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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations
Great Britain's decision in 1968 to withdraw its forces from the
Gulf by 1971 was a turning point in the modern history of the
Middle East. The lengthy British imperial presence had guaranteed a
prolonged stability for the Gulf unmatched elsewhere in the region.
This book examines how, in the context of interplay between its
ambitions and the regional and international environment, Iran
influenced efforts to reorder the Gulf's political landscape. Its
central argument is that a better understanding of the new Gulf
order can be achieved by emphasizing local concerns and the degree
to which regional powers influenced the policy of external powers
in those formative years
Key Papers on Korea is a commemorative collection of papers celebrating 25 years of the Centre of Korean Studies (CKS), SOAS, University of London that have been written by senior academics and emerging scholars. The subjects covered in this collection reflect the different research interests and different strengths of the CKS and include historical perceptions of ancient kingdoms in Manchuria, North Korean propaganda literature, the problematic history of Sino-North Korean borderlands, the millenarian aspects of Won Buddhism, and the importance of the years 1910-11 in the development of Korean music. The collection is framed by two pieces on SOAS, which have been commissioned exclusively for this publication: an introduction that examines the 60-year history of Korean studies at SOAS, and a closing paper that sheds light on the rare collections of Korean art held at SOAS.
Through an examination of the relationship between ethics and international coercion, The Sword of Justice compares the actual practice of the United States to the standards established by the just war framework. Historical cases are considered-from nuclear deterrence, conventional war and humanitarian intervention to covert action, economic sanctions and coercive diplomacy-analyzed from the perspective of the just war tradition to provide practical tools to improve the moral content of policy decisions. An enduring feature of the international system is the use or threat of force. The most systematic critique of this practice is found in the just war tradition, begun by Augustine and further elaborated by Aquinas. This book explores the relationship between ethics and international coercion by presenting historical case studies in which the United States has taken such measures to achieve their goals, and by comparing the actual practice of the United States to the standards established by the just war framework. Based on the comparison, a number of concrete recommendations are made about specific measures that could strengthen the moral content of policy decisions, and at the same time meet tests of political feasibility in the American system of government.
Isolated by much of the world for its conduct of the war in Vietnam, the United States saw British support as a key component of its efforts to sway public opinion. This is the first serious examination of the impact of the Vietnam War on the Anglo-American "special relationship" during the years of the Johnson presidency. Using recently released government papers, oral interviews, and transcripts of presidential phone conversations, Ellis discusses the discord between the United Kingdom and the United States over the war in Southeast Asia. She focuses on the pressures placed on Prime Minister Harold Wilson's Labor Government to provide material aid to the war and to remain squarely behind the U.S. war effort in public. Britain's refusal to send troops to Vietnam and Wilson's insistence on trying to mediate the conflict were both sources of tension between the allies. This study explores the extent to which the United Kingdom was pressured to send troops to the combat zone, the part that the personal relationship between Wilson and Johnson played in the tensions, and the evidence that a deal was done to link the maintenance of British defenses East of Suez with U.S. support for the pound sterling. It concludes that Wilson managed to walk a political tightrope on Vietnam, providing just enough diplomatic support for the Americans to keep Washington satisfied and putting just enough limits on that support to keep an increasingly vociferous domestic anti-war movement at bay.
Since the Libya War in 2011 it has been widely suggested that NATO's role in US security policy has diminished, because Washington gives Europe less and Asia more strategic priority (a tendency that is reinforced by budget restraints), and because the US is no longer interested in always leading NATO activities that mainly concern European conditions. Several experts have suggested that the US expect that the European security challenges primarily should be handled by NATO's European allies in a new transatlantic burden sharing model, and that the US role should principally be Article V-focused. This book investigates to what extent these claims are valid, and what consequences they may have for European and international security.
