Van Jackson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3065477 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Van Jackson |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Jackson |
| SIGNATURE | VAN JACKSON |
| AFFILIATIONS | Victoria University of Wellington |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1112-6341 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 66 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Geopolitical sacrifice zones in US strategic thought: Erasure, the frontier and the Blue Pacific
Progressivism and Grand Strategy: An Exchange – The Author Replies
A capital critique: Progressive alternatives to neo-liberal economic order
Advocates of progressive political economy agree that the neo-liberal economic order has worsened environmental degradation, worker precarity, and oligarchy, but what are the alternatives? This article relates left-progressive discourses about concrete approaches and policy ideas to implications for the global economic order. While progressives explicitly seek a more social democratic global order, the various policy initiatives in the progressiv…
Relational peace versus pacific primacy: Configuring US strategy for Asia's regional order
This article challenges the presumption that American commitment to the greater Indo‐Pacific region has positive effects on regional stability. It argues that the degree to which America's strategic choices in Asia embrittle or consolidate peace depends on how they intersect with relational configurations of regional order. An accommodative strategy of restraint and mutual threat reduction offers the greatest stability with the least risk either …
Feng Zhang and Richard Ned Lebow, Taming Sino-American Rivalry
Left of Liberal Internationalism: Grand Strategies within Progressive Foreign Policy Thought
This article brings leftist-oriented foreign policy ideas into dialogue with mainstream grand strategy literature. It argues that American progressives seek a durable security comprised of peace, democracy, and equality, meaning the grand strategies discoverable within progressive thinking are ultimately projects of worldmaking. Since leftist thought is eclectic, it gives rise to not one but three ideal-type progressive grand strategies. Progress…
Understanding spheres of influence in international politics
Spheres of influence remain one of the most pervasive phenomena in the practice and history of international relations, yet only rarely have they been taken up analytically. To bring conceptual and discursive clarity, this article advances two arguments. First, it argues that spheres of influence are not a distinct form of hierarchy in international relations, but rather practices of control and exclusion that can be found within any ideal-type h…
On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and the Threat of Nuclear War
In 2017, the world watched as President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un traded personal insults and escalating threats of nuclear war amid unprecedented shows of military force. Former Pentagon insider and Korean security expert Van Jackson traces the origins of the first American nuclear crisis in the post-Cold War era, and explains the fragile, highly unpredictable way that it ended. Grounded in security studies and informed an…
American Military Superiority and the Pacific-Primacy Myth
The claim that the United States seeks primacy – a concept distinct from military superiority – in the Asia-Pacific is fundamentally wrong
North Korea and Nuclear Weapons: Entering the New Era of Deterrence
A Region Primed for Peace or War? Historical Institutionalism and Debates in East Asian Security
This essay proposes that a turn toward historical analysis is essential for understanding the propensity for either war or peace in contemporary East Asia. It urges scholars to reorient inquiry about this question in terms of temporally sensitive processes of change and continuity, and it expresses reservations about the merits of an “Eastern” turn in international relations theory. This case is made through two supporting tasks. First, it demons…
Buffers, Not Bridges: Rethinking Multilateralism and the Resilience of Japan-South Korea Friction
Let’s make a (nuclear) deal: Bargaining, credibility, and the third offset strategy
An institutional perspective on nuclear deterrence cooperation within alliances has the potential to fundamentally reorient how we think about analyzing nuclear and deterrence decision-making between nuclear patrons and non-nuclear clients. It comes at a time when the presidency of Donald Trump is sure to test many of the core claims and assumptions in security studies, especially relating to bargaining and credibility within alliances. This arti…
Rival Reputations: Coercion and Credibility in US-North Korea Relations
Charting the turbulent history of US-North Korean affairs from the 1960s through to 2010, Rival Reputations explores how past incidents and crises can be relied upon to help determine threat credibility and the willingness of an adversary to resort to violence. Using reputation as the framework, this book answers some of the most vexing questions regarding both US and North Korean foreign policy. These include how they have managed to evade war, …
Threat Consensus and Rapprochement Failure: Revisiting the Collapse of US–North Korea Relations, 1994–2002
