A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY88 start with P start with P
Decades before Americans cheered on Ichiro Suzuki, Japanese baseball fans swooned over Babe Ruth. And a century prior to the craze for anime and manga, American art collectors hoarded Japanese woodblock prints. Few relationships can match the depth, or importance, of the cultural ties between America and Japan over the past two hundred years. In Pacific Cosmopolitans, Michael Auslin tells this absorbing history in full for the first time.
From the moment adventurers reached each other's shores in the early 1800s, cultural encounter formed the bedrock of U.S.–Japan ties. Such casual connections turned into formal cultural exchange within the emerging global society of the late nineteenth century. As both countries became great powers, new cultural institutions supplemented political ties and helped promote economic trade, shaping the Pacific world yet becoming entangled in controversy. These trans-Pacific activities faced critics in both countries and were overwhelmed by rising nationalism and geopolitical crisis in the early twentieth century.
In the decades since World War II, however, U.S.–Japan cultural exchange has again been seen as a crucial means to strengthen the bonds between the two nations. Bringing together philanthropists like the Rockefeller family and artists like Akira Kurosawa, along with untold numbers of ordinary Americans and Japanese, the acolytes of exchange continue to believe that cross-cultural understanding will promote a more peaceful future, even in the face of competing national interests.
As made abundantly clear in the classified documents recently made public by WikiLeaks, Pakistan is the keystone in the international fight against terrorism today. After the US-led coalition targeted terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan, these groups, including al Qaeda and the Taliban, relocated to the Federally Administered Tribal Area of Pakistan. From its base in this remote, inhospitable region of Pakistan, al Qaeda and its associated cells have planned, prepared, and executed numerous terrorist attacks around the world, in addition to supporting and waging insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere.
This book is the first detailed analysis of the myriad insurgent groups working in Pakistan. Written by well-known expert on global terrorism Rohan Gunaratna and Khuram Iqbal, a leading scholar in Pakistan, the book examines and reviews the nature, structure, and agendas of the groups, their links to activists in other countries, such as India and Iran, and the difficulties of defeating terrorism in this part of the world. Drawing on extensive field research and interviews with government officials and former terrorists, the authors argue that Pakistan faces grave and continuing pressures from within, and that without steadfast international goodwill and support, the threats of extremism, terrorism, and insurgency will continue to grow.
This timely and necessary book argues that if the international community is to win the battle against ideological extremism and operational terrorism around the world, then Pakistan should be in the vanguard of the fight.
Pakistan, which since 9/11 has come to be seen as one of the world’s most dangerous places and has been referred to as “the epicenter of international terrorism,” faces an acute counterterrorism (CT) challenge. The book focuses on violence being perpetrated against the Pakistani state by Islamist groups and how Pakistan can address these challenges, concentrating not only on military aspects but on the often-ignored political, legal, law enforcement, financial, and technological facets of the challenge.
Edited by Moeed Yusuf of the US Institute of Peace, and featuring the contributions and insights of Pakistani policy practitioners and scholars as well as international specialists with deep expertise in the region, the volume explores the current debate surrounding Pakistan’s ability—and incentives—to crack down on Islamist terrorism and provides an in-depth examination of the multiple facets of this existential threat confronting the Pakistani state and people.
The book pays special attention to the non-traditional functions of force that are central to Pakistan’s ability to subdue militancy but which have not received the deserved attention from the Pakistani state nor from western experts. In particular, this path-breaking volume, the first to explore these various facets holistically, focuses on the weakness of political institutions, the role of policing, criminal justice systems, choking financing for militancy, and regulating the use of media and technology by militants. Military force alone, also examined in this volume, will not solve Pakistan’s Islamist challenge. With original insights and attention to detail, the authors provide a roadmap for Western and Pakistani policymakers alike to address the weaknesses in Pakistan’s CT strategy.
Bringing together a diverse group of contributors ranging from Roane Carey of the Nation to scholars in Arab, Jewish, and comparative literary studies, this special issue considers Palestinian gender and identity and their relationship to the conflict with Israel as represented in film, literature, and photography. Essays explore the failed peace process, misrepresentations of the Oslo meetings, the devastating effect of continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, and the growing controversy over the call for U.S. military divestment from Israel.
Contributors. Ammiel Alcalay, Amal Amireh, Mohammed Bamyeh, Roane Carey, Thomas W. Lockwood, Lisa Suhair Majaj, Saree Makdisi, Melani McAlister, Brinda J. Mehta, John Michael, Andrew N. Rubin, Kenneth Surin
The Panama Canal Treaties of 1977 were the most significant foreign policy achievement of the Carter administration. Most Latin American nations had regarded the 1903 treaty and its later minor modifications as vestiges of "American colonialism" and obstacles to any long-term, stable relationship with the United States. Hence, at a time when conflicts were mushrooming in Central America, the significance of the new Panama treaties cannot be overestimated.
Former Ambassador to Panama William J. Jorden has provided the definitive account of the long and often contentious negotiations that produced those treaties. It is a vividly written reconstruction of the complicated process that began in 1964 and ended with ratification of the new pacts in 1978. Based on his personal involvement behind the scenes in the White House (1972–1974) and in the United States Embassy in Panama (1974–1978), Jorden has produced a unique living history. Access to documents and the personalities of both governments and, equally important, Jorden's personal recollections of participants on both sides make this historical study an incomparable document of U. S. foreign relations.
Beyond the singular story of the treaties themselves—and how diplomats negotiate in the modern world—is the rare description of how the United States deals with a major foreign policy problem. How does a superpower cope with a tiny nation that happens to occupy a strategically critical position? And how does the U. S. Senate face up to its constitutionally assigned power to "advise and consent"? Once treaties are approved, does the House of Representatives help or hinder? Panama Odyssey also deals with another crucial element in the shaping of policy—public opinion: how is it informed or led astray?
In sum, this is a history, a handbook on diplomacy, a course in government, and a revelation of foreign policy in action, all based on a fascinating and controversial episode in the U. S. experience.
“Helps us to rethink and re-imagine an egalitarian society where no one is left behind”—London School of Economics Review of Books
In times of crisis, when institutions of power are laid bare, people turn to one another. Pandemic Solidarity collects firsthand experiences from around the world of people creating their own narratives of solidarity and mutual aid in the time of the global crisis of COVID-19.
The world's media was quick to weave a narrative of selfish individualism, full of empty supermarket shelves and con-men. However, if you scratch the surface, you find a different story of community and self-sacrifice.
Looking at thirteen countries and regions, including India, Rojava, China and the US, the personal accounts in the book weave together to create a larger picture, revealing a universality of experience - a housewife in Istanbul supports her neighbor in the same way as a punk in Portland, and a grandmother in Italy does. Moving beyond the present, these stories reveal what an alternative society could look like, and reflect the skills and relationships we already have to create that society, challenging institutions of power that have already shown their fragility. Chapters include:
*Capitalism Kills, Solidarity Gives Life": A Glimpse of Solidarity Networks from Turkey
*Solidarity Network in Iraq During Covid-19: This Time the Enemy is Invisible
*Sharing Spaces and Crossing Borders: Voices from Taiwan
*Rethinking Minority and Mainstream in India
*Confronting State Authoritarianism: Civil Society and Community-Based Solidarity in Southern Africa
*On Intersectional Solidarity in Portugal
*Solidarity Networks in Greece
*Argentina: Injustices Magnified; Memories of Resistance Reactivated
*On Grassroots Organizing: Excerpts from Brazil
What happens to society when we are not held back by the neoliberal narrative? What can we do, to protect ourselves and one another, when we organize and act collectively? From the stories told here, maybe more than we expect.
