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Journal of Global Security Studies, 0(0), 2019, 1–9
doi: 10.1093/jogss/ogz024
Research Article

US Bias in the Study of Asian Security: Using

Europe to Study Asia
David C. Kang and Alex Yu-Ting Lin
University of Southern California

Abstract
Scholars have been particularly hampered in their explanations and understanding of Asian security
because they often learn little about Asia in their graduate training. The international relations (IR)
literature draws an overwhelming proportion of its empirical source material from the European his-
torical experience. We show that the curricula and training that graduate students of international
relations receive in the United States are overwhelmingly focused on European examples. In short,
the median American scholar of IR is deeply comfortable with European examples and analogies and
has almost no exposure to Asian examples and history. Thus, when faced with Asian examples, they
are considered within the context they are taught: through the European lens. We conclude with a call
for greater attention to the empirical reality that is Asia.

Keywords: international security, US bias, Asian international relations

Introduction and the Puzzle research. This is topical given many of the most impor-
tant international security issues are widely considered
In a survey of scholars of international relations (IR) pub-
to come from Asia: possible US-China competition, if not
lished in 2012, 76 percent of US respondents named Asia
conflict; a second Korean war over North Korea’s nuclear
as the area of the world that will be the most important to
programs; or war over the South China Sea.
their country in twenty years (TRIP Project 2012). How-
To this end, we investigate whether there is an inher-
ever, only 13 percent of the respondents said Asia is the
ent bias in how US universities train PhD students. We
main region of their focus. There is clearly a major dis-
examine the syllabi of core IR seminars at forty-two PhD
connect between the recognition that Asia is increasingly
programs in the United States. Revealing as publication
becoming important and the lack of expertise on Asia it-
trends may be, they provide only one perspective on bias:
self. Is this defensible on theoretical or methodological
frequency at which Asia is discussed. Syllabus design for
grounds?
core IR seminars and graduate training provides another
In this article, we focus on the attention that has been
perspective on potential bias: how Asia is discussed. In-
paid to Asia in American IR. We argue that attention is
structors need to choose readings carefully because space
more than just “how much are we talking about Asia?”;
is limited, so they need to focus on scholarship that can be
there is also a qualitative component: “how are we talk-
considered as general or widely applicable, as opposed to
ing about Asia?” The systematic lack of general knowl-
issue- or region-specific. If scholarship is taught in a core
edge about Asia has clear implications for the accuracy
IR seminar, it is a costly endorsement from the instructor
of scholarly research (Kang 2003a; Acharya and Buzan
that it contains the most important and general knowl-
2007; Johnston 2012), although that is not the focus of
edge. Put differently, syllabi design provides one measure
this article. We focus on attention and briefly discuss how
of the extent to which a piece of scholarship is making an
this lack of attention affects the accuracy of scholarly

Kang, David C., and Alex Yu-Ting Lin. (2019) US Bias in the Study of Asian Security: Using Europe to Study Asia. Journal of Global Security Studies,
doi: 10.1093/jogss/ogz024
© The Author(s) (2019). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail:
journals.permissions@oup.com
2 US Bias in the Study of Asian Security
impact on the discipline at large. Furthermore, for a PhD
student who does not specialize in Asia, the core seminar
may be the only venue through which he or she could
gain exposure to the region. Given that there is a grow-
ing consensus that Asia will be increasingly important in
the future, the results of our analysis will help evaluate
whether graduate students are equipped with the empiri-
cal and theoretical knowledge that is necessary for assess-
ing whether conventional wisdoms in IR are truly appli-
cable to Asia.
We find that readings derived from the European ex-
perience dominate graduate syllabi. Most significantly,
we find that 29 percent of the readings use examples
solely drawn from Europe, whereas 0 percent of the read-
ings use examples solely drawn from Asia. These re-
sults suggest that there is an inherent bias that influences
the standards with which US academics evaluate “gen-
eral knowledge” or “core IR scholarship.” All else being
equal, it is easier for scholarship that solely uses Euro-
pean examples to be considered general knowledge com-
pared to scholarship that solely uses examples from Asia.
