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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > Diplomacy
This deeply researched book offers a comprehensive analysis of the domestic politics and international consequences of Trump's foreign policy. Mel Gurtov provides detailed case studies of policy toward key countries and regions, including China, Russia, North Korea, Europe, and the Middle East. He makes a vigorous argument, centered on human-interest priorities and values, for rejecting a foreign policy of neglect and ineptness when it comes to the major issues of our times: climate change, China's rise, multiple US wars, human rights, authoritarian leadership, and nuclear weapons. Gurtov argues that Trump is a nationalist and illiberal populist whose policy views have been molded chiefly by his business practices, leading to an obsession with "winning," elevation of ego and loyalty over expertise, and preference for threats over diplomacy. Trump holds to a few simple ideas about the US role in the world: too expensive, too subject to other countries and institutions, and too influenced by "globalist" concerns such as democracy, climate crisis, human rights, and the rule of law. Trump will leave a deeply negative mark on the reputation and credibility of the United States, and on its policy-making process. But Gurtov concludes that a liberal successor should be able to reverse the worst features of the Trump era and restore foreign policy to its true purpose: exemplifying America's commitment to humane and democratic governance and cooperative economic relations with allies and economic partners.
Coups d'etat continue to present one of the most extreme risks to democracy and stable governance worldwide. This book examines the unique role played by regional organizations (ROs) following the occurrence of a coup d'etat. The book analyses the factors that influence the strength of reactions demonstrated by ROs and explores the different post-coup solutions ROs pursue. It argues that, when confronted with a coup, ROs take both basic democratic standards and regional stability into account before forming their responses. Using a mixed-methods approach, the book concludes that ROs' response to a coup depends on how detrimental it will be for the state of democracy in a country and how far it risks destabilizing the region.
This book examines the use of norms by British and Brazilian actors in aid/cooperation in the 21st century, unveiling the politics behind norm circulation. Inspired by a constructivist approach, this research analyses actors’ agency in asymmetric international and domestic environments, in which different norms, dissimilar identities, and opposing interests coexist. Regardless of the discourses and theories surrounding the differentiation between North-South and South-South aid/cooperation, British and Brazilian actors use norms to achieve their own goals at the domestic and international levels. Processes of norm circulation in aid/cooperation have a greater impact at the international level and within the domestic environment of donor/partner countries, than in promoting behavioral changes in recipient countries. However, the content of British and Brazilian norms is different given their historical position in the international architecture and domestic context. The present study sought to unveil the politics behind how actors use aid/cooperation norms in order to achieve their goals in three major instances: 1- the international forums where actors debate the aid/cooperation architecture; 2- the domestic environment of donor/partner countries; and, 3- the domestic level of recipient countries, where international norms are diffused.
This introduction to International Relations theory, now in its third edition, shows how discussions of war, wealth, peace and power stretch back well over 500 years. It shows how ancient ideas still effect the way we perceive world politics. By placing international arguments, perspectives, terms and theories in their proper historical setting, it traces the evolution of International Relations theory in context. Beginning with the emergence of the territorial state in the Middle Ages, the book follows the international ideas of sages, statesmen and scholars. It discusses early theories about the sovereign nature of the state. It demonstrates how contract philosophers like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau paved the way for the modern analysis of international relations. It shows how Enlightenment theorists followed up with balance-of-power theory and perpetual-peace projects. It seeks to demonstrate that the contemporary science of International Relations is the outcome of a long evolution and how its core concepts and major theories have been deeply affected by international events along the way while also showing that basic ideas have remained remarkably constant over the centuries. This has been a top selling title for a number of years and this new edition is keenly awaited. -- .
"In Abroad for Her Country, Jean M. Wilkowski shares the story of her extraordinary career in the U.S. Foreign Service during the last half of the twentieth century. Born in an era when few women sought professional careers, Wilkowski graduated from Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College and the University of Wisconsin and then rose through the ranks at the Department of State, from Vice Consul to the first woman U.S. Ambassador to an African country and the first woman acting U.S. Ambassador in Latin America. During her thirty-five-year diplomatic career, Wilkowski was sent first as a vice consul to the Caribbean during World War II, when the Department of State was "even taking in 4-Fs and women." She moved on to more challenging assignments in Latin America and Europe. For much of her career, she specialized in protecting and promoting U.S. trade and investment interests in such posts as Paris, Milan, Rome, Santiago, and Geneva. She also served during a revolution in Bogotá, attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, and the war between El Salvador and Honduras, when she called in U.S. humanitarian aid for 50,000 war-displaced persons. In 1977 she became coordinator of the U.S. preparation for the 1979 United Nations Conference on Science and Technology in Vienna. She worked closely with Notre Dame president Theodore Hesburgh, head of the U.S. delegation, and accompanied the delegation on its fact-finding visit to the Peoples' Republic of China.