Genocide--the deliberate destruction, usually through mass murder, of an ethnic, racial or religious group--is the ultimate crime against humanity. Drawing upon a wide variety of disciplines, this study assesses ways to prevent this crime. While most books about genocide focus on the history of a particular event, such as the Holocaust, or compare case studies to derive empirical theories, this book outlines many practical aspects of genocide prevention. Heidenrich covers a broad spectrum of expert opinions, from Stanley Hoffmann to Henry Kissinger, as well as political opinions regarding genocide that range from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton. Topics include international law, humanitarian intervention, early warning measures, and the effectiveness of such methods as diplomacy, economic pressure, and nonviolent resistance. Preventing genocide in a tense socio-political environment is no easy task, but such prevention is easier and more cost-effective than trying to put an end to genocide once it is already occurring.
"Silent Capitulations: The Kemalist Republic Under Assault" brings to life the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Turkish political life. It paints an uncompromising picture of a regime determined to appease European skeptics of Turkish adhesion to the European Union by capitulating to their demands on all fronts. Turkey's inability to unite its eastern and western parts is attributed to the dominance of an oligarchy of feudal lords, tribal chiefs, big business, and a ruling class who all masquerade as if they are part of a functioning democracy. Suffering from the ravages of tribal conformity and tainted by corruption and cronyism, the society is showing signs of an astonishing degree of deterioration. When municipal governments are a relic of the past and taxation is a tangle of dysfunctional measures, when justice is crippled by archaic arrangements and a web of vested interests control corporations-the nation is indeed under attack. Using arguments developed through the use of events and anecdotes, author Sedat Sami offers a deep examination of the Turkish social and political scene as well as a dramatic account of the Islamist onslaught against the Kemalist Republic.
This edited volume discusses the role of innovation and regional integration in economic development in Africa. Over the past five decades, post-colonial African countries have struggled to break loose from the trap of poverty and underdevelopment through the adoption of various development strategies at regional, national, and continental levels. However, the results of both national and regional efforts at advancing development on the continent have been mixed. Although the importance of agglomeration and fusion of institutions have long been recognized as possible path to achieving economic development in Africa, the approach to regionalism has been unduly focused on market integration, while neglecting other dimensions such as social policy, mobility of labor, educational policy, biotechnology, regional legislation, manufacturing, innovation, and science and technology. This volume investigates the link between innovation, regional integration, and development in Africa, arguing that the immediate and long term development of Africa lies not just in the structural transformation of its economies but in the advancement of scientific and innovation capacities. The book is divided into four parts. Part I addresses the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of innovation and regional integration in Africa. Part II presents case studies which examine how regional economic institutions are fostering innovation in Africa. Part III of the book deals with sectoral issues on innovation and integrated development in Africa. Part IV sets the future research on innovation, regional integration, and development in Africa. Combining theoretical analysis and a comparative, interdisciplinary approach, this volume is appropriate for researchers and students interested in economic development, political economy, African studies, international relations, agricultural science, and geography, as well as policymakers in regional economic communities and the African Union.
Despite the volatility and unpredictability North Korea has come to symbolize in international diplomacy and security issues, it represents only half of the potential danger on the Korean peninsula. In a notable departure from its past role as guarantor of stability on the Korean peninsula, the United States has, under the stewardship of the Bush administration, come to be regarded as, at best, an obstacle to peace and security, and at worst a potential trigger for hostility. The most immediate result of this shift on the Korean peninsula has been the U.S. failure to undertake an effective policy formulation process, which has manifested itself (on both sides of the 38th parallel) in more reactive and convulsive responses to challenges from the North Korean regime. Without such understanding there is little hope of advancing discussions or resolving North Korea's nuclear program. Fundamental to understanding North Korea's endgame is realizing that its nuclear weapons program, while menacing, is unlikely to be used offensively without major provocation; it functions as a tool of its diplomacy--missile diplomacy--to ensure survival of the regime. Working closely with South Korea, the United States must ensure that any potential resolution reached on North Korea's nuclear program does not undermine its longer-term objectives for securing broader peace and security on the Korean peninsula. Ideally, any resolution brokered over the North's nuclear weapons program will provide a synergistic effect in addressing the conventional war threat posed by North Korea on the Korean peninsula. In short, the United States must undertake constructive engagement. Steadfast unwillingness to engage withNorth Korea only provides more fodder for the regime to stall any action, and, as part of its endgame, makes U.S. behavior the issue. the issue, which is part of its endgame.