Thus, by the time scholars finish their doctorates and
begin their life as professional scholars, their intellectual
world has already been imbued with examples, stylized
facts, and case studies in which Europe is simply the de-
fault region from which to draw inspiration and lessons.
As such, we would submit that the median American IR
scholar knows more about Europe than about Asia and
hence is more comfortable debating and theorizing about
Europe than about Asia.
This type of education leads to different requirements
for publishing about Asia in top journals: the relative
paucity of deep knowledge about Asia means that there is
less conventional wisdom about the region, and, indeed,
conventional wisdom is often precisely what needs to be
subjected to careful scrutiny and, perhaps, discarded. But
the lack of general knowledge about Asia also means the
prospective author must often spend much more time
providing background or descriptive information to set
up the puzzle or the argument. This subsequently means
that there is less room for theory-building and innovative
empirical work. This lack of general knowledge makes
it harder to publish about Asia in top IR journals, as
Hundley, Kenzer, and Peterson (2015) have suggested.
We define this as an “American” bias for the simple
fact that we are exploring how top PhD programs in
the United States train the next generation of IR schol-
ars. Many of the students in these programs are from
countries other than the United States, and indeed many
of the faculty in these programs may be from other
countries, too. Yet, rather than incorporating the rich
regional knowledge that foreign students or academics
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could bring to the table, our analysis suggests that there
is a tendency for the US academia to assimilate and pro-
fessionalize them into a worldview that privileges the
European experience.
Operationalization of Concepts and
Methodology
Indeed, defining regions is a difficult process. However,
as a working definition, we define “Asia” and “Europe”
based on the United Nations’ (UN) categorization of re-
gional groups, which is based on the extent to which
countries share common interests and goals (United
Nations 2014). Asia corresponds to the UN’s “Asia Pa-
cific” category, which includes Northeast Asia and South-
east Asia.1 Europe includes the “Western European and
others” and “Eastern European” categories. The number
of countries in Asia (N = 53) and Europe (N = 52) are
roughly equal.
Our variable of interest, attention, can be concep-
tualized in two ways: how much is Asia discussed and
how is Asia discussed? Previous research has shown that
East Asia is severely underrepresented in publication pat-
terns. Hundley, Kenzer, and Peterson (2015) report that
51 percent of the publications in twelve top IR journals
use examples from the United States, Western Europe,
or Canada, whereas 12 percent of the publications use
examples from East Asia. We replicated this study by
searching the titles of publications in eight top IR jour-
nals from 1980 to 2018 based on the regional definitions
we stated above. Figure 1 presents the results.
Yet, our syllabi measure offers two advantages over
publication trends. First, as noted earlier, being placed
in the syllabi of core IR seminars means that a piece
of scholarship is considered “mainstream” and “must-
know for all students,” as opposed to being “area stud-
ies.” Getting assigned in core IR seminars across the
United States can be a much harder hurdle to clear than
being published in top journals, as the former implies
that a piece of scholarship has gained wide acceptance
from instructors from various intellectual traditions and
regional expertise. Conversely, if a piece of scholarship
is published in a top journal but does not receive such
wide acceptance, then one might say that the piece con-
tains high quality content but has yet to be recognized
beyond the subfield it addresses. If there is a systematic
1 Notable countries include China, Japan, South Korea,
India, Indonesia, Iran, Philippines, Pakistan, Iraq, and
Afghanistan. For the complete listing, please refer to
United Nations Regional Groups website (United Nations
2014).
DAVID C. KANG AND ALEX YU-TING LIN
Journal of Peace Research
39
Journal of Conflict Resoluon 58
12
European Journal of Internaonal Relaons
14
World Polics
American Polical Science Review
Internaonal Studies Quarterly 64
22
Internaonal Security 18
37
Internaonal Organizaon
24
Figure 1. Publications on Europe vs. Asia, 1980 to 2018
failure to recognize a particular set of publications, such
as scholarship on Asia, that would be evidence for bias
in disciplinary practices such as the demarcation line be-
tween general knowledge and area studies.
