Books
Upstart: How China Became a Great Power (Oxford University Press, 2024)
Thirty years ago, the idea that China could challenge the United States economically, globally, and militarily seemed unfathomable. Yet today, China is considered another great power in the international system. How did China manage to build power, from a weaker resource position, in an international system that was dominated by the U.S.? What factors determined the strategies Beijing pursued to achieve this feat?
In this book, Mastro argues that China’s extraordinary rise cannot be explained by conventional theories of great power politics alone and instead introduces a novel framework, the “upstart strategy,” to explain it. She shows how China has closed the gap in economic, military, and diplomatic power through a mix of emulation, exploitation, and entrepreneurship. Rather than copying or confronting the U.S. directly, China has selectively emulated successful practices where advantageous, exploited gaps and blind spots in the existing international order, and introduced entrepreneurial innovations in new and contested domains. Mastro also recommends that the U.S. adopt its own “upstart strategy” by emulating China’s successes, closing strategic gaps, and taking entrepreneurial approaches in areas like AI, space, and cyber.
The Cost of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime (Cornell University Press, 2019)
After a war breaks out, what factors influence the warring parties' decisions about whether to talk to their enemy, and when may their position on wartime diplomacy change? How do we get from only fighting to also talking?
In The Costs of Conversation, Oriana Skylar Mastro argues that states are primarily concerned with the strategic costs of conversation, and these costs need to be low before combatants are willing to engage in direct talks with their enemy. Specifically, leaders look to two factors when determining the probable strategic costs of demonstrating a willingness to talk: the likelihood the enemy will interpret openness to diplomacy as a sign of weakness, and how the enemy may change its strategy in response to such an interpretation. Only if a state thinks it has demonstrated adequate strength and resiliency to avoid the inference of weakness, and believes that its enemy has limited capacity to escalate or intensify the war, will it be open to talking with the enemy.