Thomas J Christensen
Biographic Data
| ID | 744396 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas J Christensen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas J |
| FAMILY NAME | Christensen |
| SIGNATURE | CHRISTENSEN T J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Princeton University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 515 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Mutually Assured Disruption: Globalization, Security, and the Dangers of Decoupling
The evolution of transnational production in the Asia-Pacific over the past few decades has been a force for peace. Critics of globalization and proponents of US-China economic decoupling advocate policies that would not only harm the global economy but would increase the likelihood of military conflict. This article focuses on the national security benefits of US-China economic engagement and the regional economic integration of East Asia. Gover…
The Meaning of the Nuclear Evolution: China's Strategic Modernization and US-China Security Relations
Will China's development of a new generation of nuclear weapons impact US-China security relations in important ways? One's answer depends on how one views the following: whether or not Chinese leaders believe that they are only now acquiring a secure second strike capability; the scope of coercive power that secure second strike capability provides to conventionally inferior actors; the meaning of China's ‘No First Use’ Doctrine; and the prospec…
Worse Than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia
In brute-force struggles for survival, such as the two world wars, disorganization and divisions within an enemy alliance are to one's own advantage. However, most international security politics involve coercive diplomacy and negotiations short of all-out war. This book demonstrates that when states are engaged in coercive diplomacy—combining threats and assurances to influence the behavior of real or potential adversaries—divisions, rivalries, …
Worse Than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia
Multipolarity, Perceptions, and the Tragedy of 1914: Multipolarity, Perceptions, and the Tragedy of 1914
In "Does Chain-Ganging Cause the Outbreak of War," Dominic Tierney critiques our work on alliance politics in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Tierney incorrectly ascribes to us a theory about the outbreak of conflict based on a "chain-ganging theory" in which war occurs because states become so tightly tied to their allies that they lose volition and find themselves in conflicts not of their own choosing. In fact, we do not try…
Shaping the Choices of a Rising China: Recent Lessons for the Obama Administration
President Barack Obama ran a successful campaign on the theme of change. Yet, for addressing what is perhaps the greatest long-term strategic challenge facing the United States—managing U.S. relati
Fostering Stability or Creating a Monster? The Rise of China and U.S. Policy toward East Asia
This article explores two starkly contrasting analytic approaches to assessing the performance of U.S. security strategy in East Asia since 1991: a positivesum approach, emphasizing the danger of security dilemmas and spirals of tension, and a zero-sum approach, emphasizing power competition and the long-term dangers posed by China's rise. In the policy world, the differences between these apparently irreconcilable perspectives are not so clear. …
Worse Than a Monolith: Disorganization and Rivalry within Asian Communist Alliances and U.S. Containment Challenges, 1949–69
This article makes the counterintuitive argument that in the first two decades of the Cold War the communist alliance in East Asia was easiest for the United States and its allies to contain through coercive diplomacy during the period in which the communist alliance was most cohesive and unified under Soviet leadership (1954–57). With a focus on the Korean War and two Indochina Wars, this article shows how internal problems in the communist alli…
The contemporary security dilemma: Deterring a Taiwan conflict
Successful deterrence requires both threats and assurances about the conditionality of those threats. The real security dilemma is how to be tough enough without being overly provocative. Deterrence across the Taiwan Strait is possible, but not simple. Here's how
Posing Problems Without Catching Up: China's Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy
International Security - Volume 25, Number 4, Spring 2001
Power and Resolve in U.S. China Policy
October 01 2001 Power and Resolve in U.S. China Policy Peter Hays Gries, Peter Hays Gries Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Thomas J. Christensen Thomas J. Christensen Associate Professor of Political Science and a member of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Search for other works by this author …
Posing Problems without Catching up: China's Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy
Spirals, Security, and Stability in East Asia
April 01 2000 Spirals, Security, and Stability in East Asia Jennifer M. Lind, Jennifer M. Lind Doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science and the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Thomas J. Christensen Thomas J. Christensen Associate Professor of Political Science and a member of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts …
Theater missile defense and taiwan’s security
China, the U.S.-Japan Alliance, and the Security Dilemma in East Asia
