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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > Diplomacy
Embassies are integral to international diplomacy, their staff instrumental to inter-governmental dialogue, strategic partnerships, trading relationships and cultural exchange. But Embassies are also discreet political spaces. Notionally sovereign territory 'immune' from local jurisdiction, in moments of crisis Embassies have often been targets of protest and sites of confrontation. It is this aspect of Embassy experience that this collection of essays explores and Embassies in Crisis revisits flashpoints in the recent lives of Embassies overseas at times of acute political crisis. Ranging across multiple British and other embassy crises, unusually, this book offers equal insights to international historians and members of the diplomatic community.
The American Century began in 1941 and ended on January 20, 2017. While the United States remains a military giant and is still an economic powerhouse, it no longer dominates the world economy or geopolitics as it once did. The current turn toward nationalism and "America first" unilateralism in foreign policy will not make America great. Instead, it represents the abdication of our responsibilities in the face of severe environmental threats, political upheaval, mass migration, and other global challenges. In this incisive and forceful book, Jeffrey D. Sachs provides the blueprint for a new foreign policy that embraces global cooperation, international law, and aspirations for worldwide prosperity-not nationalism and gauzy dreams of past glory. He argues that America's approach to the world must shift from military might and wars of choice to a commitment to shared objectives of sustainable development. Our pursuit of primacy has embroiled us in unwise and unwinnable wars, and it is time to shift from making war to making peace and time to embrace the opportunities that international cooperation offers. A New Foreign Policy explores both the danger of the "America first" mindset and the possibilities for a new way forward, proposing timely and achievable plans to foster global economic growth, reconfigure the United Nations for the twenty-first century, and build a multipolar world that is prosperous, peaceful, fair, and resilient.
The Gulf of Tonkin: The United States and the Escalation in the Vietnam War analyzes the events that led to the escalation of the conflict in Vietnam and increased American involvement. On August 4, 1964, the captains of two American destroyers, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy, reported that their ships were being attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. This report came on top of a previous report by the captain of the USS Maddox, indicating that he had been attacked by torpedo boats two nights earlier. The text introduces readers to the historiography of these incidents and how the perception of the events changed over time. The attacks, which were collectively called the Gulf of Tonkin incident, are presented in the context not only of the Vietnam War but also of the Cold War and U.S. government powers, enabling students to understand the events' full ramifications. Using essential primary documents, Tal Tovy provides an accessible introduction to a vital turning point in U.S. and international affairs. This book will be useful to all students of the Vietnam War, American military history, and foreign policy history.
Given the destruction and suffering caused by more than four years of industrialised warfare and economic hardship, scholars have tended to focus on the nationalism and hatred in the belligerent countries, holding that it led to a fundamental rupture of any sense of European commonality and unity. It is the central aim of this volume to correct this view and to highlight that many observers saw the conflict as a 'European civil war', and to discuss what this meant for discourses about Europe. Bringing together a remarkable range of compelling and highly original topics, this collection explores notions, images, and ideas of Europe in the midst of catastrophe.
When an earthquake hits a war zone or cyclone aid is flown in by an enemy, many ask: Can catastrophe bring peace? Disaster prevention and mitigation provide similar questions. Could setting up a flood warning system bring enemy countries together? Could a regional earthquake building code set the groundwork for wider regional cooperation? This book examines how and why disaster-related activities do and do not create peace and reduce conflict. Disaster-related activities refer to actions before a disaster such as prevention and mitigation along with actions after a disaster such as emergency response, humanitarian relief, and reconstruction. This volume investigates disaster diplomacy case studies from around the world, in a variety of political and disaster circumstances, from earthquakes in Greece and Turkey affecting these neighbours' bilateral relations to volcanoes and typhoons influencing intra-state conflict in the Philippines. Dictatorships are amongst the case studies, such as Cuba and Burma, along with democracies such as the USA and India. No evidence is found to suggest that disaster diplomacy is a prominent factor in conflict resolution. Instead, disaster-related activities often influence peace processes in the short-term-over weeks and months-provided that a non-disaster-related basis already existed for the reconciliation. That could be secret negotiations between the warring parties or strong trade or cultural links. Over the long-term, disaster-related influences disappear, succumbing to factors such as a leadership change, the usual patterns of political enmity, or belief that an historical grievance should take precedence over disaster-related bonds. This is the first book on disaster diplomacy. Disaster-politics interactions have been studied for decades, but usually from a specific political framing, covering a specific geographical area, or from a specific disaster framing. As well, plenty of quantitative work has been completed, yet the data limitations are rarely admitted openly or thoroughly analysed. Few publications bring together the topics of disasters and politics in terms of a disaster diplomacy framework, yielding a grounded, qualitative, scientific point of view on the topic.