This book is the result of recent research by contemporary scientists on topics which were discussed at the conference of the same name in Volgograd, Russia in April 2017. The global economic system is currently in a stage of active formation and development: its boundaries and conditions of existence are constantly changing, which is accompanied by crises that influence the economic systems of its member countries. In order to solve problems emanating from global economic crises, a new direction was formed in modern science - global crisis management. Development of this direction requires the formation of the accompanying categorical apparatus, the development of a corresponding scientific and methodological basis, and the engagement in extensive practical research.
This work puts certain aspects of Britain's relationship with the EU under the microscope, examining the evidence for Britain's reputation as an "awkward partner". It focuses on the policy of successive Conservative governments, asking why the Conservative Party of this period, electorally one of the most successful political parties in the 20th century, eventually tore itself apart over Europe. Isolating key events such as the signing of the Single European Act, the decision to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1990 and the ratification of the Treaty on European Union including a commitment to complete Stages One and Two of the Single Currency, Buller analyzes the motivations of the Conservative government in acting as they did. He argues that far from being a "semi-detached" partner, British economic policy was increasingly "Europeanised" in this period.
This book examines the process of Spanish integration into the European Community, from 1962 when Spain under the Franco regime applied to the European Community to 1985, when democratic Spain became a member of the EEC. It aims to prove that, first the European Community was the crucial external factor determining political change in Spain, and secondly that Europeanism was a mechanism of political change, as it was the only aim which unified the whole political spectrum from the Francoist establishment to the democratic opposition.
This book deals with transnationalism and captures its singularity as a generalized phenomenon. The profusion of transnational communities is a factor of fluidity in social orders and represents confrontations between contingencies and basic socio-cultural drives. It has created a new era different from the past at essential respects. This is an age of enriching cultural diversity fraught with threatening risks inextricably linked to contemporary globalization. National sovereignty is eroded from above by global processes, from below by aspirations of sub-national groups, and from the sides - by transnational allegiances. This is the backdrop against which this book delves into the fundamental issues relating to the nature, scope and overall significance of transnationalism.
This important volume examines the vast potential of--and critical need for--cooperation among the neighboring states of the Pacific Rim. From economic and security matters to cultural and environmental concerns, the Pacific Century will require increased cross-border education, communication, and cooperation, which can be enhanced by regional organizations and agreements. This work offers a compilation of new thinking from international political, business, and academic leaders on the challenges facing the Pacific Rim in the next century, and proposes the emerging Pacific community as a model for global cooperation.
Celik examines how the easing of the East-West tensions, the end of the Cold War, and the disintegration of the Soviet Union affects Turkey's foreign policy. During the Cold War, Ankara's role as a front-line state in containing Soviet expansionism had greatly influenced its foreign policy orientation as well as its foreign policy behavior. As such, changes in the structure of the international system were bound to alter the ways in which Turkey interacted with other states in the post-Cold War world. An examination of Turkish foreign policy, however, shows a high degree of continuity and stability. While Turkey's security environment has improved significantly during the 1990s, political and military considerations continue to drive Ankara's behavior. Furthermore, despite shifts in foreign policy behavior--such as closer relations with the former Soviet republics, active involvement in the Persian Gulf War, and military alliance with Israel--there have been no major alterations in foreign policy orientation. Turkey remains staunchly pro-western and the United States continues to be its most important ally. The post-Cold War era, however, also has brought an element of uncertainty to Turkish foreign policy and raises questions about its direction for the future.
A staggering number of post-World War II White House and agency records pertaining to national security are stored in repositories nationwide, but researchers often find it impossible to locate and access these records. This book provides considerable detail on the quantity, nature, and public accessibility of the records at the National Archives, Federal records centers, the agencies themselves, presidential libraries, and smaller repositories. The author also discusses the critical importance of federal records management policies, classification and declassification policies, and the need for improved compliance with these policies. The public has never had a comprehensive guide to assist in identifying, locating, and gaining access to agency and White House national security records. The author tells the reader where national security-related records are located, which ones are accessible to the public, and which ones are not. He also discusses the vital role of federal records management policies in determining the ultimate disposition of records and where the records are stored. In addition, he sets forth the policies governing the classification and declassification of records and the reasons the vast majority of records are still inaccessible to the public. Both beginning and experienced researchers will find this work to be of great assistance.