April 01 1999 China, the U.S.-Japan Alliance, and the Security Dilemma in East Asia Thomas J. Christensen Thomas J. Christensen Thomas J. Christensen is Associate Professor of Political Science and a member of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is author of Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947-1958 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996).…
Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947-1958
This book provides a new analysis of why relations between the United States and the Chinese Communists were so hostile in the first decade of the Cold War. Employing extensive documentation, it offers a fresh approach to long-debated questions such as why Truman refused to recognize the Chinese Communists, why the United States aided Chiang Kai-shek's KMT on Taiwan, why the Korean War escalated into a Sino-American conflict, and why Mao shelled …
Perceptions and alliances in Europe, 1865–1940
While some structural realists and their liberal and institutionalist critics continue to fight a high-profile battle about the fundamental nature of international politics, a quieter discussion is progressing about how to integrate various aspects of realist thinking into a more coherent approach to security politics. The goal of this discussion is to marry the two major strands of contemporary realist thought: balance-of-power theory and securi…
Progressive Research on Degenerate Alliances
Our article (1990) on alliance dynamics in multipolarity, which John Vasquez criticizes, differs from some neorealist approaches by incorporating variables from the theory of the security dilemma, including perceptual factors. Nonetheless, our argument meets Imre Lakatos's criteria for a progressive problem shift insofar as it explains more than the original theory, does so parsimoniously, has been successfully applied to new domains, and does no…
Chinese Realpolitik
China Diplomacy: The Washington-Taipei-Beijing Triangle
Threats, Assurances, and the Last Chance for Peace: The Lessons of Mao's Korean War Telegrams
Mobilization and Inadvertence in the July Crisis
Chain gangs and passed bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity
Contemporary balance-of-power theory has become too parsimonious to yield determinate predictions about state alliance strategies in multipolarity. Kenneth Waltz's theory predicts only that multipolarity predisposes states to either of two opposite errors, which this article characterizes as chain-ganging and buck-passing. To predict which of these two policies will prevail, it is necessary to complicate Waltz's theory by adding a variable from R…
Chain gangs and passed bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity
Contemporary balance-of-power theory has become too parsimonious to yield determinate predictions about state alliance strategies in multipolarity. Kenneth Waltz's theory predicts only that multipolarity predisposes states to either of two opposite errors, which this article characterizes as chain-ganging and buck-passing. To predict which of these two policies will prevail, it is necessary to complicate Waltz's theory by adding a variable from R…
Posing Problems Without Catching Up: China's Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy
International Security - Volume 25, Number 4, Spring 2001
Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947-1958
This book provides a new analysis of why relations between the United States and the Chinese Communists were so hostile in the first decade of the Cold War. Employing extensive documentation, it offers a fresh approach to long-debated questions such as why Truman refused to recognize the Chinese Communists, why the United States aided Chiang Kai-shek's KMT on Taiwan, why the Korean War escalated into a Sino-American conflict, and why Mao shelled …
Perceptions and alliances in Europe, 1865–1940
While some structural realists and their liberal and institutionalist critics continue to fight a high-profile battle about the fundamental nature of international politics, a quieter discussion is progressing about how to integrate various aspects of realist thinking into a more coherent approach to security politics. The goal of this discussion is to marry the two major strands of contemporary realist thought: balance-of-power theory and securi…
Fostering Stability or Creating a Monster? The Rise of China and U.S. Policy toward East Asia
This article explores two starkly contrasting analytic approaches to assessing the performance of U.S. security strategy in East Asia since 1991: a positivesum approach, emphasizing the danger of security dilemmas and spirals of tension, and a zero-sum approach, emphasizing power competition and the long-term dangers posed by China's rise. In the policy world, the differences between these apparently irreconcilable perspectives are not so clear. …
Chinese Realpolitik
The contemporary security dilemma: Deterring a Taiwan conflict
Successful deterrence requires both threats and assurances about the conditionality of those threats. The real security dilemma is how to be tough enough without being overly provocative. Deterrence across the Taiwan Strait is possible, but not simple. Here's how
Progressive Research on Degenerate Alliances
Our article (1990) on alliance dynamics in multipolarity, which John Vasquez criticizes, differs from some neorealist approaches by incorporating variables from the theory of the security dilemma, including perceptual factors. Nonetheless, our argument meets Imre Lakatos's criteria for a progressive problem shift insofar as it explains more than the original theory, does so parsimoniously, has been successfully applied to new domains, and does no…
The Meaning of the Nuclear Evolution: China's Strategic Modernization and US-China Security Relations