Second, given the growing consensus that Asia will
be increasingly important in the future, our measure pro-
vides leverage for assessing how Asia is discussed. Funda-
mentally, proper assessment of whether existing theories
generalize to a region must be grounded in robust com-
mand of empirical knowledge of that region and prior
theoretical debates that have unfolded among scholars
focusing on that region. Thus, examining graduate syl-
labi allows us to measure the extent to which graduate
training in the United States is preparing PhD students
to assess whether existing theoretical predictions in IR,
typically derived from the European experience, are con-
sistent with the empirical reality in Asia. That Asia is not
receiving attention in the frequency sense, as reflected in
things such as publication patterns, is a problem. How-
ever, the most problematic kind of bias is when issues
such as China’s rise are indeed being intensely debated,
but the initial parameters of these debates, and the theo-
ries and empirical evidence being marshaled to evaluate
these debates, are largely dominated by the European ex-
perience. This is not to say that only experience from Asia
can lead to knowledge-accumulation about Asia, but it is
to say that knowledge of both Europe and Asia are re-
quired to allow for optimal theoretical assessment.
Yet, it is fair to be skeptical whether this condition is
being met. As noted earlier, only 13 percent of the Teach-
ing, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) respon-
dents claim that Asia is their regional focus, but we also
know that issues such as China’s rise will typically ap-
3
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Europe Asia
64
65
597
354
731
225
98
pear at least once during the semester in most of the core
seminars around the United States. As we show in a later
section, there is emerging scholarship that offers prelimi-
nary evidence suggesting that Eurocentric theories do not
generalize very well to Asia. If PhD students are generally
not exposed to the arguments advanced by scholarship of
this kind in core seminars, then we have reasons for con-
cern whether there is a high probability for flying blind.
We build on the dataset that Colgan (2016) compiled
for evaluating graduate training in the United States.
This dataset contains the most recent syllabi of core IR
seminars from forty-two PhD-granting universities in the
United States. The units of analysis are articles, books, or
book chapters. There are 3,343 observations, as a reading
may be assigned multiple times (Colgan 2016, 489). Col-
gan identifies a smaller subset, 235 readings, that appear
on the syllabi of at least three of the forty-two universities
covered. They represent roughly 40 percent of all read-
ings assigned. We use this subset for our analysis, as these
are the readings that are considered core scholarship that
best reflect disciplinary assignment trends.
We hand-coded all articles into five categories: Europe
only, Europe and Asia, Asia only, neither, or critique of
American IR. We code an article as Europe only if it only
uses empirical examples from Europe as illustrative case
studies or to explain the construction of variables. This
means extensive discussion (for example, see Christensen
and Snyder 1990) and not just passing reference. The
same standard applies to Asia only. We code an article
as Europe and Asia if the article uses both European and
Asian examples. For instance, in “Rationalist Explana-
tions for War,” Fearon (1995) uses examples from Eu-
rope and the Russo-Japanese War. Our decision to not
4 US Bias in the Study of Asian Security
put articles like these into the Asia only or Europe only
category is to avoid the criticism that we may be sub-
jective in our interpretation of which region is the main
focus when both European and Asian examples appear.
We should note that our coding of Europe includes en-
tries that discuss United States and Russia. We made deci-
sions for coding depending on which country the United
States or Russia interacted with. For example, in all but
one entry, Russia (the Soviet Union) is mentioned in rela-
tion to Europe, usually in the context of World War I or
World War II. Thus, mentions of Russia that focused on
its interactions with Europe were coded as Europe.