Using information based on thirty years of research, Cumings offers a new perspective on a wide range of issues that originated with the cold war—with particular focus on the possibly inappropriate collaboration between universities, foundations, and intelligence agencies. Seeking to explode the presuppositions that Americans usually bring to the understanding of our relations with East Asia, the study ranges over much of the history of the twentieth century in East Asian–American relations—Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Korean War, and more recent difficulties in U.S. relations with China and Japan. Cumings also rebuts U.S. media coverage of North Korea’s nuclear diplomacy in the 1990s and examines how experiences of colonialism and postcolonialism have had varying effects on economic development in each of these countries. Positing that the central defining experience of twentieth-century East Asia has been its entanglement first with British and Japanese imperialism, and then with the United States, Cumings ends with a discussion of how the situation could change over the next century as the economic and political global clout of the United States declines.
Illuminating the sometimes self-deluded ideology of cold war America, Parallax Visions will engage historians, political scientists, and students and scholars of comparative politics and social theory, as well as readers interested in questions of modernity and the role of the United States in shaping the destinies of modernizing societies in Asia.
Law lies at the roots of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Jews sought a national home by “Public Law” while Palestinians reject the project as illegal. Britain, the League of Nations and the United Nations all mobilised international law to justify their interventions. After the 1967 war, Israel organised an occupation with excessive legalism that most of the world viewed, in fact, as illegal.
Partitioning Palestine focuses on three key moments in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: the League of Nations Mandate, the United Nations partition plan and the Oslo agreements. None of these documents are neutral but, rather, encode a variety of meanings. The book traces the way in which these legal narratives have both shaped national identity and sharpened the conflict.
In this pioneering text, John Strawson argues that a committed attachment to the belief in legal justice has hampered the search for a settlement. Law, far from offering conflict resolution, has reinforced the trenches from which Palestinians and Israelis confront one another.
Passing Lines seeks to stimulate dialogue on the role of sexuality and sexual orientation in immigration to the U.S. from Latin America and the Caribbean. The book looks at the complexities, inconsistencies, and paradoxes of immigration from the point of view of both academics and practitioners in the field.
Passing Lines takes a close look at the debates that surround eyewitness testimony, expertise, and advocacy regarding immigration and sexuality, bringing together work by scholars, activists, and others from both sides of the border.
How do international leaders emerge and why are they successful in bringing followers to converge on their positions? The Passion of International Leadership draws on recent advances in political psychology and state-of-the-art research in International Relations to go beyond current knowledge and simplistic accounts of international leadership. It tells surprising and intense stories of policymakers at the head of great powers attempting to cooperate during crisis moments, and uses these stories to challenge commonly held beliefs and intuitions about international leadership.
Beauregard explores international leadership in four cases of transatlantic cooperation when Western policymakers were confronted with foreign conflicts, like civil or secessionist wars. He provides a fascinating study of the recognition of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia during the wars in Yugoslavia; the peace mediation during the Russia-Georgia war in 2008; the adoption of economic sanctions against Russia over the conflict in Ukraine; and finally, cooperation on striking against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The book argues that leaders are driven by their convictions, and that they must strike a balance between the intense emotions associated with their beliefs and their need to represent a broader community. At the same time as they seek to bring followers on board by persuading them, they need to pay attention to emotionally contagious and resonant events that can alter the course of international cooperation.
The book probes two major issues: the effect of IP law on innovation itself and the effect of IP law on the international diffusion, or sharing, of technology. Discussing a range of inventions, from the AK-47 rifle to the B-29 Superfortress bomber to the MQ-1 Predator drone, the authors show how IP systems (or their lack) have impacted domestic and international relations across a number of countries, including the United States, Russia, China, and South Korea. The study finds, among other results, that while the open nature of the IP system may encourage industrial espionage like cyberwarfare, increased state uptake of IP law is helping to establish international standards for IP protection. This clear-eyed approach to law and national security is thus essential for anyone interested in history, political science, and legal studies.
Judith M. Heimann entered the diplomatic life in 1958 to join her husband, John, in Jakarta, Indonesia, at his American Embassy post. This, her first time out of the United States, would set her on a path across the continents as she mastered the fine points of diplomatic culture. She did so first as a spouse, then as a diplomat herself, thus becoming part of one of the Foreign Service’s first tandem couples.
Heimann’s lively recollections of her life in Africa, Asia, and Europe show us that when it comes to reconciling our government’s requirements with the other government’s wants, shuttle diplomacy, Skype, and email cannot match on-the-ground interaction. The ability to gauge and finesse gesture, tone of voice, and unspoken assumptions became her stock-in-trade as she navigated, time and again, remarkably delicate situations.
This insightful and witty memoir gives us a behind-the-scenes look at a rarely explored experience: that of one of the very first married female diplomats, who played an unsung but significant role in some of the important international events of the past fifty years. To those who know something of today’s world of diplomacy, Paying Calls in Shangri-La will be an enlightening tour through the way it used to be—and for aspiring Foreign Service officers and students, it will be an inspiration.
Published in association with ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series
Trends in the number and scope of peace operations since 2000 evidence heightened international appreciation for their value in crisis-response and regional stabilization. Peace Operations: Trends, Progress, and Prospects addresses national and institutional capacities to undertake such operations, by going beyond what is available in previously published literature.
Part one focuses on developments across regions and countries. It builds on data- gathering projects undertaken at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS), the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), and the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA) that offer new information about national contributions to operations and about the organizations through which they make those contributions. The information provides the bases for arriving at unique insights about the characteristics of contributors and about the division of labor between the United Nations and other international entities.
Part two looks to trends and prospects within regions and nations. Unlike other studies that focus only on regions with well-established track records—specifically Europe and Africa—this book also looks to the other major areas of the world and poses two questions concerning them: If little or nothing has been done institutionally in a region, why not? What should be expected?
This groundbreaking volume will help policymakers and academics understand better the regional and national factors shaping the prospects for peace operations into the next decade.
This intensively researched volume covers a previously neglected aspect of American history: the foreign policy perspective of the peace progressives, a bloc of dissenters in the U.S. Senate, between 1913 and 1935. The Peace Progressives and American Foreign Relations is the first full-length work to focus on these senators during the peak of their collective influence. Robert David Johnson shows that in formulating an anti-imperialist policy, the peace progressives advanced the left-wing alternative to the Wilsonian agenda.
