Keywords
China rising, Sino-US relations, North Korean threats, nationalism, territorial and maritime disputes
INTRODUCTION
Aside from the North Korean nuclear issue, security conditions in Northeast Asia up to late 2009 were more favorable than at any time in the post-Cold War era. The prevailing opinion of analysts was that a stable, peaceable, and cooperative mood would prevail for a considerable amount of time. Such hopes, however, were proven premature when a series of North Korean provocations in 2010 highlighted the stark distance between two aspects of regional relations. On the one hand, Northeast Asia is becoming increasingly economically integrated, as …