This book interprets the changing nature of Japanese foreign policy through the concepts of identity, culture and memory. It goes beyond rational interpretation of material interests and focus on values and ideas that are inseparable and pervasive in Japanese domestic and foreign policy. A set of chapters written by established Japanese and foreign experts show the nuances of Japanese self-images and their role in defining their understanding of the world. Stemming from historical memories of World War Two, the reconciliation between Japan and other Asian countries, the formation of Japanese self in media discourse to the role of self-perception in defining Japanese contemporary foreign and economic policies, the book offers a holistic insight into Japanese psyche and its role in the political world. It will be of utmost interest not only to the scholars of Japanese foreign policy, but also to a wide public interested in understanding the uniqueness of Japanese state and its people.
Recent public squabbles between American and Turkish leaders and lawmakers have led many to question what kind of an alliance Turkey and the United States have. This book is directly concerned with this question and attempts to shed light on every single detail related to the nature of this alliance. With discussions on the historical evolution of the bilateral relations and current disagreements on various issues such as the Turkish acquisition of Russian air defense systems and the Kurdish question in the Middle East, this study offers a lucid genealogy of the Turkish-American alliance for all those interested in the subject.
This book presents the reader with a detailed analysis of the U.S. policy toward Cuba that was designed and adopted by the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. Based in governmental and other sources from both the U.S. and Cuba, the book analyzes the changes in the U.S. policy and its political and practical effects. Cuba still had to face a combination of "dirty war" and "passive containment," but during the course of the 1960s, the influence of the "dirty war" policy was weakened due to the failure of the tactics to overthrow the Cuban Revolution by violent means. Instead, the policy was directed towards "passive containment," characterized by its focus on an intensification of the economic blockade, the promotion of diplomatic isolation, and propaganda campaigns and psychological warfare. The book is unique since it is written from a Cuban perspective and it complements and enriches the knowledge of the U.S.-Cuban relationship during the 1960s, and the policy adopted by the Johnson administration.
The creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU's new diplomatic body, was accompanied by high expectations for improving the way Europe would deal with foreign policy. However, observers of its first years of operation have come to the opposite conclusion. This book explains why the EEAS, despite being hailed as a milestone in integration in Europe's foreign policy, has fallen short of the mark. It does so by enlisting American institutionalist approaches to European questions of institutional creation, bureaucratic organisations and change. The book examines the peculiar shape the EEAS's organisation has taken, what political factors determined that shape and design and how it has operated. Finally, it looks at the autonomous operation of the EEAS from a bureaucratic theory perspective, concluding that this is the best way to understand its course. Including data gathered from elite interviews of politicians and senior officials involved in the institutional process, an assessment of official documentary evidence and a survey of EEAS officials at the organisation's beginning, it sheds new light on a controversial tool in the EU's foreign policy. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of European Union foreign policy, public administration, and more broadly to European Union and European politics, as well as to practitioners within those fields.
This book examines succinctly the substantive assumptions of each one of the main international relations theories, namely realism, liberalism, constructivism, the English school, critical theory and idealism, against China's choices and behavior as an international actor. The author seeks to articulate how China's choices and behavior alternatively reflect and vindicate, or challenge and reject reigning assumptions of international relations theory.
This book looks at the changing dynamics of diplomacy of the two emerging global powers - India and China. It examines trade relations, cultural ties and economic engagements of both countries and their shifting influence in the region surrounding them. This volume takes an in-depth look at the trade and economic strategies of India and China through the prism of soft power diplomacy. It reflects on the challenges the two countries face over bilateral trade negotiations, BRICS and China's Silk Road project, along with other issues of foreign policy. The book underlines the decisive role of the soft power approach and greater people-to-people contact in the global strategies of India and China and in fostering greater cooperation in the region. The book will be of great interest to researchers and students of international relations, political science, public policy and international communications. It will also be useful for think tanks, policy makers and general readers who are interested in the India-China relationship and the politics of soft power diplomacy.