The experience of World War I, and in particular Wilson’s postwar peace settlement, unified the group behind the idea that the United States should play an active world role as the champion of weaker states. Senators Asle Gronna of North Dakota, Robert La Follette and John Blaine of Wisconsin, and William Borah of Idaho, among others, argued that this anti-imperialist vision would reconcile American ideals not only with the country’s foreign policy obligations but also with American economic interests. In applying this ideology to both inter-American and European affairs, the peace progressives emerged as the most powerful opposition to the business-oriented internationalism of the decade’s Republican administrations, while formulating one of the most comprehensive critiques of American foreign policy ever to emerge from Congress.
Peacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa is a critical reflection on peacebuilding efforts in Africa. The authors expose the tensions and contradictions in different clusters of peacebuilding activities, including peace negotiations; statebuilding; security sector governance; and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. Essays also address the institutional framework for peacebuilding in Africa and the ideological underpinnings of key institutions, including the African Union, NEPAD, the African Development Bank, the Pan-African Ministers Conference for Public and Civil Service, the UN Peacebuilding Commission, the World Bank, and the International Criminal Court. The volume includes on-the-ground case study chapters on Sudan, the Great Lakes Region of Africa, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the Niger Delta, Southern Africa, and Somalia, analyzing how peacebuilding operates in particular African contexts.
The authors adopt a variety of approaches, but they share a conviction that peacebuilding in Africa is not a script that is authored solely in Western capitals and in the corridors of the United Nations. Rather, the writers in this volume focus on the interaction between local and global ideas and practices in the reconstitution of authority and livelihoods after conflict. The book systematically showcases the tensions that occur within and between the many actors involved in the peacebuilding industry, as well as their intended beneficiaries. It looks at the multiple ways in which peacebuilding ideas and initiatives are reinforced, questioned, reappropriated, and redesigned by different African actors.
A joint project between the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, South Africa, and the Centre of African Studies at the University of Cambridge.
The post-Cold War era has been difficult for Japan. A country once heralded for evolving a superior form of capitalism and seemingly ready to surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy lost its way in the early 1990s. The bursting of the bubble in 1991 ushered in a period of political and economic uncertainty that has lasted for over two decades. There were hopes that the triple catastrophe of March 11, 2011—a massive earthquake, tsunami, and accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant—would break Japan out of its torpor and spur the country to embrace change that would restart the growth and optimism of the go-go years. But several years later, Japan is still waiting for needed transformation, and Brad Glosserman concludes that the fact that even disaster has not spurred radical enough reform reveals something about Japan's political system and Japanese society. Glosserman explains why Japan has not and will not change, concluding that Japanese horizons are shrinking and that the Japanese public has given up the bold ambitions of previous generations and its current leadership. This is a critical insight into contemporary Japan and one that should shape our thinking about this vital country.
Drawing on testimonies from contra collaborators and ex-combatants, as well as pro-Sandinista peasants, this book presents a dynamic account of the growing divisions between peasants from the area of Quilalí who took up arms in defense of revolutionary programs and ideals such as land reform and equality and those who opposed the FSLN.
Peasants in Arms details the role of local elites in organizing the first anti-Sandinista uprising in 1980 and their subsequent rise to positions of field command in the contras. Lynn Horton explores the internal factors that led a majority of peasants to turn against the revolution and the ways in which the military draft, and family and community pressures reinforced conflict and undermined mid-decade FSLN policy shifts that attempted to win back peasant support.
This collection gathers a unique group of contributors, including representatives from Congress, the United Nations, and Israel’s Ministry of Justice, as well as senior diplomats from Canada, Bulgaria, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey. Presenting their diverse perspectives, the contributors address regional and policy issues related to the mass migration of people, as well as questions concerning citizenship and national security, human trafficking in the form of prostitution, and cultural discrimination. The result is a multifaceted exploration of issues underlying many of the world’s economic, security, and social challenges. Other topics include the impact of state failure on migration, immigration in California, security measures and “preferred” immigrants in Canada after September 11, 2001, and Albanian migration into Greece.
Contributors. Alexandre Afonso, David Binder, Andrew C. Danopoulos, Constantine P. Danopoulos, Francis M. Deng, Mohamed A. El-Khawas, Omar G. Encarnación, Rochelle Gershuni, Larry L. Gerston, Ahmet Içduygu, Benjamin Kline, Bojan Korenic, Erin Kruger, Robert S. Leiken, Marlene Mulder, Elena Poptodorova, Tom Tancredo
The first months of the Obama administration have led to expectations, both in the United States and abroad, that in the coming years America will increasingly promote the international rule of law—a position that many believe is both ethically necessary and in the nation’s best interests.
With The Perils of Global Legalism, Eric A. Posner explains that such views demonstrate a dangerously naive tendency toward legalism—an idealistic belief that law can be effective even in the absence of legitimate institutions of governance. After tracing the historical roots of the concept, Posner carefully lays out the many illusions—such as universalism, sovereign equality, and the possibility of disinterested judgment by politically unaccountable officials—on which the legalistic view is founded. Drawing on such examples as NATO’s invasion of Serbia, attempts to ban the use of land mines, and the free-trade provisions of the WTO, Posner demonstrates throughout that the weaknesses of international law confound legalist ambitions—and that whatever their professed commitments, all nations stand ready to dispense with international agreements when it suits their short- or long-term interests.
Provocative and sure to be controversial, The Perils of Global Legalism will serve as a wake-up call for those who view global legalism as a panacea—and a reminder that international relations in a brutal world allow no room for illusions.
Now more than ever, in the arenas of national security, diplomacy, and military operations, effective communication strategy is of paramount importance. A 24/7 television, radio, and Internet news cycle paired with an explosion in social media demands it.
According to James P. Farwell, an expert in communication strategy and cyber war who has advised the U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND and the Department of Defense, and worked nationally and internationally as a media and political consultant, this book examines how colorful figures in history from Julius Caesar to Winston Churchill, Napoleon to Hugo Chavez, Martin Luther to Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan, have forged communication strategies to influence audiences.
Mark Twain said that history doesn't repeat itself, but rhymes. In showing how major leaders have moved audiences, Farwell bears out Twain's thesis. Obama and Luther each wanted to reach a mass audience. Obama used social media and the Internet. Luther used the printing press. But the strategic mindset was similar. Hugo Chavez identifies with Simon Bolivar, but his attitude towards the media more closely echoes Napoleon. Caesar used coins to build his image in ways that echo the modern use of campaign buttons. His "triumphs," enormous parades to celebrate military victories, celebrated his achievements and aimed to impress the populace with his power and greatness. Adolph Hitler employed a similar tactic with his torchlight parades.
The book shows how the US government's approach to strategic communication has been misguided. It offers a colorful, incisive critical evaluation of the concepts, doctrines, and activities that the US Department of Defense and Department of State employ for psychological operations, military information support operations, propaganda, and public diplomacy.
Persuasion and Power is a book about the art of communication strategy, how it is used, where, and why. Farwell's adroit use of vivid examples produce a well-researched, entertaining story that illustrates how its principles have made a critical difference throughout history in the outcomes of crises, conflicts, politics, and diplomacy across different cultures and societies.
Before the First World War, the British Admiralty conceived a plan to win rapid victory in the event of war with Germany-economic warfare on an unprecedented scale.This secret strategy called for the state to exploit Britain's effective monopolies in banking, communications, and shipping-the essential infrastructure underpinning global trade-to create a controlled implosion of the world economic system.
