Partners Choice In America Integrating U.S.-Japan-Australia-India Security Cooperation

This thesis not only aims at probing the reason that why US select Japan, Australia and India as its partners to push forward the multilateral security cooperation policies in Asia Pacific, but also tries to do researches on the general policies which integrate US-Japan-Australia-India Security Cooperation. For this point, this paper constructs a theoretical frame about how U.S selects security cooperation partners, which contains four components of selective standards and three policy-making modes propeling the selection. Firstly, from the basic grand strategy principle and the international regime theory, four factors should be taken into consideration when choosing cooperative partners:(1) Cooperative partner's capacity should be compatible with the intensity and functional mode of emerging threat. The functional mode of emerging threat refers to which field of international issues the threats lie in and how they influence the interest of the states. The intensity of emerging threat defines the level of national interest which is divided into secondary interest, significant interest and vital interest. The intensity of emerging threat is determined by offensive capacity and defensive intention. According to the different combinations of the capacity and intention, threat intensity is commonly distinguished as explicit and ambiguous. The former means threatens indicate explicit interest level under clear offensive power and intention. The latter means hard to determine the gains and loss, for the reason that one is without threaten intention, but possess or might possess offensive capacity (2) The partners should have consensus on interests with U.S under the framework of cooperation. They should not only share consensus on threat cognition but also on wide range of interests beyond threat. (3)U.S. should be the center of institutional cooperation, which means its partners should have better relationships with U.S than among themselves. (4) The partners should share the same values with U.S.Under these assumptions above, with a hypothesis that U.S treats "China Rising" as threat, this thesis analyzes the capacity of U.S.-Japan -Australia- India Security Cooperation will be compatible with the intensity and functional mode of China threat, thereby analyzes the foundation that U.S integrate U.S.-Japan -Australia- India Security Cooperation. This thesis also unfolds the motivation of the other three nations which initiated by U.S through the analysis of soften security dilemma and joint interests, such as cooperation in the Asia region, untraditional security threats, economic trade. Lastly illustrating the reason that U.S dominated position cannot be constrained within or beyond the mechanism itself, in the views of strategy, geography, and history. And briefly mention the common values shared by the four states, thus analyze the premises of U.S dominate position. In addition, the thesis concludes three policy-making modes which, specifically, include strategic capacity, transparent and diverse coordinative mechanisms and U.S dominated cooperative network to describe the process that U.S integrates cooperative partners, when it constructs international security mechanisms. Under the perspectives of this three policy mode, the thesis sorts out the policies of U.S which relate to U.S.-Japan-Australia- India Security Cooperation and reflect the original progress of this cooperative frame. Therefore, in the future, certain explicit, cohesive and integrated cooperative policy system have the possibility to be cultivated and derived from U.S.-Japan -Australia- India Security Cooperation.