Yalta still excites scholars and general public alike. In shaping post-war geographical alignments, Yalta has become drenched in ideological disputes. It has assumed a symbolic quality for liberal, left, and conservative interpretations of modern European history. In his book, Pierre de Senarclens offers the reader a clear and precise account of the matter in which negotiations at Yalta were actually conducted by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. Senarclens not only follows closely the negotiations themselves, but draws upon the political and strategic events preceding the negotiations, and the stated aims of the Allied Forces before the conference.In the light of all the different expectations of the respective leaders, the key question for Senarclens is, what was the real outcome of Yalta? Senarclens avoids overdramatization and does not elevate Yalta to a turning point in world history. He avoid ideological interpretations, from the conservative analysis of Yalta as appeasement and the selling out of Eastern Europe and China, to the liberal-left analysis of three old men ruthlessly dividing the world between themselves. But he does not spare us Roosevelt's idealized picture of Stalin, nor does he avoid revealing the ambiguities of Churchill's conduct, or the ruthlessness of Stalin's approach.Senarclens refutes the thesis that Yalta amounted to an occidental capitulation to the Soviets. As the author convincingly argues, the world has not come about us as a result of Yalta, but in spite of it.
Relations between China and India underwent a dramatic transformation from Buddhist-dominated to commerce-centered exchanges in the seventh to fifteenth centuries. The unfolding of this transformation, its causes, and wider ramifications are examined in this masterful analysis of the changing patterns of the interaction between the two most important cultural spheres in Asia. Tansen Sen offers a new perspective on Sino-Indian relations during the Tang dynasty (618-907), arguing that the period is notable not only for religious and diplomatic exchanges but also for the process through which China emerged as a center of Buddhist learning, practice, and pilgrimage. Before the seventh century, the Chinese clergy-given the spatial gap between the sacred Buddhist world of India and the peripheral China-suffered from a "borderland complex." A close look at the evolving practice of relic veneration in China (at Famen Monastery in particular), the exposition of Mount Wutai as an abode of the bodhisattva Manjusri, and the propagation of the idea of Maitreya's descent in China, however, reveals that by the eighth century China had overcome its complex and successfully established a Buddhist realm within its borders. The emergence of China as a center of Buddhism had profound implications on religious interactions between the two countries and is cited by Sen as one of the main causes for the weakening of China's spiritual attraction toward India. At the same time, the growth of indigenous Chinese Buddhist schools and teachings retrenched the need for doctrinal input from India. A detailed examination of the failure of Buddhist translations produced during the Song dynasty (960-1279), demonstrates that these developments were responsible for the unraveling of religious bonds between the two countries and the termination of the Buddhist phase of Sino-Indian relations. Sen proposes that changes in religious interactions were paralleled by changes in commercial exchanges. For most of the first millennium, trading activities between India and China were closely connected with and sustained through the transmission of Buddhist doctrines. The eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, witnessed dramatic changes in the patterns and structure of mercantile activity between the two countries. Secular bulk and luxury goods replaced Buddhist ritual items, maritime channels replaced the overland Silk Road as the most profitable conduits of commercial exchange, and many of the merchants involved were followers of Islam rather than Buddhism. Moreover, policies to encourage foreign trade instituted by the Chinese government and the Indian kingdoms contributed to the intensification of commercial activity between the two countries and transformed the China-India trading circuit into a key segment of cross-continental commerce.
In this book Professor Nish deals with one of the most important aspects of far eastern politics in the critical period between 1894 and 1907. His object is to demonstrate how Britain and Japan, at first separately and later jointly, reacted to Russian encroachments in China and east Asia; he is concerned also with the policies of the other European powers and of the U.S., to whose hostility towards the Anglo-Japanese alliance after 1905 Britain showed herself increasingly sensitive. First published in 1966, this title is part of the Bloomsbury Academic Collections series.
Although many observers argue that US-Russia relations are a simple reflection of elites' political and economic preferences in both countries, these preferences tend to arise from pre-existing belief systems that are deeply rooted in the public and accentuated by mass media. In Dark Double, Andrei P. Tsygankov focuses on the driving power of values and media, in addition to political and economic interests, in structuring US-Russia relations. By analyzing mainstream US newspapers and other media sources, Tsygankov identifies five media narratives involving Russia since the Cold War's end and studies them through a framework of three inter-related factors: historic and cultural differences between the two countries, inter-state competition, and polarizing domestic politics. He shows how Americans' negative views toward Russia draw from a deep wellspring of suspicion and are further enhanced by a biased media that regularly exploits such negativity, Russia's centralization of power and anti-American attitudes. Given the intensity of our current impasse with Russia, Dark Double represents an important intervention that forces us to think about the sources of conflict in a new way.