A reading is coded as neither if it does not refer to
empirical examples from Europe or Asia. It is important
to note that the majority of entries in this category are
constituted by readings that utilize cross-national quan-
titative methods. In addition, if a reading makes a passing
reference to Europe or Asia, instead of using regional ex-
amples extensively, we also code it as neither. We are thus
perhaps overly cautious. Our caution, however, probably
understates the potential bias. If we also coded readings
based on passing references, the number of readings being
coded as European only would most likely increase. This
is because there is a much higher tendency to mention
Europe in passing in comparison to Asia. Finally, for par-
simony, we fold the small amount of readings that refer
to other regions (Latin America, N = 1) into this group.
More significantly, there are numerous assigned read-
ings that do not explicitly refer to European examples
but are directly responding to readings that are draw-
ing from the European experience. For instance, Neore-
alism and its Critics (Keohane 1986) and its constituent
chapters are one of the most commonly assigned readings
in the dataset (frequency = 33). The book contains two
parts: central neorealist claims made by Kenneth Waltz
and a collection of chapters responding to Waltz. Waltz
uses European examples extensively to illustrate his ar-
guments. In our coding scheme, we consider entries be-
longing to Waltz as Europe only. However, while chap-
ters within Neorealism and its Critics do not always use
European examples to refute Waltz, they are nevertheless
responding to a set of arguments whose parameters are
shaped by European examples. Thus, although we code
these chapters (and other readings like these) as neither,
they are clearly responding to ideas derived from the Eu-
ropean experience and have an implicit focus on Europe
despite the lack of explicit reference.
Finally, an article is coded as a critique of American
IR if it criticizes the fact that IR is a predominantly Amer-
ican research program. Only a handful of articles (N = 7)
belong to this category. A notable example would be Ole
Wœver’s (1998) “The Sociology of a Not So Interna-
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EUROPE VS. EUROPE + ASIA VS. ASIA
Crique
2% Europe only
29%
Neither
57%
Europe and
Asia
12%
Asia only
0%
Figure 2. Coded articles in forty-two graduate syllabi
tional Discipline: American and European Developments
in International Relations.” While articles like Wœver’s
use insights from European IR to criticize American IR,
their ultimate point is to argue against the potential pit-
falls of an American-dominated IR. Accordingly, we find
it much more suitable to code readings like these as cri-
tique of American IR, rather than Europe only, Europe
and Asia, or neither.
Our results are summarized in Figure 2. Approxi-
mately 57 percent of the readings belong to the neither
category, whereas 41 percent of the readings use regional
examples. Approximately 29 percent use examples from
Europe only, compared to 12 percent that use both Eu-
ropean and Asian examples. Most significantly, 0 percent
of the readings only use examples from Asia.
We are also interested in which countries from Asia
receive the most attention. To this end, we create two
subcategories within the Europe and Asia category: Eu-
rope and Japan and Europe and rest of Asia. We expect
US scholars to be more familiar with Japan, for reasons
such as the US-Japan alliance, the fact that it is one of
the largest economies in the world, or that it is one of
the most advanced democracies. We show the results in
Figure 3.
Japan is overrepresented: 8 percent of the readings use
Japan as the example from Asia in tandem with Euro-
pean examples. In contrast, only 4 percent of readings
use examples from the rest of Asia (China, North Korea,
Thailand, or Cambodia, for instance). When an Asian ex-
ample is invoked, Japan overwhelmingly tends to be the
country of choice.
We make five observations based on these results.
First, from Figure 2, it is important to note that at least
42 percent of the articles in the dataset are regionally
DAVID C. KANG AND ALEX YU-TING LIN
SEPARATING JAPAN FROM REST OF ASIA
Crique
2%
Europe only
29%
Neither
57% Europe and
Japan
8%
Europe and
rest of Asia
4%
Asia only
0%
Figure 3. Japan, Asia, Europe
rooted. They are either inspired by, or contextualized
through, regional examples. The results also show that
Europe (either alone or in tandem with examples from
Asia) tends to be the main region of focus. This is not
a claim about the quality of work, but it is a reminder
that the knowledge that we tend to consider as general or
“theoretical” are constructed through regional examples.
