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This thesis examines America's post-Cold War relations with China in the context of the neoliberal vs. neorealist debate. It concludes that neorealism - the dominant school of thought in the international relations literature - is incapable of explaining America's response to China's rise in the post-Cold War era. Because America was the leading global power and China was its most obvious potential rival, a neorealist theory that prioritized the distribution of relative power would anticipate this relationship to be a most-likely case for American policymakers to pursue containment and prioritize relative gains. However, I leverage insights from more than 100 personal interviews to demonstrate that in reality American leaders have overwhelmingly preferred a strategy of neoliberal engagement with China that has remained decidedly positive-sum in nature. My explanation for this consistent, bipartisan preference is that American policymakers have not adopted the neorealist assumption that conflict is inevitable between existing and rising great powers. As a result, policymakers have not focused exclusively on how to minimize the relative costs of a potential conflict with China by trying to contain China's relative power and limit America' exposure to China (as they did with the Soviet Union in the Cold War). Instead, policymakers have subscribed to the neoliberal belief that conflict can be avoided, and that increasing engagement and interdependence is the best strategy to maintain peace. They have pursued this strategy despite acknowledging that engagement and interdependence have increased the costs of a potential conflict by helping to facilitate China's rise in both an absolute and relative sense, and by increasing America's exposure to China. This thesis helps to define the differences between hedging and containing strategies. It argues that while relative material power is often important in deciding whether to hedge or not hedge, these purely material calculations play no role in decisions of whether to pursue containment or engagement. Instead, the decision to contain or not hinges on the target state's behavior and what that reveals about the regime's underlying intentions. Within this new framework, I argue that American policymakers' strategy has been to engage China economically while simultaneously hedging militarily. Furthermore, to the extent that American policymakers have expressed increased concerns about China in recent years, this has been primarily a consequence of China's increased assertiveness - not changes in its relative power.

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During World War II, the United States had worked in a multilateral fashion with Great Britain and the Soviet Union to form the victorious "Big Three." The countries were optimistic that the peace they had achieved would be sustainable. However, after the Cold War began, the United States backed away from opportunities to work multilaterally; instead, working unilaterally to spread democracy and other principles around the globe. On many occasions, the United States has chosen to take action alone, leaving it isolated from other countries. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the bipolar system, the United States has sought superpower status and has sought to become a global hegemon on many fronts. Issues such as ideology and human rights have created tension in U.S. bilateral relations, notably with Russia, China, and France. While headway has been made to reduce tension since the Cold War, other issues have prevented the complete alleviation of tension in U.S. foreign relations with the three countries. The United States' pursuit of hegemonic status employing a unilateral approach and isolationist strategy has resulted in much of the tension seen today. While there are many examples, the most prominent example is that of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. This and several other issues are addressed in the evolution of U.S. foreign policy after the Cold War with Russia, China, and France.

The evolution of the People's Republic of China's Latin American policy from Mao to Deng consists of four stages: (1) communist internationalism, (2) revolutionary policy, (3) government contacts and peaceful co-existence, and (4) independent and open policy. Besides explaining the meaning of each policy and its execution, this study identifies the key elements--domestic and external--which characterize the policy evolution, and compares those elements in an explication of why Sino-Latin American relations under Deng's regime appear more active than those of Mao's regime. The policies of Mao and Deng differ in the greater emphasis of Deng on the content of government contacts and his greater concern with economic relations, in contrast to the political motivation of Mao.

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This thesis examines the deep bilateral tensions surrounding the East China Sea (ECS) disagreements between Japan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the period from August 19th 2003 to June 18th 2008 from an actor-centred constructivist liberal viewpoint. The East China Sea disputes could be described as a conflicting difference of opinion over a) the demarcation of maritime territory and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) in which potentially significant energy deposits exist and b) the ownership of the strategically important and historically sensitive Pinnacle (Senkaku/Diaoyu) Islands. This research addresses the question of why, given the fact that China and Japan have a strong interest in co-operation and stable relations with each other, small incidents in the ECS blow up into larger problems, cause approaches to the East China Sea to wax and wane, and move the relationship in a direction that goes against preferred national objectives? In attempting to unravel this puzzle, this work argues that domestic politics and popular negative sentiment have been the major issues that have greatly amplified and politicised the ECS problems and have significantly affected positive progress in negotiations aimed at managing and stabilising these disputes. By examining these, the thesis addresses the question of why China and Japan have been so constrained in their attempts to find a workable bilateral agreement over disputed energy resources and demarcation in the East China Sea. It also indirectly deals with the question of why the conflicting legal complexities surrounding these disagreements contributed to both states so fervently maintaining and defending their claims.