Why do states that make a deliberate effort to pursue rapprochement sometimes fail? This article dissects US–North Korea relations between 1994 and 2002 as one way to better understand how deliberate decisions to dramatically improve relations with a historical adversary go awry. This vastly understudied period in US–North Korea relations started in late 1994 with an ambitious agreement to move toward diplomatic normalization through a gradual pr…
Red Teaming the Rebalance: The Theory and Risks of US Asia Strategy
What specific forms of reasoning underlie the US approach to Asia, what downside risks do they imply, and to what extent can they be mitigated? This article examines the theoretical underpinnings of the US “rebalance” to Asia by categorizing US policies according to three types of logic: military power; economic liberalism; and institutionalism. It then uses international relations theory as a diagnostic tool to assess risks in these approaches. …
Power, trust, and network complexity: Three logics of hedging in Asian security
Why do hedging strategies appear so pervasive in Asia? This article argues that hedging – not balancing or bandwagoning – is the central tendency in Asian international relations, offering three different lenses for making sense of this phenomenon, focusing in particular on the third: power transition theory, mistrust under multipolarity, and complex networks. Each perspective highlights different factors that explain the incentives for Asian sta…
Beyond Tailoring: North Korea and the Promise of Managed Deterrence
How can one state maintain deterrence against another state undergoing an uncertain political transition? A debate within fourth wave deterrence theory focuses on whether and when a tailored approach, based on cultural, organizational, and idiosyncratic characteristics of a target state, has the greatest value. Tailored deterrence may not be appropriate under conditions of domestic political uncertainty in the target state, often those most in ne…
Making Diplomacy Work: Coercion and Conciliation in the First North Korean Nuclear Crisis
When is a two-track policy approach of coercion and conciliation more or less likely to achieve its target objective? The first North Korean nuclear crisis of 1993–94 reveals that a U.S. policy approach combining coercive and conciliatory diplomacy contributed to near-term U.S. policy objectives when conciliation was offered to North Korea in order to signal benign intent. This case also reveals two additional conditions that can hinder a two-tra…
Getting Past the Past: Korea's Transcendence of the Anti–Japan Policy Frontier
Why are some nations able to move beyond historical hatreds to have productive relationships with former enemies while others seem bound by the past, unable to make policy choices that are in their “objective” interest? This article explores Korea's decision to normalize diplomatic relations with Japan in 1965 and finds, inter alia, that US pressure for normalization was not the key causal variable that it has been described as elsewhere. I propo…
Power, trust, and network complexity: Three logics of hedging in Asian security
Why do hedging strategies appear so pervasive in Asia? This article argues that hedging – not balancing or bandwagoning – is the central tendency in Asian international relations, offering three different lenses for making sense of this phenomenon, focusing in particular on the third: power transition theory, mistrust under multipolarity, and complex networks. Each perspective highlights different factors that explain the incentives for Asian sta…
Understanding spheres of influence in international politics
Spheres of influence remain one of the most pervasive phenomena in the practice and history of international relations, yet only rarely have they been taken up analytically. To bring conceptual and discursive clarity, this article advances two arguments. First, it argues that spheres of influence are not a distinct form of hierarchy in international relations, but rather practices of control and exclusion that can be found within any ideal-type h…
Left of Liberal Internationalism: Grand Strategies within Progressive Foreign Policy Thought
This article brings leftist-oriented foreign policy ideas into dialogue with mainstream grand strategy literature. It argues that American progressives seek a durable security comprised of peace, democracy, and equality, meaning the grand strategies discoverable within progressive thinking are ultimately projects of worldmaking. Since leftist thought is eclectic, it gives rise to not one but three ideal-type progressive grand strategies. Progress…
Buffers, Not Bridges: Rethinking Multilateralism and the Resilience of Japan-South Korea Friction
Threat Consensus and Rapprochement Failure: Revisiting the Collapse of US–North Korea Relations, 1994–2002
Why do states that make a deliberate effort to pursue rapprochement sometimes fail? This article dissects US–North Korea relations between 1994 and 2002 as one way to better understand how deliberate decisions to dramatically improve relations with a historical adversary go awry. This vastly understudied period in US–North Korea relations started in late 1994 with an ambitious agreement to move toward diplomatic normalization through a gradual pr…
Getting Past the Past: Korea's Transcendence of the Anti–Japan Policy Frontier
Why are some nations able to move beyond historical hatreds to have productive relationships with former enemies while others seem bound by the past, unable to make policy choices that are in their “objective” interest? This article explores Korea's decision to normalize diplomatic relations with Japan in 1965 and finds, inter alia, that US pressure for normalization was not the key causal variable that it has been described as elsewhere. I propo…
