Japan’s Status-Driven Restraint Despite Racial Humiliation, 1921-1936 (forthcoming, The Journal of American-East Asian Relations)

According to recent research on the intersection of rising powers and race, a combination of a rising power’s pursuit of status and its encounter with the racial hierarchy at the international level does not bode well, for such moments are assumed to drive a rising power to be more aggressive. But Japan’s continued commitment to the Washington naval system from 1921-1930 even after racially humiliating moments in 1919 and 1924 is inconsistent with this conventional wisdom. Why was Japan willing to concede to the inferior naval ratio despite racial humiliation? I argue that Japan’s orthodox foreign policy idea prioritized its higher civilizational status relative to both the white great powers and the rest of Asia and generated elite consensus among civilian and military leaders on the trade-off between a higher status and decreased military capabilities. Japan’s status-driven restraint lasted until the political-economic consequences of the Showa Depression of 1930-1931 massively disappointed social expectations and brought about the collapse of the orthodox foreign policy idea and the elite consensus. In other words, I argue that the effect of racialized moments on a rising power is not linear but filtered through the dominant foreign policy idea and domestic elite consensus.

Why in the Upper Nile but Not in West Africa? Britain’s Atypical Preventive War Motivation, the Contagion Effect, and the Fashoda Crisis Revisited, 1882–1898 (under review)

While the existing literature on the Fashoda crisis largely focuses on why the Fashoda crisis was peacefully solved, few research examines the Fashoda crisis in light of the leading sea power’s atypical preventive war motivation in the periphery during a naval arms race. Consequently, none of the previous research can explain why Britain signed the Anglo-French convention of June 1898 over Niger in West Africa but was on the verge of fighting a war against France over the Upper Nile in October 1898. In this paper, drawing on my novel mid-range theory, An Interactive Theory of Power Projection, I argue that the geographical direction of a naval challenger’s power projection as well as the leading sea power’s expectation about its contagion effect on the first line of naval defense in the peripheral theater are key variables that account for the variation in the leading sea power’s resolve to use force in the peripheral theater during a naval arms race and unpack why Britain invoked a preventive war against France over the Upper Nile but not in West Africa. In doing so, I also offer a compelling answer as to why Britain had an atypical preventive war motivation in the first place despite France’s consistent inability to close the naval power gap.