilitate international cooperation. This may help to explain why in East Asia no major war has taken place since 1979. In the future, US–China rivalry will likely affect all aspects of East Asian regional order, but this competition will take place within the framework of a heavily institutionalized regional order offering some anchors to hold the power shift within the bounds of certain norms and principles. This might leave room for maneuver for middle and small powers in the region. Both the USA and China have also tried to find a common basis on which they can pursue mutual interests and sustain cooperation, thus steering clear of the fearsome “Thucydides trap.”

Many trends in East Asia, such as the consolidation of nation-states and the growth of economic interdependence and regional cooperation, support a more robust “partial order.” However, geo-political issues, especially China’s ambitions and inter-Korean relations remain significant question marks, intensified by uncertainty about the USA. Asian countries generally benchmark rather than challenge many principles of the liberal international order, but there are cultural traditions and modern preferences at variance with Western political liberalism. The weight of Asia suggests that as a truly global system evolves, there will be some compromise between Western and Eastern concepts of order, all the more likely as domestic support for international liberalism has eroded in parts of the West, notably the USA.