In this revisionist account, Nicholas Lambert shows in lively detail how naval planners persuaded the British political leadership that systematic disruption of the global economy could bring about German military paralysis. After the outbreak of hostilities, the government shied away from full implementation upon realizing the extent of likely collateral damage-political, social, economic, and diplomatic-to both Britain and neutral countries. Woodrow Wilson in particular bristled at British restrictions on trade. A new, less disruptive approach to economic coercion was hastily improvised. The result was the blockade, ostensibly intended to starve Germany. It proved largely ineffective because of the massive political influence of economic interests on national ambitions and the continued interdependencies of all countries upon the smooth functioning of the global trading system.
Lambert's interpretation entirely overturns the conventional understanding of British strategy in the early part of the First World War and underscores the importance in any analysis of strategic policy of understanding Clausewitz's "political conditions of war."
Ryan evaluates the nature and effectiveness of U.S. trade diplomacy with Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China in the 1970s and 1980s by examining the diplomatic strategies used by the U.S. Trade Representative to enforce Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, which was designed to protect free trade and competition through investigations, negotiations, and sanctions.
Ryan shows the different trade diplomacy tactics the East Asian governments pursued during dispute settlement negotiations with the USTR. The study also evaluates the fit between the East Asian political economies and the rules and principles of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) regime. It explores the capabilities of the multilateral and minilateral regional institutions of trade dispute in the Pacific to settle emerging trade disputes. In the debate over rule-based or power-based diplomacy, Ryan concludes that U.S. trade diplomacy was most successful when it was rule-based, and that it gained significant compliance with GATT and other fair trade agreements.
Ryan interviewed many of the key trade negotiators in Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Beijing, and Washington. His analysis is based on the largest, most systematic, market sector-specific data set yet presented on U.S. export trade dispute settlement in the Pacific. It studies the structure of state power, the structures of international business competition in manufacturing, agriculture, and services, the international and regional institutions of trade diplomacy, and the national governmental institutions of trade diplomacy in the Pacific.
Anyone interested in international trade or diplomacy will find this book a source of new insight into the dynamics of trans-Pacific trade.
In Plowshares into Swords, David Ekbladh recaptures the power of knowledge and information developed between World War I and World War II by an international society of institutions and individuals committed to liberal international order and given focus by the League of Nations in Geneva. That information and analysis revolutionized critical debates in a world in crisis. In doing so, Ekbladh transforms conventional understandings of the United States’ postwar hegemony, showing that important elements of it were profoundly influenced by ideas that emerged from international exchanges. The League’s work was one part of a larger transnational movement that included the United States and which saw the emergence of concepts like national income, gross domestic product, and other attempts to define and improve the standards of living, as well as new approaches to old questions about the role of government. Forged as tools for peace these ideas were beaten into weapons as World War II threatened. Ekbladh recounts how, though the US had never been a member of the organization, vital parts of the League were rescued after the fall of France in 1940 and given asylum at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. However, this presence in the US is just one reason its already well-regarded economic analyses and example were readily mobilized by influential American and international figures for an Allied “war of ideas,” plans for a postwar world, and even blueprints for the new United Nations. How did this body of information become so valuable? As Ekbladh makes clear, the answer is that information and analysis themselves became crucial currencies in global affairs: to sustain a modern, liberal global order, a steady stream of information about economics, politics, and society was, and remains, indispensable.
This is an Auto-narrated audiobook version of this book.
An in-depth look at how the ideas formulated by the interwar League of Nations shaped American thinking on the modern global order.
In Plowshares into Swords, David Ekbladh recaptures the power of knowledge and information developed between World War I and World War II by an international society of institutions and individuals committed to liberal international order and given focus by the League of Nations in Geneva. That information and analysis revolutionized critical debates in a world in crisis. In doing so, Ekbladh transforms conventional understandings of the United States’ postwar hegemony, showing that important elements of it were profoundly influenced by ideas that emerged from international exchanges. The League’s work was one part of a larger transnational movement that included the United States and which saw the emergence of concepts like national income, gross domestic product, and other attempts to define and improve the standards of living, as well as new approaches to old questions about the role of government. Forged as tools for peace these ideas were beaten into weapons as World War II threatened. Ekbladh recounts how, though the US had never been a member of the organization, vital parts of the League were rescued after the fall of France in 1940 and given asylum at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. However, this presence in the US is just one reason its already well-regarded economic analyses and example were readily mobilized by influential American and international figures for an Allied “war of ideas,” plans for a postwar world, and even blueprints for the new United Nations. How did this body of information become so valuable? As Ekbladh makes clear, the answer is that information and analysis themselves became crucial currencies in global affairs: to sustain a modern, liberal global order, a steady stream of information about economics, politics, and society was, and remains, indispensable.
The identification of acid rain in the 1960s changed scientific and popular understanding of fossil fuel pollution’s potential to cause regional—and even global—environmental harms. It showed scientists that the problem of fossil fuel pollution was one that crossed borders—it could travel across vast stretches of the earth’s atmosphere to impact ecosystems around the world. This unprecedented transnational reach prompted governments, for the first time, to confront the need to cooperate on pollution policies, transforming environmental science and diplomacy. Studies of acid rain and other pollutants brought about a reimagining of how to investigate the natural world as a complete entity, and the responses of policy makers, scientists, and the public set the stage for how societies have approached other prominent environmental dangers on a global scale, most notably climate change.
Grounded in archival research spanning eight countries and five languages, as well as interviews with leading scientists from both government and industry, Poisonous Skies is the first book to examine the history of acid rain in an international context. By delving deep into our environmental past, Rothschild hopes to inform its future, showing us how much is at stake for the natural world as well as what we risk—and have already risked—by not acting.
The global economic crisis has exposed the limits of neoliberalism and dramatically deepened social polarization. Yet, despite increasing social resistance and opposition, neoliberalism prevails globally.
Radical alternatives, moreover, are only rarely debated. And if they are, such alternatives are reduced to new Keynesian and new developmental agendas, which fail to address existing class divisions and imperialist relations of domination.
This collection of essays polarizes the debate between radical and reformist alternatives by exploring head-on the antagonistic structure of capitalist development. The contributors ground their proposals in an international, non-Eurocentric and Marxian inspired analysis of capitalism and its crises. From Latin America to Asia, Africa to the Middle East and Europe to the US, social and labour movements have emerged as the protagonists behind creating alternatives.
This book’s new generation of scholars has written accessible yet theoretically informed and empirically rich chapters elaborating radical worldwide strategies for moving beyond neoliberalism, and beyond capitalism. The intent is to provoke critical reflection and positive action towards substantive change.
But security techniques bred in the tropical hothouse of colonial rule were not contained, McCoy shows, at this remote periphery of American power. Migrating homeward through both personnel and policies, these innovations helped shape a new federal security apparatus during World War I. Once established under the pressures of wartime mobilization, this distinctively American system of public-private surveillance persisted in various forms for the next fifty years, as an omnipresent, sub rosa matrix that honeycombed U.S. society with active informers, secretive civilian organizations, and government counterintelligence agencies. In each succeeding global crisis, this covert nexus expanded its domestic operations, producing new contraventions of civil liberties—from the harassment of labor activists and ethnic communities during World War I, to the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, all the way to the secret blacklisting of suspected communists during the Cold War.