A capital critique: Progressive alternatives to neo-liberal economic order
Advocates of progressive political economy agree that the neo-liberal economic order has worsened environmental degradation, worker precarity, and oligarchy, but what are the alternatives? This article relates left-progressive discourses about concrete approaches and policy ideas to implications for the global economic order. While progressives explicitly seek a more social democratic global order, the various policy initiatives in the progressiv…
Relational peace versus pacific primacy: Configuring US strategy for Asia's regional order
This article challenges the presumption that American commitment to the greater Indo‐Pacific region has positive effects on regional stability. It argues that the degree to which America's strategic choices in Asia embrittle or consolidate peace depends on how they intersect with relational configurations of regional order. An accommodative strategy of restraint and mutual threat reduction offers the greatest stability with the least risk either …
A Region Primed for Peace or War? Historical Institutionalism and Debates in East Asian Security
This essay proposes that a turn toward historical analysis is essential for understanding the propensity for either war or peace in contemporary East Asia. It urges scholars to reorient inquiry about this question in terms of temporally sensitive processes of change and continuity, and it expresses reservations about the merits of an “Eastern” turn in international relations theory. This case is made through two supporting tasks. First, it demons…
Let’s make a (nuclear) deal: Bargaining, credibility, and the third offset strategy
An institutional perspective on nuclear deterrence cooperation within alliances has the potential to fundamentally reorient how we think about analyzing nuclear and deterrence decision-making between nuclear patrons and non-nuclear clients. It comes at a time when the presidency of Donald Trump is sure to test many of the core claims and assumptions in security studies, especially relating to bargaining and credibility within alliances. This arti…
Beyond Tailoring: North Korea and the Promise of Managed Deterrence
How can one state maintain deterrence against another state undergoing an uncertain political transition? A debate within fourth wave deterrence theory focuses on whether and when a tailored approach, based on cultural, organizational, and idiosyncratic characteristics of a target state, has the greatest value. Tailored deterrence may not be appropriate under conditions of domestic political uncertainty in the target state, often those most in ne…
Getting Past the Past: Korea's Transcendence of the Anti–Japan Policy Frontier
Why are some nations able to move beyond historical hatreds to have productive relationships with former enemies while others seem bound by the past, unable to make policy choices that are in their “objective” interest? This article explores Korea's decision to normalize diplomatic relations with Japan in 1965 and finds, inter alia, that US pressure for normalization was not the key causal variable that it has been described as elsewhere. I propo…
Beyond Tailoring: North Korea and the Promise of Managed Deterrence
How can one state maintain deterrence against another state undergoing an uncertain political transition? A debate within fourth wave deterrence theory focuses on whether and when a tailored approach, based on cultural, organizational, and idiosyncratic characteristics of a target state, has the greatest value. Tailored deterrence may not be appropriate under conditions of domestic political uncertainty in the target state, often those most in ne…
Making Diplomacy Work: Coercion and Conciliation in the First North Korean Nuclear Crisis
When is a two-track policy approach of coercion and conciliation more or less likely to achieve its target objective? The first North Korean nuclear crisis of 1993–94 reveals that a U.S. policy approach combining coercive and conciliatory diplomacy contributed to near-term U.S. policy objectives when conciliation was offered to North Korea in order to signal benign intent. This case also reveals two additional conditions that can hinder a two-tra…
Power, trust, and network complexity: Three logics of hedging in Asian security
Why do hedging strategies appear so pervasive in Asia? This article argues that hedging – not balancing or bandwagoning – is the central tendency in Asian international relations, offering three different lenses for making sense of this phenomenon, focusing in particular on the third: power transition theory, mistrust under multipolarity, and complex networks. Each perspective highlights different factors that explain the incentives for Asian sta…
Rival Reputations: Coercion and Credibility in US-North Korea Relations
Charting the turbulent history of US-North Korean affairs from the 1960s through to 2010, Rival Reputations explores how past incidents and crises can be relied upon to help determine threat credibility and the willingness of an adversary to resort to violence. Using reputation as the framework, this book answers some of the most vexing questions regarding both US and North Korean foreign policy. These include how they have managed to evade war, …
Threat Consensus and Rapprochement Failure: Revisiting the Collapse of US–North Korea Relations, 1994–2002