The results raise the recurring question of whether theo-
ries from one region are applicable in other regions. As
will be discussed, empirical tests of whether some of the
most prominent IR theories—such as balance of power—
apply across different regions have provided grounds for
skepticism. Therefore, our results suggest that we need a
rigorous evaluation of the cross-regional applicability of
the knowledge that we consider to be general or theoret-
ical.
Second, our results point to a potential bias in the US
academics’ thought process when it comes to determining
whether a piece of scholarship is general knowledge. Ap-
proximately 29 percent of the entries within the dataset
only use European examples, whereas 0 percent of the
entries only use Asian examples. This is a stark contrast.
The difference suggests that it is much easier for a read-
ing that only uses European examples to be considered as
general knowledge, in comparison to a reading that only
uses Asian examples. In fact, the 0 percent suggests that it
is nearly impossible for scholarship that only uses Asian
examples to be considered as general knowledge, though
such barriers do not exist for scholarship that only use
European examples. The standard is demonstrably dif-
ferent: readings using examples from Asia would have to
connect these examples to European examples in order to
be considered general knowledge. This asymmetry points
to a potential bias in our interpretation of what general
5
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Figure 4. Do departments within the dataset offer a seminar on
Asia?
knowledge is versus what area studies are. It is important
to note that Europe is a region, just like Asia.
Third, there is a clear disconnect between the recog-
nition that Asia will become the most important region
in the coming decades and the training that US PhD pro-
grams provide to the next generation of scholars. Only
approximately 12 percent of the readings refer to Asia.
More alarmingly, the number drops to 4 percent if we
remove Japan. Thus, our results reveal serious shortcom-
ings in the graduate training that PhD students receive in
the United States in preparing them for a better under-
standing of Asia.
A detractor might suggest that the core seminar is
not where students can gain better knowledge of var-
ious regions. Other seminars are designed for this. We
thus searched among the forty-two schools from which
syllabi are collected for whether graduate-level seminars
on Asia were offered during the 2016–2017 school year
(Figure 4).2
Approximately 54 percent of the departments
(N = 21) do not offer a graduate-level seminar on Asia,
whereas 46 percent of the departments (N = 18) do. In
other words, PhD students can take a seminar on Asia if
they want to in less than half of the departments we sur-
vey. Furthermore, these classes tend to be narrow—often
a class on Chinese or Japanese foreign policy. However,
Asia is more than just Japan or China. Given that PhD
students are limited by the number of courses they can
realistically take, this means that it is only those who are
already interested in Asia who will go out of their way
to take a seminar on Asia. If anything, this contributes
toward silo-thinking, rather than promoting a broader
understanding of the region for all students.
Fourth, Asia is more than just Japan. Our results
show that US academics are more much comfortable with
2 Three departments do not publish their course cata-
logues.
6 US Bias in the Study of Asian Security
AFTER 1990 Europe only
Crique
23%
2%
Europe and
Japan
6%
Europe and
rest of Asia
Neither 3%
66%
Asia only
0%
Figure 5. All readings written after 1990
using Japan as the illustrative example (N = 10) in com-
parison to all other Asian countries (N = 12). In particu-
lar, all ten readings focus on post-Meiji restoration Japan,
Russo-Japanese War, or Japan’s interaction with Euro-
pean countries after World War II. That only 4 percent
of the readings within our dataset use examples from the
rest of Asia should give US academics cause for concern.
The growing importance of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (e.g., Goh 2008; Ba 2009; Acharya 2013),
the proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) in Asia
(e.g., Solis and Katada 2007; Ravenhill 2010; Chin and
Stubbs 2011; Aggarwal and Koo 2016), the enduring di-
vision of the Korean peninsula (Kang 2003b), the poten-
tial for hostility in the South China Sea (Johnston 2013;
Jerdén 2014), or the rise of China and India (Johnston
2003; Glaser and Medeiros 2007; Legro 2007; Buzan
2010; Chan 2012; Phillips and Sharman 2015) all sug-
gest that future PhD students need to know about Asia
beyond just Japan.