Providing a comprehensive overview of two centuries of international civil servants and international secretariats, this book reveals how international secretariats have emerged and evolved, focusing on both structures (international public administrations) and the practitioners (international civil servants). Reinalda explores the history and development of international secretariats and international civil servants, starting with the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815), when the first international organization was established in the form of a river commission for the navigation of the Rhine. Charting the development of international secretariats through the nineteenth century - the League of Nations, the United Nations, and the United Nations System with its many specialized agencies, the author explains why NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) have strong, rather than weak, international secretariats, and shines a light on the registries of international courts and tribunals. The book fills a gap in the literature by exploring the full evolution of international secretariats, covering global and continental developments as well as regional integration practices around the world. Secretariats have become the leading actors in multilateral diplomacy particularly for dealing with complex issues, and this book will be of interest to all scholars of global governance and practitioners working for a range of international organizations.
This book represents an update of a well-received volume published in 1989, "Caribbean in World Affairs." Given the broad changes that have occurred in the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and taking into account requests for a second edition from Caribbean scholars and policymakers in recent years, the author has written this new edition with the same aim as the original: to provide a comprehensive and theoretically-grounded account of diplomatic developments in these microstates. The author provides a lasting analysis of small state behavior, noting the recent renewal of interest in small states in both the global north and south. The new material includes attention to the changed global setting, updated theoretical developments in foreign policy, and the inclusion of Haiti and Suriname, newer members of Caricom.
Is the Armenian Genocide a strictly historical matter? If that is the case, why is it still a topical issue, capable of causing diplomatic rows and heated debates? The short answer would be that the century old Armenian Genocide is much more than a historical question. It emerged as a political dilemma on the international arena at the San Stefano peace conference in 1878 and has remained as such into our days. The disparity between knowledge and acknowledgement, mainly ascribable to Turkey's official denial of the genocide, has only heightened the politicization of the Armenian question. Thus, the memories of the WWI era refuse to be relegated to the pages of history but are rather perceived as a vivid presence. This is the result of the perpetual process of politics of memory. The politics of memory is an intricate and interdisciplinary negotiation, engaging many different actors in the society who have access to a wide range of resources and measures in order to achieve their goals. By following the Armenian question during the past century up to its Centennial Commemoration in 2015, this study aims to explain why and how the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide has kept it as a topical issue in our days.
This innovative new book argues that diplomacy, which emerged out of the French Revolution, has become one of the central Ideological State Apparatuses of the modern democratic nation-state. The book is divided into four thematic parts. The first presents the central concepts and theoretical perspectives derived from the work of Slavoj Zizek, focusing on his understanding of politics, ideology, and the core of the conceptual apparatus of Lacanian psychoanalysis. There then follow three parts treating diplomacy as archi-politics, ultra-politics, and post-politics, respectively highlighting three eras of the modern history of diplomacy from the French Revolution until today. The first part takes on the question of the creation of the term 'diplomacy', which took place during the time of the French Revolution. The second part begins with the effects on diplomacy arising from the horrors of the two World Wars. Finally, the third part covers another major shift in Western diplomacy during the last century, the fall of the Soviet Union, and how this transformation shows itself in the field of Diplomacy Studies. The book argues that diplomacy's primary task is not to be understood as negotiating peace between warring parties, but rather to reproduce the myth of the state's unity by repressing its fundamental inconsistencies. This book will be of much interest to students of diplomacy studies, political theory, philosophy, and International Relations.
The long-standing, but unresolved debate of the virtues and values of multilateralism vs. unilateralism in American foreign policy is critically important in today's complicated world. To understand the history of each approach is to understand their opportunities and challenges for the future. The Best Laid Plans answers two central questions. First, why did the United States embrace the principles and practices of liberal multilateralism during World War II? Second, why did it cling to this vision of world order despite the outbreak of the Cold War in the late 1940s, as the "One World" that had been anticipated by U.S. postwar planners split into two rival global camps? The book contends that neither the U.S. turn to liberal multilateralism nor the persistence of this orientation during the Cold War can be attributed solely or even primarily to the global power structure or crude considerations of material self interest. Rather, Stewart Patrick argues that a combination of enduring identity commitments and new ideas, based on the lessons of recent, cataclysmic events, shaped the policy preferences of American central decision-makers in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. Although the book is steeped in history, its conclusions have tremendous relevance for the contemporary era, when the United States once again finds itself at the apex of world power, and debates are rife about the role of multilateral cooperation in the realization of U.S. foreign policy objectives.