Will China's development of a new generation of nuclear weapons impact US-China security relations in important ways? One's answer depends on how one views the following: whether or not Chinese leaders believe that they are only now acquiring a secure second strike capability; the scope of coercive power that secure second strike capability provides to conventionally inferior actors; the meaning of China's ‘No First Use’ Doctrine; and the prospec…
Threats, Assurances, and the Last Chance for Peace: The Lessons of Mao's Korean War Telegrams
Shaping the Choices of a Rising China: Recent Lessons for the Obama Administration
President Barack Obama ran a successful campaign on the theme of change. Yet, for addressing what is perhaps the greatest long-term strategic challenge facing the United States—managing U.S. relati
Theater missile defense and taiwan’s security
Mobilization and Inadvertence in the July Crisis
Multipolarity, Perceptions, and the Tragedy of 1914: Multipolarity, Perceptions, and the Tragedy of 1914
In "Does Chain-Ganging Cause the Outbreak of War," Dominic Tierney critiques our work on alliance politics in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Tierney incorrectly ascribes to us a theory about the outbreak of conflict based on a "chain-ganging theory" in which war occurs because states become so tightly tied to their allies that they lose volition and find themselves in conflicts not of their own choosing. In fact, we do not try…
Spirals, Security, and Stability in East Asia
April 01 2000 Spirals, Security, and Stability in East Asia Jennifer M. Lind, Jennifer M. Lind Doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science and the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Thomas J. Christensen Thomas J. Christensen Associate Professor of Political Science and a member of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts …
Mutually Assured Disruption: Globalization, Security, and the Dangers of Decoupling
The evolution of transnational production in the Asia-Pacific over the past few decades has been a force for peace. Critics of globalization and proponents of US-China economic decoupling advocate policies that would not only harm the global economy but would increase the likelihood of military conflict. This article focuses on the national security benefits of US-China economic engagement and the regional economic integration of East Asia. Gover…
Worse Than a Monolith: Disorganization and Rivalry within Asian Communist Alliances and U.S. Containment Challenges, 1949–69
This article makes the counterintuitive argument that in the first two decades of the Cold War the communist alliance in East Asia was easiest for the United States and its allies to contain through coercive diplomacy during the period in which the communist alliance was most cohesive and unified under Soviet leadership (1954–57). With a focus on the Korean War and two Indochina Wars, this article shows how internal problems in the communist alli…
Power and Resolve in U.S. China Policy
October 01 2001 Power and Resolve in U.S. China Policy Peter Hays Gries, Peter Hays Gries Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Thomas J. Christensen Thomas J. Christensen Associate Professor of Political Science and a member of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Search for other works by this author …
Posing Problems without Catching up: China's Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy
Chain gangs and passed bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity
Contemporary balance-of-power theory has become too parsimonious to yield determinate predictions about state alliance strategies in multipolarity. Kenneth Waltz's theory predicts only that multipolarity predisposes states to either of two opposite errors, which this article characterizes as chain-ganging and buck-passing. To predict which of these two policies will prevail, it is necessary to complicate Waltz's theory by adding a variable from R…
Mobilization and Inadvertence in the July Crisis
Threats, Assurances, and the Last Chance for Peace: The Lessons of Mao's Korean War Telegrams
China Diplomacy: The Washington-Taipei-Beijing Triangle
Chinese Realpolitik
Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947-1958
This book provides a new analysis of why relations between the United States and the Chinese Communists were so hostile in the first decade of the Cold War. Employing extensive documentation, it offers a fresh approach to long-debated questions such as why Truman refused to recognize the Chinese Communists, why the United States aided Chiang Kai-shek's KMT on Taiwan, why the Korean War escalated into a Sino-American conflict, and why Mao shelled …
Perceptions and alliances in Europe, 1865–1940
While some structural realists and their liberal and institutionalist critics continue to fight a high-profile battle about the fundamental nature of international politics, a quieter discussion is progressing about how to integrate various aspects of realist thinking into a more coherent approach to security politics. The goal of this discussion is to marry the two major strands of contemporary realist thought: balance-of-power theory and securi…
Progressive Research on Degenerate Alliances
Our article (1990) on alliance dynamics in multipolarity, which John Vasquez criticizes, differs from some neorealist approaches by incorporating variables from the theory of the security dilemma, including perceptual factors. Nonetheless, our argument meets Imre Lakatos's criteria for a progressive problem shift insofar as it explains more than the original theory, does so parsimoniously, has been successfully applied to new domains, and does no…
China, the U.S.-Japan Alliance, and the Security Dilemma in East Asia
