Asia's Middle Powers?

South Korea and Vietnam established diplomatic relations only twenty years ago. Today these former adversaries enjoy unexpectedly cordial and rapidly expanding bilateral ties. Leaders of the two nationsperceiving broadly shared interests and no fundamental conflictsseek to leverage their subregional influence on behalf of common or complementary policy goals. Today they often profess a middle power identity as they explain their foreign policy in terms of such classical middle power goals as regional peace, integration, and common goods. Broadly similar in many respects, South Korea and Vietnam are nonetheless sufficiently different that a comparison can yield interesting insightsyet there is a dearth of systematic comparative work on the two. While holding a range of views on the contentious concepts of middle power and national identity, the contributors to Asias Middle Powers? help readers, both academic and policy practitioners, to gain an enhanced appreciation of South Korea and Vietnams regional behavior and international strategies.