This paper examines China’s strategic response to the Japan–South Korea entente within the broader context of US-led trilateral security cooperation since the 2010s. Rather than employing conventional wedge strategies such as selective accommodation and coercion, China has pursued a ‘soft wedging’ approach, leveraging rhetoric to subtly reinforce pre-existing divisions without direct intervention. This strategy seeks to discourage South Korea from deepening its alignment with Japan and the United States while minimising the risk of alienating either Japan or South Korea. Drawing on official materials and expert interviews, this study analyses China’s rhetorical tactics in public statements and diplomatic engagements, along with the strategic calculus underpinning its preference for soft wedging. By providing an alternative to more resource-intensive and risk-prone measures, soft wedging broadens the existing theoretical framework of wedge strategies. The empirical analysis further deepens our understanding of multi-target wedging dynamics and China’s strategic objectives in Northeast Asia’s evolving security landscape.

What factors make aligned relationships possible, and how can we account for transformation of alignments? Alignment patterns and the durability of some aligned relationships above others have often raised questions about factors that influence cooperative arrangements. This article makes a twofold contribution by proposing a tentative process-centred alignment typology as an analytical tool and by empirically applying this tool to examine Sino–Russian alignment (1991–2024). Our conceptual typology differentiates among six primary alignment types: thin strategic partnerships, coalitions, thick strategic partnerships, alliances, non-allied security communities, and allied security communities. We propose that these types become possible due to varying compatibility between prospective or existing alignment partners in their assessment of threats, interpretations of identities, and status expectations. Our empirical analysis focuses on specific upgrades in the Sino–Russian relationship as presented by both states in 1996, 2001, 2011, and 2021 while also discussing more recent developments after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

This study examines how partner repeatedness drives alliance reconfiguration. Using data on 571 fund products initiated by 58 Chinese fund firms from 2007 to 2011, our results indicate that higher levels of partner repeatedness drive firms to reconfigure their alliance by re-introducing previous partners (those that have collaborated with the focal firm in the past, but not currently), rather than dropping active partners or introducing new ones, in an attempt to retain the positive aspects and mitigate the negative effects of partner repeatedness. However, resource richness and firms' centrality in their industries play a key moderating role, as these factors affect the perceived efficacy of the reconfiguration strategies at firms' disposal.

The existing literature offers contrasting views on the causes and effects of non-aggression pacts. Some scholars contend that these agreements impose audience costs that prevent an ongoing rivalry from escalating to war. Others claim that states use non-aggression pacts to signal to others that their rivalry is over and that their future relations will be peaceful. Scholars disagree as to the impact non-aggression pacts have on violent conflict. I demonstrate that various definitional and coding issues beset the literature, resulting in the incorporation of many agreements that should not be considered as non-aggression pacts. I then make a threefold argument about non-aggression pacts. First, non-aggression pacts came into being in the 1920s amid emerging norms proscribing interstate warfare. Second, they saw frequent use in interstate Europe. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union used them to manipulate those norms so as to make themselves appear more acceptable despite their revisionism. Finally, many friendship treaties, which have been miscast as non-aggression pacts, are a separate type of agreement that became common among those post-colonial states that acquired independence during and immediately after the Cold War. Timeless arguments regarding non-aggression pacts thus reify these agreements and overlook key motives behind their use.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has made strengthening the alliance relationship with the United States a key part of his foreign policy positions. At the same time, South Korea continues to maintain a decent relationship with China, pursuing a precarious position to decide its role in the context of the growing US–China rivalry. The US has made the trilateral cooperation and close coordination among the US, South Korea, and Japan the centerpiece of its Indo-Pacific strategy, while South Korea and Japan have maintained their contentious relationship. The articles in this special issue address the challenges that South Korea faces today, focusing on two major themes in the contemporary era: first, how the US–China rivalry and power competition affect South Korea’s security and economic foreign policies, and second, how the bilateral tensions between South Korea and Japan affect regional security and alliance capabilities.