Why do states that make a deliberate effort to pursue rapprochement sometimes fail? This article dissects US–North Korea relations between 1994 and 2002 as one way to better understand how deliberate decisions to dramatically improve relations with a historical adversary go awry. This vastly understudied period in US–North Korea relations started in late 1994 with an ambitious agreement to move toward diplomatic normalization through a gradual pr…
Red Teaming the Rebalance: The Theory and Risks of US Asia Strategy
What specific forms of reasoning underlie the US approach to Asia, what downside risks do they imply, and to what extent can they be mitigated? This article examines the theoretical underpinnings of the US “rebalance” to Asia by categorizing US policies according to three types of logic: military power; economic liberalism; and institutionalism. It then uses international relations theory as a diagnostic tool to assess risks in these approaches. …
North Korea and Nuclear Weapons: Entering the New Era of Deterrence
A Region Primed for Peace or War? Historical Institutionalism and Debates in East Asian Security
This essay proposes that a turn toward historical analysis is essential for understanding the propensity for either war or peace in contemporary East Asia. It urges scholars to reorient inquiry about this question in terms of temporally sensitive processes of change and continuity, and it expresses reservations about the merits of an “Eastern” turn in international relations theory. This case is made through two supporting tasks. First, it demons…
Buffers, Not Bridges: Rethinking Multilateralism and the Resilience of Japan-South Korea Friction
Let’s make a (nuclear) deal: Bargaining, credibility, and the third offset strategy
An institutional perspective on nuclear deterrence cooperation within alliances has the potential to fundamentally reorient how we think about analyzing nuclear and deterrence decision-making between nuclear patrons and non-nuclear clients. It comes at a time when the presidency of Donald Trump is sure to test many of the core claims and assumptions in security studies, especially relating to bargaining and credibility within alliances. This arti…
On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and the Threat of Nuclear War
In 2017, the world watched as President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un traded personal insults and escalating threats of nuclear war amid unprecedented shows of military force. Former Pentagon insider and Korean security expert Van Jackson traces the origins of the first American nuclear crisis in the post-Cold War era, and explains the fragile, highly unpredictable way that it ended. Grounded in security studies and informed an…
American Military Superiority and the Pacific-Primacy Myth
The claim that the United States seeks primacy – a concept distinct from military superiority – in the Asia-Pacific is fundamentally wrong
Understanding spheres of influence in international politics
Spheres of influence remain one of the most pervasive phenomena in the practice and history of international relations, yet only rarely have they been taken up analytically. To bring conceptual and discursive clarity, this article advances two arguments. First, it argues that spheres of influence are not a distinct form of hierarchy in international relations, but rather practices of control and exclusion that can be found within any ideal-type h…
Feng Zhang and Richard Ned Lebow, Taming Sino-American Rivalry
Left of Liberal Internationalism: Grand Strategies within Progressive Foreign Policy Thought
This article brings leftist-oriented foreign policy ideas into dialogue with mainstream grand strategy literature. It argues that American progressives seek a durable security comprised of peace, democracy, and equality, meaning the grand strategies discoverable within progressive thinking are ultimately projects of worldmaking. Since leftist thought is eclectic, it gives rise to not one but three ideal-type progressive grand strategies. Progress…
Progressivism and Grand Strategy: An Exchange – The Author Replies
A capital critique: Progressive alternatives to neo-liberal economic order
Advocates of progressive political economy agree that the neo-liberal economic order has worsened environmental degradation, worker precarity, and oligarchy, but what are the alternatives? This article relates left-progressive discourses about concrete approaches and policy ideas to implications for the global economic order. While progressives explicitly seek a more social democratic global order, the various policy initiatives in the progressiv…
Relational peace versus pacific primacy: Configuring US strategy for Asia's regional order
This article challenges the presumption that American commitment to the greater Indo‐Pacific region has positive effects on regional stability. It argues that the degree to which America's strategic choices in Asia embrittle or consolidate peace depends on how they intersect with relational configurations of regional order. An accommodative strategy of restraint and mutual threat reduction offers the greatest stability with the least risk either …
Geopolitical sacrifice zones in US strategic thought: Erasure, the frontier and the Blue Pacific
Political science (19 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (16 works) · Law (16 works) · Law (13 works) · Politics (12 works) · Economics (11 works) · Political economy (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Korean Peninsula Historical and Political Studies (7 works) · History (6 works)