M. TAYLOR FRAVEL is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and member of the Security Studies Program at MIT. He studies international relations, with a focus on international security, China and East Asia. His publications have appeared in International Security, Foreign Affairs, Armed Forces & Society, The China Quarterly, Current History, and Asian Survey as well as in edited volumes. His current research examines how China settles territorial disputes, comparing periods of cooperation and escalation. Taylor is a graduate of Middlebury College and Stanford University, where he received his PhD in 2003. He has been a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University and a Pre-Doctoral Fellow the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also has graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.