The demise of the Cold War continues to pose new challenges to the international system. Central to these challenges is the extent of German and Japanese security commitments within their regions and to the global maintenance of peace and stability. It is important to know whether two of the world's acknowledged economic powers will play significant stabilizing roles. If they choose not to, what are the reasons and what can be done to convince them that their military might and political leadership are critical? Certainly in the first decade since the end of the Cold War, Germany and Japan did not fulfill the roles that their allies and many realist scholars expected they would. Haar seeks to explain German and Japanese reticence to assume their anticipated roles. In order to undertake this task she evaluates, various models of foreign policy. In the future, Haar asserts, Japanese and German foreign policy are likely to remain torn, with both practicing a have-it-all-ways policy. If their allies, the United States in particular, continue to insist that they bear more of the burdens of world security, then their foreign policy must be better understood. This is a provocative analysis that will be of particular interest to scholars, researchers, and policy makers involved with German and Japanese foreign policy analysis.
Domestic economic and ideological concerns during the Cold War drove many national leaders to promote U.S. international activism. This study presents the domestic sources and goals underlying the creation of America's Cold War policies and the selling of those policies to the public. Its examination of the Advertising Council illustrates how those activist international foreign policies reflected the domestic agenda of the Council's private supporters. By cooperating with the Ad Council, the American business community enlisted in the domestic propaganda programs of the wartime and early postwar years in an attempt to defeat the continued threats they perceived from the New Deal. This emerges as a central goal and consequence of advertising's promotion of President Truman's Cold War policies. The Advertising Council's representation of the moderate businessmen of the early postwar years casts a sharp light on the continuing accommodations made with the expansion of governmental power after the war and the shifting cooperation between the moderate and conservative wings of business to reshape that federal power. The Council's private propaganda programs, presented in commercial and public service advertising, related most American problems, such as race relations, labor relations, conservation and even safe driving, among others, to an asserted total foreign threat. That propaganda hoped to convince Americans that their security, prosperity, and freedom all required shaping the world in a way that protected the nation's free-enterprise political economy--presented as the source of all American freedoms.
The Munitions Inquiry, often called the Nye Committee after its chairperson, Senator Gerald Nye, critically examined the pre-World War II military-industrial complex of government agencies, corporations, labor unions, and financial institutions. Cold War-era historians typically presented the inquiry as a naive isolationist search for evil arms dealers who caused wars. Going beyond the concept of the Merchants of Death theory and into the social, intellectual, political, and cultural currents of the 1930s, Coulter expands the dimensions of a topic formerly framed within the narrow confines of isolationism and internationalism. In addition, he shows how the committee's 19th-century values and progressive idealism were unsuited to an era dominated by Hitler and Mussolini. In divesting the Munitions Inquiry of its image as an historical oddity, this book recovers a piece of American history that had been a casualty of World War II and the Cold War.
Language Policy beyond the State invites readers to (re-)consider the ways language policy is constituted, taken up, and researched if we look within and past the state. Contributors to this edited volume draw attention to language policy as always in the making, focusing on agency, on-the-ground practices, and ideologies. The chapters of the book reveal how simultaneous, and at times contradicting, language policies exist within a state and explore the complex roles played by families, businesses, educational institutions, and media in generating and appropriating these policies. By moving away from language policy analysis concerned primarily with how official state policies address well-defined language problems, some of the contributions of the volume highlight how the problems themselves can be ideological artifacts or are discursively constructed in language ideological debates that are provoked by changes in the geopolitical situation in the region. Using qualitative and descriptive research, the book uses Estonia as a setting to examine the ways historic and contemporary populations navigate language policies in both local and transnational spaces. As a whole, the collection speaks eloquently and powerfully to current efforts to understand and map the ways multiple institutions and individuals-not just the state-play an active role in forming and taking up language policies.