Fifth, the biases that we have described so far are en-
during. Detractors might point out that historically, IR
paid greater attention to Europe because of real-world
events (two World Wars, then the Cold War) and the dis-
cipline’s intellectual development (started in response to
the World Wars). The inclusion of classics that were writ-
ten during the earlier periods would necessarily lead to
greater attention on Europe. As time went on, however,
we should expect to see a more balanced view in terms
of regional attention. To examine this claim, we create
two smaller subsets from our main dataset: all readings
that were published after 1990 and all readings that were
written after 2000. We summarize our results in Figures 5
and 6.
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AFTER 2000
Europe only
Crique
21%
3%
Europe and
Japan
0%
Europe and
rest of Asia
6%
Neither Asia only
70% 0%
Figure 6. All readings written after 2000
We find weak support for the claim that attention in
IR is becoming more balanced. As Figures 5 and 6 show,
the pattern we have observed so far still holds: Europe
only continues to hover above 20 percent, Europe and
Asia fluctuates between 5 percent to 10 percent, and Asia
only remains at 0 percent. The only notable change is
that, after 2000, Europe and Asia in fact decreased to
6 percent and that readings that use Europe and Japan
have plummeted to 0 percent. These results suggest that
it is not the case that attention to Europe is decreasing
and that attention to Asia is increasing as time went on.
Instead, readings involving Asia are cannibalizing each
other for the same 10 percent (or less) that we observe in
our main dataset. Despite increasing importance of other
regions after the Cold War, and despite the increasing
recognition that Asia will become important in the next
twenty years, IR’s attention and training of PhD students
have not updated accordingly. Therefore, the biases that
we have identified are fundamental and enduring.
Is Asia Actually Different?
Paying attention to regions such as Asia in graduate train-
ing is only important if there is regional variation in em-
pirical patterns that cause scholars to question their the-
ories. The problem begins, of course, with a focus on
Europe to explain Asia. The tendency to use European
comparisons to understand Asia is to be expected. Ex-
isting theories of multipolarity, alliances, and balancing
were largely derived from the European experience of the
past two centuries (e.g., Waltz 1979; Schweller 1993). Re-
search is then conducted on the same evidence used to
derive the theories, and conclusions have typically been
presented as universal and deductive. Yet, using Europe
as an unquestioned universal and inevitable source for IR
DAVID C. KANG AND ALEX YU-TING LIN
theory is potentially dangerous—particularly because us-
ing Europe can crowd out a larger universe of cases that
show what is possible in international politics. Idealized
representation about the West is so ubiquitous that it is
almost invariably invoked as the obvious reference point
for the East. Indeed, Asia is constantly being held to ac-
count for expectations emerging from Europe, but almost
never the opposite.
This tendency is perhaps most pronounced in the use
of European history to draw implications for contempo-
rary Asia (e.g., Friedberg 1993; Chong and Hall 2014;
Mearsheimer 2014; Allison 2017). Whether it is the prim-
itive infantry battle between two Greek villages from
2,500 years ago or the rise of Bismarckian Germany, a
consistent theme in the literature about contemporary
Asia is to reach back to Europe for analogies and ex-
amples that explain the present, particularly China’s rise.
Rarely, as Acharya and Buzan (2007) have noted, is there
genuine “non-Western” international relations theory.
Yet, a group of scholars have begun to argue that
Asia’s historical and contemporary experience has been,
and continues to be, quite different from that of Europe’s.
These scholars argue that different international orders
and different regions can have systematically different
patterns of violence and other behavior (Kang 2003a,
2010; Wohlforth et al. 2007; Johnston 2012). Kang and
Ma (2018), for example, directly argue that power tran-
sition theory never applied in East Asian history and is of
little utility in explaining US-China relations today. Non-
Asia specialists have also questioned the universality of
the European experience. For example, Bennett and Stam
(2003, 191–95) subjected the realist balancing model that
was inductively derived from the European historical ex-
perience to empirical testing across regions and the past
150 years. Although the balancing model works well in
Europe, they find that “significant differences in prefer-
ences for conflict exist across regions,” and there is “no
support for the argument that [Asian] behavior will con-
verge on that of Europe. In fact, all of the regions outside
of Europe appear to diverge from the European pattern
[of classical balance of power]” (Bennett and Stam 2003,
191–95).
