Scott D. McDonald
Introduction
This project is based on the premise that to understand policy, we must understand how those making policy think. “Walking a mile in another man’s shoes” is not enough, we must try to see the world through the eyes of the decision-makers we aim to understand. Therefore, in asking how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) views security, we are neither trying to calculate force ratios nor analyze equipment. Rather, we are exploring the ends to which those items are employed and how those ends are conceived by the leadership in Beijing.
Moreover, simply defining “security” is insufficient. If the goal is to understand how a state will craft policy, we must start from the conceptual foundations of its leaders and build up to the environment in which those concepts are applied. Consequently, our workshop was organized from the foundation up. We began by exploring the ideational sources of strategic thinking in the PRC to understand how policy makers conceive the world. From this basis, we then attempted to identify what the leadership considers to be their interests. This forms the basis of what the state will seek to pursue and protect. Once the interests are defined, it is possible to look for threats to those interests. However, even after dealing with threats, a state rarely feels completely secure. One of the ways it attempts to find security is by shaping the international environment to fit its concept of security. Once that is done, it is possible to consider the role a state would like in that world: one may feel secure enough to emulate Lichtenstein or chose to arm to the teeth and seek hegemony. States may answer these questions differently, and how they do will influence the policies chosen.
No comments:
Post a Comment