How did the United States move from position of nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1960s to a period of arms control based on nuclear parity the doctrine of mutual assured destruction in 1972? Drawing on declassified records of conversations between three presidents and their most trusted advisors, this book provides a new and fascinating answer to this question. John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon struggled to reconcile their own personal convictions on the nuclear arms race with the very different views of the public and Congress. In doing so they engaged in a double game, hiding their true beliefs behind a facade of strategic language while grappling in private with the complex realities of the nuclear age. The book shows how Kennedy and Johnson consistently worried about the domestic political costs of their actions, pushing ahead with an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system for the United States for fear of the domestic political consequences of scrapping both the system and the doctrine of strategic superiority on which it was based. By contrast, the abrupt change in U.S. public and congressional opinion in 1969 forced Nixon to give up America's first ABM and the U.S. lead in offensive ballistic missiles through agreements with the Soviet Union, despite his conviction that the U.S. needed a nuclear edge over the USSR to maintain the security of the West. By placing this dynamic at the center of the story, the book provides a completely new overarching interpretation of this pivotal period in the development of U.S. nuclear policy.
In the first quarter of the twentieth century, the British Government, the banks, and leading individuals in London reached historic decisions that determined the name, shape, nature, and future of the region known as the Middle East. In this fascinating and readable book, Roger Adelson examines who made policy, on what grounds, with what information, and with what results. The setting for the narrative is London, then the world's greatest metropolis and its financial and political center. Adelson evokes the atmosphere of Whitehall, Fleet Street, the City of London, and Westminster, and paints a vivid portrait of the individuals (Churchill, Lloyd George, Curzon, Cromer, and others) who established the international agenda. Using an extensive range of public and private archives, he identifies issues of money, power, and territorial ambition at the heart of policy, and he describes decisions made in ignorance of and often wholly without reference to local interests. The book explores and explains British diplomacy both before and after the 1914-1918 War: the protection of the Suez Canal and Persian Gulf; the fear of a German drive to the East and subjugation of the Turks; the discovery of oil; the post-war suppression of nationalist aspirations and the establishment of collaborative regimes more in tune with London than with the Middle East itself. More clearly than any previous work, it identifies the virtual invention of the modern Middle East and the roots of the ethnic and nationalist antagonisms that characterize the region today.
Relations between Japan and the European Union rarely hit the headlines. And yet, based upon decades of incremental developments, their bilateral partnership has come to cover a wide range of activities. This book traces the history of that mutual interaction and assesses how Japan and the EU together have the potential to offer joint solutions to the problems of the 21st century.
As the world moves further into the Information Age and the ensuing increased levels of globalization, the ability to harness all of the elements of national power in an integrated, coordinated, and synchronized manner will be even more critical for the United States to successfully defend itself. Gerstein argues that the United States as a nation is largely unprepared to reap the full benefits of the Information Age and unable to address an increasing threat level because its methods, procedures, and ways of thinking remain anchored to the Industrial Age that is rapidly being left behind. To understand and adapt to this emerging environment, the United States must re-examine the development and the implementation of national security strategy. Gerstein examines the history of U.S. national security strategy, and he analyzes the results and conclusions of several capstone documents, including the National Security Strategy of the United States (2002), the Homeland Security Strategy of the United States (2002), the Commission of National Security/21st Century, and the 9/11 Commission Report. After evaluating the execution of U.S. national security strategy, Gerstein maintains that U.S. efforts today are more heavily weighted to the use of "hard power"--political, military, and intelligence resources--for achieving strategic goals and objectives. A strategy that incorporates more fully the elements of national power, including "soft power" such as economic, social, cultural, and informational capabilities will better serve the interests of the nation. In addition, Gerstein proposes a new way of looking at strategy. Typically, strategy has been defined as the linking of ways and means toachieve ends while mitigating risk. In the future, we must factor environment into any discussion. |
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