Abstract
Under what conditions would a great power adopt a general strategy or selective strategies towards multiple weaker targets? This article seeks to answer the question through conceptual, theoretical, and empirical contributions. First, the essay discusses the conceptual significance of general and selective strategies in multilateral asymmetry. Second, the conventional wisdom suggests that external threats and domestic politics explain a great power’s foreign policy. Such theories may indeed explain certain types of foreign policy, but this article raises a structural theory to account for a great power’s multilateral asymmetric strategies, wherein regional structures and alignment relationships best explain the particular type of a great power’s foreign conduct. Third, the essay challenges the conventional wisdom whereby US–Soviet bipolarity in Cold War Europe was applicable to Cold War Asia. Based upon newly available Chinese, Russian, and American archives, China’s consistent behaviour in maritime East Asia and Indochina (1949–1982) demonstrates the virtues of a structural theory, and exposes the limits of alternative explanations.
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