“With a breathtaking sweep of archival research, McCoy shows how repressive techniques developed in the colonial Philippines migrated back to the United States for use against people of color, aliens, and really any heterodox challenge to American power. This book proves Mark Twain’s adage that you cannot have an empire abroad and a republic at home.”—Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago
“This book lays the Philippine body politic on the examination table to reveal the disease that lies within—crime, clandestine policing, and political scandal. But McCoy also draws the line from Manila to Baghdad, arguing that the seeds of controversial counterinsurgency tactics used in Iraq were sown in the anti-guerrilla operations in the Philippines. His arguments are forceful.”—Sheila S. Coronel, Columbia University
Since the late 1950s the world's banks have expanded their global operations, with US institutions leading the way. As the recent global economic crisis shows, actions of private bankers can threaten capital markets, weaken national regulatory systems, and strain international cooperation-seriously endangering the world economy and the interests of nation states.
Since the 1960s, the Asian Tigers have combined economic success and autocratic politics. Now in the wake of a daunting financial crisis, these nations are moving toward political change as well as renewed growth. What direction will these changes take? Will the traditional Asian "development state" give way to the American model of market liberalism?
This book explores the complex transitions under way in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, as the leaderships shift their economic and political relationships in order to survive in the global economy. Written by a team of international scholars in political science, economics, international relations, and Asian studies, this book illuminates the significant changes in the political economies of the major Asian states.
The chapters that follow are grouped in three sections, corresponding to the three stages of peacemaking: reduction or management of regional conflict; peacemaking or progress toward a peace treaty; and maintenance of bilateral peace and the regionalization of the peace settlement. In each chapter, the contributors consider the five key questions from a variety of methodological, historical, cultural, and empirical perspectives, drawing data from the Pacific, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The conclusion expands on several themes found in the chapters and proposes an agenda for future research.
Much attention has focused on the ongoing role of economics in the prevention of armed conflict and the deterioration of relations. In The Political Economy of Transitions to Peace, Galia Press-Barnathan focuses on the importance of economics in initiating and sustaining peaceful relations after conflict.
Press-Barnathan provides in-depth case studies of several key relationships in the post-World War II era: Israel and Egypt; Israel and Jordan; Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia; Japan and South Korea; Germany and France; and Germany and Poland. She creates an analytical framework through which to view each of these cases based on three factors: the domestic balance between winners and losers from transition to peace; the economic disparity between former enemies; and the impact of third parties on stimulating new cooperative economic initiatives. Her approach provides both a regional and cross-regional comparative analysis of the degree of success in maintaining and advancing peace, of the challenges faced by many nations in negotiating peace after conflict, and of the unique role of economic factors in this highly political process.
Press-Barnathan employs both liberal and realist theory to examine the motivations of these states and the societies they represent. She also weighs their power relations to see how these factor into economic interdependence and the peace process. She reveals the predominant role of the state and big business in the initial transition phase (“cold” peace), but also identifies an equally vital need for a subsequent broader societal coalition in the second, normalizing phase (“warm” peace). Both levels of engagement, Press-Barnathan argues, are essential to a durable peace. Finally, she points to the complex role that third parties can play in these transitions, and the limited long-term impact of direct economic side-payments to the parties.
After a historical review of policing in the United States and Europe over the past century, Huggins reveals how the United States, in order to protect and strengthen its position in the world system, has used police assistance to establish intelligence and other social control infrastructures in foreign countries. The U.S.-encouraged centralization of Latin American internal security systems, Huggins claims, has led to the militarization of the police and, in turn, to an increase in state-sanctioned violence. Furthermore, Political Policing shows how a domestic police force—when trained by another government—can lose its power over legitimate crime as it becomes a tool for the international interests of the nation that trains it.
Pointing to U.S. responsibility for violations of human rights by foreign security forces, Political Policing will provoke discussion among those interested in international relations, criminal justice, human rights, and the sociology of policing.
In the wake of September 11, the American public has been besieged with claims that politics is driven by personality. Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Kim Chong-Il, Ayatollah Khameinei-America's political rogues' gallery is populated by individuals whose need for recognition supposedly drives their actions on the world stage. How does personality actually drive politics? And how is personality, in turn, formed by political environment? Political Psychology in International Relations provides students and scholars with the analytical tools they need to answer these pressing questions, and to assess their implications for policy in a real and sometimes dangerous world.
In these original essays, widely respected experts analyze the personal psychologies and public belief systems of the individuals and nations involved in the Gulf War - from George Bush and Saddam Hussein to the peoples of the United States, Israel, and Arab countries. Approaching the events of 1990-1991 from the perspectives of psychology, history, mass communications, and political science, these scholars examine the dynamic relationship of events, behavior, and perceptions.
Part I deals with the psychological and political origins of the war; part II focuses on George Bush, Saddam Hussein, and the nature of their leadership and judgement; part III discusses the battle for public perceptions and beliefs waged by both sides; part IV analyzes the results of that battle as revealed by the understanding of the U.S., Israeli, and Arab publics; and part V deals with the war’s consequences. A postscript by Stanley Renshon covers military actions in the Gulf in late 1992 and early 1993.
Drawing on insights from sociology, political science, and institutional theory, Sending challenges theories centered on particular actors’ authority, whether it is the authority of so-called epistemic communities, the moral authority of advocacy groups, or the rational-legal authority of international organizations. Using in-depth and historically oriented case studies of population and peacebuilding, he demonstrates that authority is not given nor located in any set of particular actors. Rather, continuous competition for recognition as an authority to determine what is to be governed, by whom, and for what purpose shapes global governance in fundamental ways.
Advancing a field-based approach, Sending highlights the political stakes disguised by the technical language of professionals and thus opens a broader public debate over the key issues of our time.
From the conflicts over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization to concern over illegal immigration and debates over the official status of the English language, politicians and citizens have been reconsidering fundamental questions about American society’s role in a changing global arena. Applying concepts derived from the study of international and comparative politics, Edward S. Cohen offers a systematic analysis of the impact of globalization on United States domestic politics.
Focusing on the obvious issue of trade and the less obvious areas of immigration and language policy, Cohen demonstrates that globalization is both the cause and result of a new relationship between the government, corporations, and citizens within the United States. Globalization has led to the formation of new political divisions and coalitions and has caused deepening conflicts over the purposes and goals of American politics. The outcome of these conflicts, Cohen argues, will determine the future of American political life.
Showing that globalization has transformed the priorities and responsibilities of sovereign states rather than hastening their demise, the book will interest politicians, policymakers, and students looking for a discussion of globalization that is grounded in the recent political history of the United States.
Debates on the end-of-life controversy are complex because they seem to highjack national and cultural traditions. Where previous books have focused on ideological grounds, The Politics of Intimacy explores dying as the site where policies are negotiated and implemented. Intimacy comprises the emotional experience of the end of life and how we acknowledge it—or not—through institutions. This process shows that end-of-life controversy relies on the conflict between the individual and these institutions, a relationship that is the cornerstone of Western liberal democracies.
