Asian Diplomacy: The Foreign Ministries of China, India, Japan, Singapore, and Thailand

WASHINGTON—Woodrow Wilson Center Press has published a new book, Asian Diplomacy: The Foreign Ministries of China, India, Japan, Singapore, and Thailand, by Kishan S. Rana. It is copublished with the Johns Hopkins University Press.

Based on over 160 interviews, Asian Diplomacy evaluates the ministries of foreign affairs in five major Asian countries. For each country, Kishan S. Rana first sketches the historical and political background of its diplomatic service. He reviews the structural features of the service; its responsibilities in such key areas as economic and political relations; and its methods for intragovernmental relations, decision making, and crisis management. He then provides a summary assessment of each service and concludes by asking what is special about Asian diplomacy. Asian diplomatic services will become central to international relations as globalization spreads and the influence of Asian countries continues to grow. Rana's pioneering comparative examination provides a sound basis for understanding this new diplomatic environment.

"With his strong reputation as a scholar of modern diplomacy, Rana treads new ground and offers us rare insights into the working of five Asian foreign offices. His work will be valued for a long time by anyone interested in the diplomatic culture of Asia's rising powers."—C. Raja Mohan, Nanyang Technological University

"The ebb of Western military and industrial predominance behooves diplomacy of a different mettle from the newly emerging and vibrant powerhouses of the Indo-Pacific. This remarkable book provides valuable insights and wisdom for the contemporary practice and understanding of that form of diplomacy in the infinitely more complex world of the 21st century."—Peter Cozens, Director, Center for Strategic Studies, Wellington, New Zealand

Kishan S. Rana is a retired Indian diplomat who served as ambassador to Algeria, Czechoslovakia, Kenya, Mauritius, and Germany. Since retiring, he has had a variety of consulting and academic roles. He was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2005.

Asian Diplomacy is distributed by the Johns Hopkins University Press, accessible online at www.press.jhu.edu or by telephone at 1-800-537-5487. The list price is $29.95 for paperback.

Woodrow Wilson Center Press publishes books by fellows, resident scholars, and staff written in substantial part at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Titles range from popular accounts of historical topics to fundamental reviews of scholarly fields to authoritative background on important policy issues. For more information about the Press, or to search its backlist of titles, please visit www.wilsoncenter.org/press.