A seemingly never-ending stream of observers claims that the populist emphasis on nationalism, identity, and popular sovereignty undermines international collaboration and contributes to the crisis of the Liberal International Order (LIO). Why, then, do populist governments continue to engage in regional and international institutions? This Element unpacks the counter-intuitive inclination towards institutional cooperation in populist foreign policy and discusses its implications for the LIO. Straddling Western and non-Western contexts, it compares the regional cooperation strategies of populist leaders from three continents: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. The study identifies an emerging populist 'script' of regional cooperation based on notions of popular sovereignty. By embedding regional cooperation in their political strategies, populist leaders are able to contest the LIO and established international organisations without having to revert to unilateral nationalism.
In this indispensable and comprehensive text, Scott D. Watson critically examines the current understanding of international order that underpins international disaster management and disaster diplomacy. Based on empirical analysis of the three international disaster management regimes - disaster relief, disaster risk reduction, and disaster migration - and case studies of disaster diplomacy in the United States, Egypt and China, Watson argues that international disaster management and disaster diplomacy are not simply efforts to reduce the impact of disasters or to manage bilateral relations but to reinforce key beliefs about the larger international order. Challenging the conventional understandings of disasters as natural, as exogenous shocks, or as unintended and accidental outcomes of the current order, this text shows how the ideological foundations of the current heterogenous international order produce recurrent disasters. International Order and the Politics of Disaster is a vital source for undergraduate or graduate students interested in international responses to disasters and complex humanitarian emergencies, forced migration and displacement, as well as climate change and development.
Between 1945 and 1960, the birth of a multi-party democracy and NATO membership radically transformed Turkey's foreign relations and domestic politics. As Turkish politicians, intellectuals and voters rethought their country's relationship with its past and its future to facilitate democratization, a new alliance with the United States was formed. In this book, Nicholas L. Danforth demonstrates how these transformations helped consolidate a consensus on the nature of Turkish modernity that continues to shape current political and cultural debates. He reveals the surprisingly nuanced and often paradoxical ways that both secular modernizers and their Islamist critics deployed Turkey's famous cliches about East and West, as well as tradition and modernity, to advance their agendas. By drawing on a diverse array of published and archival sources, Danforth offers a tour de force exploration of the relationship between democracy, diplomacy, modernity, Westernization, Ottoman historiography and religion in mid-century Turkey.
So much of modern-day diplomacy still takes place behind closed doors, away from cameras and prying eyes. So what does this vital role really look like in today's world -and what does it take to do it well? From 2009 to 2014, Cathy Ashton was the EU's first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, effectively Europe's foreign policy supremo responsible for coordinating the EU's response to international crises. Arriving in Brussels as a relative novice to international diplomacy, she faced the challenge of representing the views and values of 28 nations during one of the most turbulent times in living memory. Decades-old certainties were swept away in days. Hope rose and fell, often in a matter of hours. From the frozen conflict of Ukraine to the Serbia-Kosovo deal, there were challenges, failures and moments of success. She encountered dictators and war criminals, and witnessed the aftermath of natural disasters, military action, and political instability. Working with US politicians and counterparts including John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Bill Burns, she negotiated historic settlements, such as the Iran nuclear deal. An 'honest broker', she navigated the needs of opposing politicians to chart a path towards collaboration and stability. Now Ashton takes us behind the scenes to show us what worked and what didn't, and how it felt to be in 'the room where it happened'. From Serbia to Somalia, Libya to Haiti, she offers essential insight into how modern diplomacy works, examining the tools needed to find our way through the many challenges we face today. 'A riveting, absorbing account of modern diplomacy by one of the greatest international diplomats of recent times' General David Petraeus (US Army, Ret.), former Director of the CIA 'If generations of Earthlings-to-be do indeed engage in cosmic negotiations with other lifeforms, it will be because of the success of Cathy and her diplomatic compatriots in bringing us to realise we are Earth-life, together.' Rusty Schweickart, Apollo 9 astronaut 'A must for students of politics and a treat for lovers of general non-fiction.' Misha Glenny, Rector of the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna, and author of McMafia 'riveting, deeply personal and wonderfully accessible' Sir Kim Darroch, former British Ambassador to the USA, National Security Advisor, and UK Permanent Representative to the EU 'Catherine Ashton's gripping memoirs are not only a perfect combination of very precise facts and touching personal emotions, but for all foreign policy observers they convey important lessons of the past to serve for the crises of today.' Pierre Vimont, former French ambassador to the EU and the USA