In a similar way, scholars of East Asian development
have challenged the fields of economics, political sci-
ence, and sociology to move beyond the long-standing di-
chotomy between a neoclassical free market and centrally
planned economy in the study of economic development
(Johnson 1982; Haggard 1990; Rodrik 1995; Haggard
2004; Wade 2004). A generation ago, the maxim that
economic growth could occur only through “free mar-
kets” is widely accepted as given. The rise of blatantly in-
terventionist states in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan directly
7
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challenged this consensus. The spirited and careful debate
that ensued has introduced the notion that markets are
more than self-governing autonomous and spontaneous
areas for exchange, but rather are created and maintained
by institutions, rules, and norms. Although not solely a
result of the East Asian experience, there is no question
that the dramatic economic transformation of the region
was a key impetus to this scholarly debate.
Whether the Asian experience is substantially differ-
ent from the European one is an ongoing debate that
involves careful attention to both theory and evidence.
Our focus here is not to resolve this debate, but to point
out that there is a debate, and that scholarship engaged
in this debate or scholarship on Asia in general, if as-
signed to core IR seminars, can enrich the breadth and
depth of theoretical discussions about some of the most
pressing theoretical and policy questions about Asia.
Conclusion
Europe is a region, just like Asia. It is often the case in
our profession that scholars studying Asia are considered
“area specialists” but those studying Europe are viewed
as being “broadly theoretical,” even though their empir-
ical knowledge is confined to a particular country or re-
gion just like those scholars who focus on Asia. In fact,
both regions can potentially provide the empirical grist
for theoretical innovation. However, we have shown that
a focus on the European experience is deeply woven into
the graduate training experience in the United States.
Editors, referees, and colleagues are overwhelmingly
fair and even eager to see a wider variety of scholarship.
But this does not mean simply trying to use Asia to repli-
cate existing theoretical concepts or findings. Rather, the
best move scholars can make—and the real theoretical
and practical possibilities that arise from studying Asia—
is to be very sensitive to whether and how the Asian
experience may give rise to questions and challenge the
universalist aspirations that come so seamlessly with
mainstream work. Some claims can be universal, but oth-
ers are not; different regions of the world might or might
not have different patterns of behavior. It is not about
saying all of IR is wrong, but rather about marshaling the
evidence necessary to say that “here is something you all
agree is important, and you are all looking at it in demon-
strably misleading ways or carelessly drawing misleading
conclusions that really need to be much more qualified
than they are.”
Journals such as International Organization (IO) or
International Studies Quarterly (ISQ) have started ask-
ing manuscript contributors to be more gender- and
minority-equal in their citations, as studies have shown
8 US Bias in the Study of Asian Security
that publications from females and minority scholars are
systematically cited less. We support the spirit of this pol-
icy and believe that small changes like these are realistic
first steps that can accumulate over time. In light of the
results presented in this article, we believe IO and ISQ’s
policy serves as a good analogy for an informal rule of
thumb for encouraging instructors to be more regionally
inclusive in their syllabi design. Thus, we would like to
put forth a call to action: US academics should actively
step out of their comfort zones and try to incorporate ex-
amples from other regions including, but are not limited
to, Asia. Instructors for core IR seminars should also re-
ward this practice by placing scholarship of this type on
the syllabus. Individually, each academic may have pro-
fessional incentives for using examples from regions that
he or she is most familiar with. Yet, collectively as a dis-
cipline, this can be detrimental. If IR theories are truly
as generalizable as claimed, then our recommendation
would serve pedagogical and theoretical purposes.
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