The Challenges of Nuclear Non-Proliferation is an exhaustive survey of the many aspects of non-proliferation efforts. It explains why some nations pursued nuclear programs while others abandoned them, as well as the challenges, strengths, and weaknesses of non-proliferation efforts. It addresses key issues such as concerns over rogue states and stateless rogues, delivery systems made possible by technology, and the connection between nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, examining whether non-proliferation regimes can deal with these threats or whether economic or military sanctions need to be developed. It also examines the feasibility of eliminating or greatly reducing the number of nuclear weapons. A broad survey of one of today's great threats to international security, this text provides undergraduates students with the tools needed to evaluate current events and global threats.
Political theorists often see deliberation-understood as communication and debate among citizens-as a fundamental act of democratic citizenship. In other words, the legitimacy of a decision is not simply a function of the number of votes received, but the quality of the deliberation that precedes voting. Efforts to enhance the quality of deliberation have focused on designing more inclusive deliberative procedures or encouraging citizens to be more internally reflective or empathetic. But the adequacy of such efforts remains questionable. Beyond Empathy and Inclusion aims to better understand the prospects of democracy in a world where citizens are often uninterested or unwilling to engage across social distance and disagreement. Specifically, the book considers how our practices of listening affect the quality and democratic potential of deliberation. Mary F. Scudder offers a systematic theory of listening acts to explain the democratic force of listening. Modeled after speech act theory, Scudder's listening act theory shows how we do something in the act of listening, independent of the outcomes of this act. In listening to our fellow citizens, we recognize their moral equality of voice. Being heard by our fellow citizens is what ensures we have a say in the laws to which we are held. The book also tackles timely questions regarding the limits of toleration and listening in a democratic society. Do we owe listening even to democracy's enemies? After all, a virtue of democratic citizenship is the ability to resist political movements that seek to destroy democracy. Despite these challenges and risks, Scudder shows that listening is a key responsibility of democratic citizenship, and examines how listening can be used defensively to protect against threats to democracy. While listening is admittedly difficult, especially in pluralist societies, this book investigates how to motivate citizens to listen seriously, attentively, and humbly, even to those with whom they disagree.
The 1950s were a vital time in the history of science. In accordance with the intensification of the Cold War, many scientific talents were mobilized to several military-related research and development projects not only in the United States, but also in the Soviet Union. Contrary to the expectation of General Leslie Groves, a leader of the Manhattan Project, the Soviet Union succeeded in their nuclear weapon development in a very short time. And then, by the end of the decade, mankind reached the dawn of the Atomic Age proper with the beginning of the operation of the world's first civil nuclear power plant in Obninsk in 1954. The risky and costly developments of new weapons such as rockets, jet warplanes, and computers were achieved by the Soviet Union in a very short time after World War in spite of the heavy economic damage caused by the battles with German troops in Soviet territory. Why were such a great number of scientific talents mobilized to various Soviet Cold War research and development projects? What were the true natures, and real consequences of the rushed Cold War projects? How did Soviet scientists approach the nuclear age? Thanks to the study of formerly classified Soviet archives, a more nuanced view of Soviet society has become possible. To resolve the above-mentioned questions, Ichikawa analyses the complicated interactions among various factors, including the indigenous contradictions in the historical development of science in the Soviet Union; conflicts among the related interest groups; relationships with the political leadership and the military, the role of ideology and others.
The India-Pakistan relationship is complex and choreographed with wars, protracted conflicts and active disputes. Although the presence of nuclear weapons has decreased the probability of an all-out conventional war, the frequency of minor conflicts and crises have increased manifold. India considers nuclear weapons a deterrent against nuclear strikes, whereas Pakistan assumes that these would deter a nuclear as well as a conventional war. The central argument of this book is that another military engagement between India and Pakistan, similar to one in February 2019, exists with varying degrees of probability, thus challenging the efficacy of nuclear deterrence. Until the probabilities of military engagements are minimized, the possibilities of peace and stability in the region would remain elusive. Therefore, the situation asks for scholarly contribution in developing a new paradigm wherein the two nuclear neighbors are made to recognize the need to resolve their disputes instead of just managing them, to avoid recurrence of violent conflicts that can lead to a catastrophic nuclear exchange, no matter how limited it is.
This book examines the growing interest by Asian states, which are normally considered as 'outsiders' in the Arctic governance system. Whilst existing research asserts that Asian states are mostly interested in the economic aspect of the changing Arctic, including its mineral and fossil sources and the opening up of new sea routes, the book argues that the relation between Asian states and the Arctic is much more complex and dynamic, grounded in their unique perspective on national security and the role of economic development in securing their national interests. |
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