This book provides a unique view on the Beagle Channel crisis (1977-1984) between Argentina and Chile by examining it in a global political context. The author explores the factors which led from imminent conflict to signing the Treaty of Peace and Friendship in just six years. Regional and international dimensions of the Beagle crisis are given particular attention, including international arbitration, the participation of the Vatican as a third actor, the role of the US, the complicating effects of the Falkland war, and the relations between each party and the UK. The author highlights unequal effects on Argentine and Chilean foreign policies of domestic structures and international conditions. The book seeks to determine the extent to which foreign policy provides opportunities for states to exercise political autonomy, given the powerful constraints imposed by the multiple structures of the international system, and how negotiation behaviour generated the path from conflict to cooperation between Argentina and Chile. The author's focus on foreign policy aids the understanding of processes and decisions within Argentina and Chile during the Beagle crisis while utilising new theoretical approaches in the field of negotiation behaviour in Latin America.
Between 1920 and 1950, British and US internationalists called for aviation and atomic energy to be taken out of the hands of nation-states, and instead used by international organizations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations. An international air force was to enforce collective security and internationalized civil aviation was to bind the world together through trade and communication. The bomber and the atomic bomb, now associated with death and devastation, were to be instruments of world peace. Drawing on rich archival research and focusing on public and private discourse relating to the control of aviation and atomic energy, Waqar H. Zaidi highlights neglected technological and militaristic strands in twentieth-century liberal internationalism, and transforms our understanding of the place of science and technology in twentieth-century international relations.
The year 2017 saw a multitude of conferences and exhibitions devoted to the centenary of the Russian Revolutions, both in Russia and in other parts of the world. The commemoration of this event would be incomplete without an exploration of its Northern dimension; in October 2017, the University of Tromso, The Arctic University of Norway hosted the conference The Russian Revolutions of 1917: The Northern Impact and Beyond. Norway and Russia are both northern states, and the two countries have a common border in the High North. Some articles in this volume, based on the conference proceedings, investigate the impact of the Russian Revolution in Norway and Sweden, while others deal with the High North, e.g. the Revolution and Civil War in Northern Russia and the radicalization of the workers' movement of Northern Norway; some are also devoted to representations of the Russian Revolution at exhibitions and on the big screen.
A Companion to American Foreign Relations is an authoritative volume of historiographical essays that survey the state of U.S. diplomatic history. The essays cover the entire range of the history of American foreign relations from the colonial period to the present. They discuss the major sources and analyze the most influential books and articles in the field. The contributors -- eminent scholars and experts in their subject matter--delve deeply into the literature and integrate discussions of new methodological approaches with more traditional diplomatic history. Each essay concludes with prospects for future work in the field. For the student, scholar, and those interested in the history of American foreign relations, this is an invaluable reference work.
Donald Trump might have been the loudest and most powerful voice maligning the integrity of news media in a generation, but his unrelenting attacks draw from a stew of resentment, wariness, cynicism, and even hatred toward the press that has been simmering for years. At one time, journalism's centrality in reporting and interpreting important events was relatively unquestioned when a limited number of channels and voices produced a consensus-based news environment. The collapse of this environment has sparked a moment of reckoning within and outside journalism, particularly as professional news outlets struggle to remain solvent. Alternative voices compete for attention with and criticize the work and motivations of journalists, even as a growing number of journalists question their core norms and practices. News After Trump considers these struggles over journalism to be about the very relevance of journalism as an institutional form of knowledge production. At the heart of this questioning is a struggle to define what truthful accounts look like and who ought to create them or determine them in a rapidly changing media culture. Through an extensive accounting of Trump's relationship with the press, and drawing on in-depth interviews with journalists and textual analysis of news events, editorials, social media, and trade-press discussions, the book rethinks the relevance of journalism by recognizing the limits of objectivity and the way in which journalism positions certain actors as authority figures while rendering the less socially powerful invisible or flawed. This ethos of detachment has staved off vital questions about how journalism connects to its audiences, how it creates enduring value in people's lives (or not), and how diversity needs to be understood jointly at the level of production, reporting, and audience in order to rebuild trust.
