Fuses, Chains, and Backlashes China, the United States, and the Dynamics of Conflict Contagion and Escalation

How do interstate conflicts start, spread and escalate? Not all local or regional rivalries develop into devastating multistate wars, but those that do cause upheaval across the world. It is important, therefore, to study causal chains and pathways that can trigger a conflict of international proportions.

Fuses, Chains, and Backlashes analyzes the factors and processes that have historically ignited wars among the great powers and applies the resulting insights to examine the potential for contemporary Sino-American competition to flare into conflict. Distinguished political scientist Steve Chan emphasizes the importance of considering multiple enabling conditions for system-level conflict, including power shifts, armament races, alliance dynamics, and enduring rivalries. But these conditions in themselves do not always lead to war. Chan introduces the idea of a catalyst--or fuse--that ignites the combustible mixture produced by these variables' interactions. He traces the origins of many large conflagrations to local feuds-such as the dispute across the Taiwan Straits--which in turn invite intervention by third parties--like the United States. By analyzing possible causal pathways to interstate war and applying this historical, empirical context to the present-day relationship between the US and China, Chan hopes to help us learn from the past and avoid future catastrophe.

Steve Chan received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1976. He has taught at Bowling Green State University, University of Maryland, and Texas A&M University before arriving at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has had visiting teaching or research appointments in China, France, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Chapter 1 Introduction to the Dynamics of Conflict Contagion and Escalation
Chapter 2 Local Rivalries as Possible Fuses for Larger Conflicts
Chapter 3 Alliances as Balls and Chains on Conflict Contagion
Chapter 4 The Backlash Effects of Self-Defeating Policies
Chapter 5 The Dynamics of Sino-American Tension

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