Through interviews with mourners, stakeholders, and medical professionals, examination of media debates in France and the Czech Republic, Durnová shows that liberal institutions, in their attempts to accommodate the emotional experience at the end of life, ultimately fail. She describes this deadlock as the “politics of intimacy,” revealing that political institutions deploy power through collective acknowledgment of individual emotions but fail to maintain this recognition because of this same experience.
How can toleration be fostered in a contentious and tightly populated world? What situations and fears have historically fed attitudes of intolerance? When and how should states intervene? The authors of these essays seek answers to such questions and examine topics such as why certain national groups are especially vulnerable to intolerance and narcissistic fantasies and how the colonial view of intolerant exploitation as an acceptable norm of behavior has been replaced by a drive toward international solidarity. The essays address religious tolerance, the role of toleration in legal contexts, the philosophical justification of tolerance, and the concept of solidarity. Ethnic identity, nationalism, the “goods of conflict,” and the treatment of refugees seeking asylum are discussed as well. While one contributor argues that a moment of genuine tolerance is achieved only when there is a cost involved in the act of tolerating another person’s way of living, another stresses that rational, communal dialogue can only take place if the state is excluded from the discussion, if conflict is recognized as valuable, and if local communities come to consensus about what behavior and discourse is intolerable.
Offering an accessible and engaging commentary on the concept of tolerance, The Politics of Toleration in Modern Life will interest a wide range of readers of philosophy, political science, religion, sociology, and history.
Contributors. George Carey, Christopher Hill, Michael Ignatieff, Helena Kennedy, Alasdair MacIntyre, Susan Mendus, Julia Neuberger, Bernard Williams
earlier work up to date, comparing classical nationalist, populist regimes of the 1940s, such as those of Juan Perón and José María Velasco Ibarra, with their contemporary neoliberal and radical successors. De la Torre explores their similarities and differences, focusing on their discourses and uses of political symbols and myths.
Young identifies three cycles of hope and disappointment common to many of the African states (including those in North Africa) over the last half-century: initial euphoria at independence in the 1960s followed by disillusionment with a lapse into single-party autocracies and military rule; a period of renewed confidence, radicalization, and ambitious state expansion in the 1970s preceding state crisis and even failure in the disastrous 1980s; and a phase of reborn optimism during the continental wave of democratization beginning around 1990. He explores in depth the many African civil wars—especially those since 1990—and three key tracks of identity: Africanism, territorial nationalism, and ethnicity.
Only more recently, Young argues, have the paths of the fifty-three African states begun to diverge more dramatically, with some leading to liberalization and others to political, social, and economic collapse—outcomes impossible to predict at the outset of independence.
“This book is the best volume to date on the politics of the last 50 years of African independence.”—International Affairs
“The book shares Young’s encyclopedic knowledge of African politics, providing in a single volume a comprehensive rendering of the first 50 years of independence. The book is sprinkled with anecdotes from his vast experience in Africa and that of his many students, and quotations from all of the relevant literature published over the past five decades. Students and scholars of African politics alike will benefit immensely from and enjoy reading The Postcolonial State in Africa.”—Political Science Quarterly
“The study of African politics will continue to be enriched if practitioners pay homage to the erudition and the nobility of spirit that has anchored the engagement of this most esteemed doyen of Africanists with the continent.”—African History Review
“The book’s strongest attribute is the careful way that comparative political theory is woven into historical storytelling throughout the text. . . . Written with great clarity even for all its detail, and its interwoven use of theory makes it a great choice for new students of African studies.”—Australasian Review of African Studies
These essays demonstrate how realism operates rhetorically and point the way toward a richer understanding of world politics.
Power and Negotiation is a unique study that addresses the concept of power and produces new findings both about the concept itself and about its applications to negotiation. It rejects both the notion of power as a resource and power as an ability. Instead, the work defines power as an act that is designed to cause the other party to move in a desired direction, thus separating the concept both from its source and from its effects and leaving it open to much more detailed analysis. At the same time, it also examines perceived power on the basis of which symmetries and asymmetries in the relations between parties can be identified. It then looks at six cases of clear asymmetry, two cases of symmetry, and one mixed situation. The book ends with a careful examination of lessons for practice and lessons for theory.
The book will appeal to students of negotiation strategy and international relations.
I. William Zartman is Jacob Blaustein Professor of International Organization and Conflict Resolution, The Johns Hopkins University. The late Jeffrey Z. Rubin was Professor of Psychology at Tufts University.
The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has instructed all UN specialized agencies and other affiliated organizations to consider how their work might advance the cause of human rights around the world. Many of these bodies have taken this call to heart, with a wide range of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) trying to play a more active role in promoting human welfare.
Power and Principle is a comparative study of how and why IGOs integrate human rights standards into their development operations. It focuses on the process of policy innovation in three UN-related IGOs: the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF,) the World Bank, and the World Health Organization (WHO). In his comprehensive analysis, Joel E. Oestreich uses case studies to demonstrate how their policies have evolved during the past two decades to reflect important human rights considerations.
Drawing on interviews with dozens of staffers from IGOs, Oestreich creates a gripping narrative of the inner workings of these large bureaucracies. In each study he describes how the organization first became interested in human rights standards, how these standards were adopted as a priority, how the organization defined rights in the context of their work, and what a rights-based approach has meant in practice. The book argues that IGOs ought to be seen as capable of meaningful agency in international politics, and describes the nature of that agency. It concludes with an examination of these organizations and their ethical responsibilities as actors on the world stage.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the United States emerged as an economic colossus in command of a new empire. Yet for the next forty years the United States eschewed the kind of aggressive grand strategy that had marked other rising imperial powers in favor of a policy of moderation.
In Power and Restraint, Jeffrey W. Meiser explores why the United States—counter to widely accepted wisdom in international relations theory—chose the course it did. Using thirty-four carefully researched historical cases, Meiser asserts that domestic political institutions and culture played a decisive role in preventing the mobilization of resources necessary to implement an expansionist grand strategy. These factors included traditional congressional opposition to executive branch ambitions, voter resistance to European-style imperialism, and the personal antipathy to expansionism felt by presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. The web of resilient and redundant political restraints halted or limited expansionist ambitions and shaped the United States into an historical anomaly, a rising great power characterized by prudence and limited international ambitions.
Only recently have international relations scholars started to seriously examine the influence of collective memory on foreign policy formation and relations between states and peoples. The ways in which the memories of past events are interpreted, misinterpreted, or even manipulated in public discourse create the context that shapes international relations.
Power and the Past brings together leading history and international relations scholars to provide a groundbreaking examination of the impact of collective memory. This timely study makes a contribution to developing a theory of memory and international relations and also examines specific cases of collective memory’s influence resulting from the legacies of World War II, the Holocaust, and September 11. Addressing concerns shared by world leaders and international institutions as well as scholars of international studies, this volume illustrates clearly how the memory of past events alters the ways countries interact in the present, how memory shapes public debate and policymaking, and how memory may aid or more frequently impede conflict resolution.