American Alliance Policy in the Middle East provides a stimulating, new look at a U.S. Cold War foreign policy gripped by anticommunist paranoia. Through case studies of America's relationships with Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, John P. Miglietta reveals how an overriding fear of global communism led to the overcommitment of U.S. security resources to the region. The perceived need to preserve Middle East stability rendered U.S. policy ineffectual and unresponsive to changing local conditions, drastically altering the patron-client paradigm to the detriment of American strategic interests. This superb analysis of American foreign policymaking illustrates how Cold War anticommunist ideology prevented the evolution of traditional military alliances into broader-based relationships and perpetuated authoritarian regimes that mired the Middle East in a cycle of poverty and despotism.
This edited collection draws upon interdisciplinary research to explore new dimensions in the politics of image and aid. While development communication and public diplomacy are established research fields, there is little scholarship that seeks to understand how the two areas relate to one another. However, international development doctrine in the US, UK and elsewhere increasingly suggests that they are integrated-or at the very least should be-at the level of national strategy. This timely volume considers a variety of cases in diverse regions, drawing upon a combination of theoretical and conceptual lenses that combine a focus on both aid and image. The result is a text that seeks to establish a new body of knowledge on how contemporary debates into public diplomacy, soft power and the national image are fundamentally changing not just the communication of aid, but its wider strategies, modalities and practices.
China-Africa economic tie has experienced lasting rapid growth since the 2000s, attracting lots of discussion on its nature and effects. A key question is whether Chinese engagements provide an alternative paradigm to existing mainstream models, like Washington Consensus, for developing countries. However, theories on state-market dichotomy can hardly explain the strong momentum of bilateral cooperation. By examining a broad range of practices with solid field research, including trade, infrastructure, agriculture, manufacturing, industrial zones, labor and socio-environmental preservation, this book proposes a new angle of non-linear circular causality to understand Chinese approaches to work with Africa. Guided by the pursuit for sustainable growth rather than by specific models, Chinese actors are able to experiment diverse methods to foster structural transformation in Africa. In particular, the author carefully records mutual influences between Chinese and African stakeholders at all levels, from grassroots to policy making, to illustrate the effects of coevolving industrialization.
Time magazine named Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates their "Persons of the Year." The United Nations tapped Angelina Jolie as a goodwill ambassador. Bob Geldof organized the Live8 concert to push the G8 leaders' summit on AIDS and debt relief. What has come to be called "celebrity diplomacy" attracts wide media attention, significant money, and top official access around the world. But is this phenomenon just the latest fad? Are celebrities dabbling in an arena that is out of their depth, or are they bringing justified notice to important problems that might otherwise languish on the crowded international diplomatic scene? This book is the first to examine celebrity diplomacy as a serious global project with important implications, both positive and negative. Intended for readers who might not normally read about celebrities, it will also attract audiences often turned off by international affairs. Celebrities bring optimism and "buzz" to issues that seem deep and gloomy. Even if their lofty goals remain elusive, when celebrities speak, other actors in the global system listen.
Commercial competition between Britain and Russia became entangled during the eighteenth century in Iran, the Middle East, and China, and disputes emerged over control of the North Pacific. Focusing on the British Russia Company, Matthew P. Romaniello charts the ways in which the company navigated these commercial and diplomatic frontiers. He reveals how geopolitical developments affected trade far more than commercial regulations, while also challenging depictions of this period as a straightforward era of Russian economic decline. By looking at merchants' and diplomats' correspondence and the actions and experiences of men working in Eurasia for Russia and Britain, he demonstrates the importance of restoring human experiences in global processes and provides individual perspective on this game of empire. This approach reveals that economic fears, more than commodities exchanged, motivated actions across the geopolitical landscape of Europe during the Seven Years' War and the American and French Revolutions.