April 01 1999 China, the U.S.-Japan Alliance, and the Security Dilemma in East Asia Thomas J. Christensen Thomas J. Christensen Thomas J. Christensen is Associate Professor of Political Science and a member of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is author of Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947-1958 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996).…
Spirals, Security, and Stability in East Asia
April 01 2000 Spirals, Security, and Stability in East Asia Jennifer M. Lind, Jennifer M. Lind Doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science and the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Thomas J. Christensen Thomas J. Christensen Associate Professor of Political Science and a member of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts …
Theater missile defense and taiwan’s security
Posing Problems Without Catching Up: China's Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy
International Security - Volume 25, Number 4, Spring 2001
Power and Resolve in U.S. China Policy
October 01 2001 Power and Resolve in U.S. China Policy Peter Hays Gries, Peter Hays Gries Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Thomas J. Christensen Thomas J. Christensen Associate Professor of Political Science and a member of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Search for other works by this author …
Posing Problems without Catching up: China's Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy
The contemporary security dilemma: Deterring a Taiwan conflict
Successful deterrence requires both threats and assurances about the conditionality of those threats. The real security dilemma is how to be tough enough without being overly provocative. Deterrence across the Taiwan Strait is possible, but not simple. Here's how
Worse Than a Monolith: Disorganization and Rivalry within Asian Communist Alliances and U.S. Containment Challenges, 1949–69
This article makes the counterintuitive argument that in the first two decades of the Cold War the communist alliance in East Asia was easiest for the United States and its allies to contain through coercive diplomacy during the period in which the communist alliance was most cohesive and unified under Soviet leadership (1954–57). With a focus on the Korean War and two Indochina Wars, this article shows how internal problems in the communist alli…
Fostering Stability or Creating a Monster? The Rise of China and U.S. Policy toward East Asia
This article explores two starkly contrasting analytic approaches to assessing the performance of U.S. security strategy in East Asia since 1991: a positivesum approach, emphasizing the danger of security dilemmas and spirals of tension, and a zero-sum approach, emphasizing power competition and the long-term dangers posed by China's rise. In the policy world, the differences between these apparently irreconcilable perspectives are not so clear. …
Shaping the Choices of a Rising China: Recent Lessons for the Obama Administration
President Barack Obama ran a successful campaign on the theme of change. Yet, for addressing what is perhaps the greatest long-term strategic challenge facing the United States—managing U.S. relati
Worse Than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia
In brute-force struggles for survival, such as the two world wars, disorganization and divisions within an enemy alliance are to one's own advantage. However, most international security politics involve coercive diplomacy and negotiations short of all-out war. This book demonstrates that when states are engaged in coercive diplomacy—combining threats and assurances to influence the behavior of real or potential adversaries—divisions, rivalries, …
Worse Than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia
Multipolarity, Perceptions, and the Tragedy of 1914: Multipolarity, Perceptions, and the Tragedy of 1914
In "Does Chain-Ganging Cause the Outbreak of War," Dominic Tierney critiques our work on alliance politics in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Tierney incorrectly ascribes to us a theory about the outbreak of conflict based on a "chain-ganging theory" in which war occurs because states become so tightly tied to their allies that they lose volition and find themselves in conflicts not of their own choosing. In fact, we do not try…
The Meaning of the Nuclear Evolution: China's Strategic Modernization and US-China Security Relations
Will China's development of a new generation of nuclear weapons impact US-China security relations in important ways? One's answer depends on how one views the following: whether or not Chinese leaders believe that they are only now acquiring a secure second strike capability; the scope of coercive power that secure second strike capability provides to conventionally inferior actors; the meaning of China's ‘No First Use’ Doctrine; and the prospec…
Mutually Assured Disruption: Globalization, Security, and the Dangers of Decoupling
The evolution of transnational production in the Asia-Pacific over the past few decades has been a force for peace. Critics of globalization and proponents of US-China economic decoupling advocate policies that would not only harm the global economy but would increase the likelihood of military conflict. This article focuses on the national security benefits of US-China economic engagement and the regional economic integration of East Asia. Gover…
Political science (21 works) · Law (18 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Politics (13 works) · China (9 works) · Economics (9 works) · Political economy (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Sociology (8 works)