In Power in Colonial Africa: Conflict and Discourse in Lesotho, 1870–1960, Elizabeth A. Eldredge analyzes a panoply of archival and oral resources, visual signs and symbols, and public and private actions to show how power may be exercised not only by rulers but also by the ruled. The BaSotho—best known for their consolidation of a kingdom from the 1820s to 1850s through primarily peaceful means, and for bringing colonial forces to a standstill in the Gun War of 1880–1881—struggled to maintain sovereignty over their internal affairs during their years under the colonial rule of the Cape Colony (now part of South Africa) and Britain from 1868 to 1966. Eldredge explores instances of BaSotho resistance, resilience, and resourcefulness in forms of expression both verbal and non-verbal. Skillfully navigating episodes of conflict, the BaSotho matched wits with the British in diplomatic brinksmanship, negotiation, compromise, circumvention, and persuasion, revealing the capacity of a subordinate population to influence the course of events as it selectively absorbs, employs, and subverts elements of the colonial culture.
“A refreshing, readable and lucid account of one in an array of compositions of power during colonialism in southern Africa.”—David Gordon, Journal of African History
“Elegantly written.”—Sean Redding, Sub-Saharan Africa
“Eldredge writes clearly and attractively, and her studies of the war between Lerotholi and Masupha and of the conflicts over the succession to the paramountcy are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand those crises.”—Peter Sanders, Journal of Southern African Studies
For decades—and today to a certain extent—Hu Shih’s political writings were considered sensitive and even dangerous. As a strident critic of the Chinese Communist Party’s oligarchical practices, he was targeted by the CCP in a concerted national campaign to smear his reputation, cast aspersions on his writings, and generally destroy any possible influence he might have in China. This volume brings together a collection of Hu Shih’s most important, mostly unpublished, English-language speeches, interviews, and commentaries on international politics, China-U.S. relations, and the International Communist Movement. Taken together, these works provide an insider’s perspective on Sino-American relations and the development of the International Communist Movement over the course of the 20th century.
Power, Profit and Prestige applies incisive historical and sociological analysis to make sense of the United States’ post-Cold War imperial behaviour.
Philip Golub studies imperial identity formation and shows how an embedded culture of force and expansion has shaped American foreign policy. He argues that the US logic of world power and deeply rooted assumptions about American primacy inhibits democratic transformation at domestic and international levels. This resistance to change may lead the US empire into a crisis of its own making.
This enlightening book will be particularly useful to students of history and international relations as they explore a world where America is no longer able to set the global agenda.
In Power without Victory, Trygve Throntveit argues that there is more to the story of Wilson than these sad truths. Throntveit makes the case that Wilson was not a “Wilsonian,” as that term has come to be understood, but a principled pragmatist in the tradition of William James. He did not seek to stamp American-style democracy on other peoples, but to enable the gradual development of a genuinely global system of governance that would maintain justice and facilitate peaceful change—a goal that, contrary to historical tradition, the American people embraced. In this brilliant intellectual, cultural, and political history, Throntveit gives us a new vision of Wilson, as well as a model of how to think about the complex relationship between the world of ideas and the worlds of policy and diplomacy.
Exemplary of this new approach were Western responses to ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and genocide in Rwanda. In order to avoid costly interventions, U.S. and European leaders traced these crimes to ancient tribal enmities and professed that the role of the international community should be limited to a humanitarian, impartial, and conciliatory engagement with all the warring parties. They thus managed to appear righteous but powerless, at least until NATO’s intervention in Kosovo. Faced with this doctrine, both the liberal and radical wings of the Western Left found themselves in an uneasy position. Liberals, while lured by their leaders’ humanitarianism were nonetheless disturbed by the dismal results of the policies carried out in the name of the international community. Conversely, anti-imperialist militants were quick to mock the hypocrisy of their governments’ helpless indignation, yet certainly not prepared to demand that Western powers resort to force.
Are we still in this “age of the international community”? Feher shows that with NATO’s intervention in Kosovo, both liberal and radical activists suddenly found their mark: the former welcomed the newfound resolve of their governments, while the latter condemned it as the return of the imperialist “new world order.” For Western leaders, however, the war against Serbia proved an accident rather than a turning point. Indeed, less than a year later, their indifference to the destruction of Chechnya by Russian troops suggested that the discursive strategy exposed in Powerless by Design might remain with us for quite some time.
John Yoo, formerly a lawyer in the Department of Justice, here makes the case for a completely new approach to understanding what the Constitution says about foreign affairs, particularly the powers of war and peace. Looking to American history, Yoo points out that from Truman and Korea to Clinton's intervention in Kosovo, American presidents have had to act decisively on the world stage without a declaration of war. They are able to do so, Yoo argues, because the Constitution grants the president, Congress, and the courts very different powers, requiring them to negotiate the country's foreign policy. Yoo roots his controversial analysis in a brilliant reconstruction of the original understanding of the foreign affairs power and supplements it with arguments based on constitutional text, structure, and history.
Accessibly blending historical arguments with current policy debates, The Powers of War and Peace will no doubt be hotly debated. And while the questions it addresses are as old and fundamental as the Constitution itself, America's response to the September 11 attacks has renewed them with even greater force and urgency.
“Yoo’s theory promotes frank discussion of the national interest and makes it harder for politicians to parade policy conflicts as constitutional crises. Most important, Yoo’s approach offers a way to renew our political system’s democratic vigor.”—David B. Rivkin Jr. and Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky, National Review
As the initial US observer, David Rawson participated in the 1993 Rwandan peace talks at Arusha, Tanzania. Later, he served as US ambassador to Rwanda during the last months of the doomed effort to make them hold. Despite the intervention of concerned states in establishing a peace process and the presence of an international mission, UNAMIR, the promise of the Arusha Peace Accords could not be realized. Instead, the downing of Rwandan president Habyarimana’s plane in April 1994 rekindled the civil war and opened the door to genocide.
In Prelude to Genocide, Rawson draws on declassified documents and his own experiences to seek out what went wrong. How did the course of political negotiations in Arusha and party wrangling in Kigali, Rwanda, bring to naught a concentrated international effort to establish peace? And what lessons are there for other international humanitarian interventions? The result is a commanding blend of diplomatic history and analysis that is a milestone read on the Rwandan crisis and on what happens when conflict resolution and diplomacy fall short.
Published in partnership with the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series.
From Abraham Lincoln’s stance on international slavery to George W. Bush’s incursions on the world stage, American presidents and other leaders have taken decisive actions to shape our country’s foreign policy. This new collection of essays provides analytical narratives of how and why policies were devised and implemented that would determine the place of the United States in the international arena from the 1860s to the present. Showing what individuals do—or choose not to do—is central to understanding diplomacy in peace and war.
These writings—by such prominent historians as Terry H. Anderson and Eugene P. Trani—examine presidents and other diplomats at their best and worst in the practice of statecraft. They take on issues ranging from America’s economic expansion abroad to the relations of democracies with authoritarian leaders and rogue nations to advocacy of such concepts as internationalism, unilateralism, nation building, and regime change. In so doing, they take readers on a virtual tour of American diplomatic history, tracing the ideas and actions of individuals in shaping our foreign policy, whether George F. Kennan as author of Soviet containment or Ronald Reagan as progenitor of “Star Wars.”