The US has declared its intent to strategically compete with the rising power of China on all fronts. However, Washington’s overt extension of US–China rivalry into the ideological realm presents unique challenges to its Indo-Pacific order-building process. The balance of threat theory provides a useful conceptual toolkit to unravel the case of the geostrategic positioning of South Korea, which is a close US ally and already engaged in a delicate balancing act between the US and China, to set the stage for a deeper examination of how the strategic community within South Korea views America’s augmented policy of resisting “authoritarianism” and national debates on the prospect of an ideational “threat” from China. It then contemplates how policymakers in South Korea could respond to the new challenges this raises, concluding that the advent of an intensified values competition requires further finessing of their already delicate balancing act.

In this study, we examine South Korea's foreign policy strategy in the context of the increasing strategic rivalry between the United States and China. We ask why South Korea is relatively hesitant to actively balance against China, especially compared to other US allies like Japan. We present a theory that examines how the lack of territorial and maritime disputes between a US ally and China affects an ally's foreign policy strategy in the US–China rivalry, to explain the case of South Korea. In general, when a US ally is engaged in an ongoing, active territorial and/or maritime dispute with China, we expect the US ally to more actively help the US balance against China. Because bilateral relations between the US ally and China are already tense, the US ally can afford to side with the US without being as vulnerable to Chinese retaliation. On the other hand, when a US ally has no ongoing, active territorial and/or maritime dispute with China, the US ally is expected to be more cautious in siding with the US against China because doing so can provoke China to retaliate in ways more costly than if they already had ongoing disputes. We find that without ongoing, active disputes with China, South Korea is more vulnerable to retaliation by China through critical issues like North Korea and trade. As a result, it is difficult for South Korea to side with the US in actively balancing against China.

South Korea and Japan have maintained tense bilateral relations over their unresolved historical and territorial disputes for decades. The US has repeatedly called for improved relations between South Korea and Japan and underlined the importance of US–South Korea–Japan trilateral relations to address North Korean threats and regional security challenges. Would we, then, expect the US to play a role in helping to mediate South Korea–Japan problems? If so, under what conditions and to what extent would the US get involved in South Korea–Japan disputes? If not, what makes the US hesitate to do so? We argue that US involvement in South Korea–Japan bilateral relations depends on the degree to which the US perceives the tensions as costly and risky for US national security interests. With an issues-based analysis, a granular examination of South Korea–Japan trade disputes and the spat over the GSOMIA in 2019, and qualitative interviews with former US government and military officials, we find that the US is more likely to involve itself in South Korea–Japan relations and more likely to use its leverage as a major power with its allies when it perceives significant risks to its capabilities to address security challenges, primarily those posed by North Korea.

Despite being ubiquitously used, the concept of alignment remains inchoate. Existing literature offers more than 30 interpretations of the term and very few attempts to develop an objective indicators-based metric of alignment. This state of the field makes assessments of the degree to which states are aligned problematic. This article systematises the theoretical knowledge about alliances, alignments, strategic partnerships, and other forms of cooperation and draws on some empirical observations to develop a ‘stadial model of alignment formation’ (SMAF). The model conceptualises, operationalises, measures, and explains interstate alignment with greater precision and consistency. It also includes the explanatory factors in the form of the three balances – the balance of power, the balance of threat, and the balance of interest – and connections between them located along the stages of alignment formation. As such, the SMAF framework gauges the relative scale and depth of strategic alignments and can facilitate comparative analysis.

Ananya Dance Theatre generates a framework for “contemporary dance” as choreography which enacts its solidarity with the land of Native peoples. Artistic director Ananya Chatterjea mobilizes her contemporary aesthetic, “Yorchhā,” through the company's alliance with Indigenous peoples’ worldviews on land and water protection, especially through their relations with Dakota and Anishinaabe persons. Dance analysis of the pieces “Moreechika: Season of Mirage” (2012), “Shaatranga: Women Weaving Worlds” (2018), and “Shyamali: Sprouting Words” (2017) shapes contemporary dance through its engagement with Native persons’ caretaking labor for the environment and the position of these relations in the choreography. A practice of humility emerges as the cornerstone of solidarity in contemporary dance due to the necessity for longstanding Native invitation and engagement, Indigenous narratives and embodiment in the dance pieces, and lessons learned from the pitfalls in intersecting techniques such as Ananya Dance Theatre's with Native people's lifeways and knowledges.