This edited collection examines the political, economic and security legacies of former US President Barack Obama in Asia and the Pacific, following two terms in office between 2009 and 2017. In a region that has only become more vivid in the American political imagination since Obama left office, this volume interrogates the endurance of Obama's legacies in what is increasingly reimagined in Washington as the Indo-Pacific. Advancing our understanding of Obama's style, influence and impact throughout the region, this volume explores dimensions of US relations and interactions with key Indo-Pacific states including China, India, Japan, North Korea and Australia; multilateral institutions and organisations such the East Asia Summit and ASEAN; and salient issue areas such as regional security, politics and diplomacy, and the economy. How far has the Trump administration progressed in challenging or disrupting Obama's Pivot to Asia? What differences can we discern in the declared or effective US strategy towards Asia and to what extent has it radically shifted or displaced Obama-era legacies? Including contributions from high-profile scholars and policy practitioners such as Michael Mastanduno, Bruce Cumings, Maryanne Kelton, Robert Sutter and Sumit Ganguly, contributors examine these questions at the halfway point of the 2017-21 Presidency of Donald Trump, as his administration opens a new and potentially divergent chapter of American internationalism. -- .
At least since Athenian trade sanctions helped to spark the Peloponnesian War, economic coercion has been a prominent tool of foreign policy. In the modern era, sovereign states and multilateral institutions have imposed economic sanctions on dictatorial regimes or would-be nuclear powers as an alternative to waging war. They have conditioned offers of aid, loans, and debt relief on recipients' willingness to implement market and governance reforms. Such methods interfere in freedom of trade and the internal affairs of sovereign states, yet are widely used as a means to advance human rights. But are they morally justifiable? Cecile Fabre's Economic Statecraft: Human Rights, Sanctions, and Conditionality provides the first sustained response to that question. For millennia, philosophers have explored the ethics of war, but rarely the ethics of economic carrots and sticks. Yet the issues raised could hardly be more urgent. On what grounds can we justify sanctions, in light of the harms they inflict on civilians? If, as some argue, there is a human right to basic assistance, should donors be allowed to condition the provision of aid on recipients' willingness to do their bidding? Drawing on human rights theories, theories of justifiable harm, and examples such as IMF lending practices and international sanctions on Russia and North Korea, Fabre offers a defense of economic statecraft in some of its guises. An empirically attuned work of philosophy, Economic Statecraft lays out a normative framework for an important tool of diplomacy.
The Wars of the French Revolution, 1792-1801 offers a comprehensive and jargon-free coverage of this turbulent period and unites political, social, military and international history in one volume. Carefully designed for undergraduate students, through twelve chapters this book offers an introduction to the origins and international context of the French Revolution as well as an in-depth examination of the reasons why war began. Aspects unpicked within the book include how France acquired a de facto empire stretching from Holland to Naples; the impact of French conquest on the areas concerned; the spread of French ideas beyond the frontiers of the French imperium; the response of the powers of Europe to the sudden expansion in French military power; the experience of the conflicts unleashed by the French Revolution in such areas as the West Indies, Egypt and India; and the impact of war on the Revolution itself. Offering extensive geographical coverage and challenging many preconceived ideas, The Wars of the French Revolution, 1792-1801 is the perfect resource for students of the French Revolution and international military history more broadly.
International Organizations (IOs) are vital institutions in world politics in which cross-border issues can be discussed and global problems managed. This path-breaking book shows the efforts that small states have made to participate more fully in IO activities. It draws attention to the challenges created by widened participation in IOs and develops an original model of the dilemmas that both IOs and small states face as the norms of sovereign equality and the right to develop coincide. Drawing on extensive qualitative data, including more than 80 interviews conducted for this book, the authors find that the strategies which both IOs and small states adopt to balance their respective dilemmas can explain both continuity and change in their interactions with institutions ranging from UN agencies to the World Trade Organization.
"This is a brilliant and hardheaded book. It will frighten those who prefer not to dwell on the unthinkable and infuriate those who have taken refuge in stereotypes and moral attitudinizing."-Gordon A. Craig, New York Times Book Review "A grim but carefully reasoned and coldly analytical book. . . . One of the most frightening previews which this reviewer has ever seen of the roads that lie just ahead in warfare."-Los Angeles Times Originally published more than fifty years ago, this landmark book explores the ways in which military capabilities-real or imagined-are used, skillfully or clumsily, as bargaining power. Anne-Marie Slaughter's new introduction to the work shows how Schelling's framework-conceived of in a time of superpowers and mutually assured destruction-still applies to our multipolar world, where wars are fought as much online as on the ground. The Henry L. Stimson Lectures Series |
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