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Swaine, Michael D., and Ashley J. Tellis. Interpreting China's Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and Future. Santa Monica, Calif: RAND, 2000. 283pp. $20
Michael Swaine, author of the outstanding The Military & Political Succession in China (1992), and his fellow RAND analyst Ashley Tellis have written a very good book about Chinese security in both historical and future perspective. It will certainly be of interest to the policy community, as it should be to all who work on Asian security.
Swaine and Tellis define grand strategy as a country's "basic approach to politicalmilitary security." China's grand strategy seeks to preserve domestic order, defend against external threats, and eventually attain "geopolitical influence as a major, and perhaps, primary state." These bland objectives become vibrant when viewed in historical context-many centuries ago, with strong leadership and domestic order, China dominated the region not only, or even primarily, militarily but also in cultural, political, and economic ways that elicited deference and reduced the need for military capability. Subsequent periodic weak leadership and domestic disorder reduced China's ability to resist persistent threats from beyond its long, vulnerable border and diminished its political strength, so China has been...