Rethinking the Pacific

Have you noticed how academics specializing in British or American foreign policy are considered generalists while specialists on Chinese or Japanese foreign policy are considered 'mere' practitioners of area studies? Is it not curious when supposed journals of International Relations (like this one) have special numbers on balance of power theory and rarely draw examples from East Asia? This myopic mid-Atlanticism among students of International Relations reaches 'down' to the media world: how many realize that the majority of the troop cuts announced by Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1988 are coming from Asia.