The essays range over a variety of scenarios to depict leaders coming to grips with real-world situations. They offer original views on such topics as American diplomacy toward Nicaragua, origins of U.S. attitudes toward Russia and the Soviet Union, FDR’s idiosyncratic approach to statecraft, and food diplomacy as practiced by LBJ and Richard Nixon. And in considering post–Cold War crises, they address Bill Clinton’s military interventions, George W. Bush’s war against Iraq, and the half-century background to the current nuclear standoff with Iran. Additional articles pay tribute to the outstanding career of Robert H. Ferrell as a scholar and teacher.
Throughout the volume, the authors seek to exemplify the scholarly standards of narrative diplomatic history espoused by Robert Ferrell—especially the notion that historians should attempt to explain fully the circumstances, opportunities, and pressures that influence foreign policy decisions while remembering that historical actors cannot with certainty predict the outcomes of their actions. Presidents, Diplomats, and Other Mortals is both a collection of compelling historical studies and an overarching case study of the role of individuals in foreign policy making and an insightful review of some of history’s most important moments. Taken together, these essays provide a fitting tribute to Ferrell, the trailblazing scholar in whose honor the book was written.
“A superb, field-changing book…A true classic.”
—Sunil Amrith
“Makes a major contribution towards a necessary discussion of the politics of aid.”
—Times Higher Education
Debates over foreign aid are often strangely ahistorical. Economists argue about effectiveness—how to make aid work—while critics bemoan money wasted on corruption, ignoring the fundamentally political character of aid. The Price of Aid exposes the geopolitical calculus underpinning development assistance, and its costs.
India stood at the center of American and Soviet aid competition throughout the Cold War, as both superpowers saw developmental aid as a way of pursuing their geopolitical goals by economic means. Drawing on recently declassified files from seven countries, David Engerman shows how Indian leaders used Cold War competition to win battles at home, eroding the Indian state in the process. As China spends freely in Africa, the political stakes of foreign aid are rising once again.
“A magnificent book. Anyone who seeks to understand contemporary India and its development struggles will have to start here. Engerman’s work is not only enlightening, it turns much of what we thought we knew about India, foreign aid, and the Cold War in South Asia upside down.”
—O. A. Westad, author of The Cold War
“An outstanding history…Drawing on an unprecedented array of official and private archives in India, Russia, the United States, and Britain, Engerman offers a superb account—one that integrates the ideologies and policies of the superpowers with a sharp analysis of the push-and-pull of policymaking in India. This is a landmark study of independent India as well as the Cold War.”
—Srinath Raghavan, author of India’s War
In The Price of Prestige, Gilady shows how many seemingly wasteful government expenditures that appear to contradict the laws of demand actually follow the pattern for what are known as Veblen goods, or positional goods for which demand increases alongside price, even when cheaper substitutes are readily available. From flashy space programs to costly weapons systems a country does not need and cannot maintain to foreign aid programs that offer little benefit to recipients, these conspicuous and strategically timed expenditures are intended to instill awe in the observer through their wasteful might. And underestimating the important social role of excess has serious policy implications. Increasing the cost of war, for example, may not always be an effective tool for preventing it, Gilady argues, nor does decreasing the cost of weapons and other technologies of war necessarily increase the potential for conflict, as shown by the case of a cheap fighter plane whose price tag drove consumers away. In today’s changing world, where there are high levels of uncertainty about the distribution of power, Gilady also offers a valuable way to predict which countries are most likely to be concerned about their position and therefore adopt costly, excessive policies.
As shown by China’s relationship to Japan, and Japan’s relationship to South Korea, even growing regional economic interdependencies are not enough to overcome bitter memories grounded in earlier wars, invasions, and periods of colonial domination. Although efforts to ease historical animosity have been made, few have proven to be successful in Northeast Asia. In previous research scholars anticipated an improvement in relations through thick economic interdependence or increased societal contact. In economic terms, however, Japan and China already trade heavily: Japan has emerged as China’s largest trading partner and China as second largest to Japan. Societal contact is already intense, as millions of Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese visit one another’s countries annually as students, tourists, and on business trips. But these developments have not alleviated international distrust and negative perception, or resolved disagreement on what constitutes “adequate reparation” regarding the countries’ painful history.
Noticing clashes of strong nationalisms around the world in areas like Northeast Asia, numerous studies have suggested that more peaceful relations are likely only if countries submerge or paper over existing national identities by promoting universalism. Pride, Not Prejudice argues, to the contrary, that affirmation of national identities may be a more effective way to build international cooperation. If each national population reflects on the values of their national identity, trust and positive perception can increase between countries. This idea is consistent with the theoretical foundation that those who have a clear, secure, and content sense of self, in turn, can be more open, evenhanded, and less defensive toward others. In addition, this reduced defensiveness also enhances guilt admission by past “inflictors” of conflict and colonialism. Eunbin Chung borrows the social psychological theory of self-affirmation and applies it to an international context to argue that affirmation of a national identity, or reflecting on what it means to be part of one’s country, can increase trust, guilt recognition, and positive perception between countries.
Intelligence agencies provide critical information to national security and foreign policy decision makers, but spying also poses inherent dilemmas for liberty, privacy, human rights, and diplomacy. Principled Spying explores how to strike a balance between necessary intelligence activities and protecting democratic values by developing a new framework of ethics.
David Omand and Mark Phythian structure this book as an engaging debate between a former national security practitioner and an intelligence scholar. Rather than simply presenting their positions, throughout the book they pose key questions to each other and to the reader and offer contrasting perspectives to stimulate further discussion. They demonstrate the value for both practitioners and the public of weighing the dilemmas of secret intelligence through ethics. The chapters in the book cover key areas including human intelligence, surveillance, acting on intelligence, and oversight and accountability. The authors disagree on some key questions, but in the course of their debate they demonstrate that it is possible to find a balance between liberty and security. This book is accessible reading for concerned citizens, but it also delivers the sophisticated insights of a high-ranking former practitioner and a distinguished scholar.
Why do accomplished and stable leaders frequently make calamitous decisions with devastating consequences for their countries—and other nations? We debate debacles such as the American involvement in Vietnam, seeking to understand why leaders pursued disastrous policies. In Prisoners of Their Premises, George C. Edwards III argues that the failure of leaders to examine their premises—the assumptions they make about the world and situation they are dealing with—cause them to ignore real problems or pursue policies that, in costly ways, deal with problems that are different than they think or simply don’t exist. Edwards looks at the role of premises in identifying (or ignoring) a problem in a series of case studies that range from strategic decisions in World War I and the Korean War to the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Too often, unexamined premises color initial decisions to pursue a policy and shape the strategies leaders employ to achieve their goals, with grave consequences for their countries, organizations, and potentially the world. Timely and important, Prisoners of Their Premises demonstrates the real costs leaders incur by failing to question their assumptions.
Privatizing Health Services in Africa analyzes the disappearance of public health in the form of state services in Africa, and the growth of a private market in health care that will serve primarily an urban elite. Meredeth Turshen considers the implications of introducing private insurance in countries with growing unemployment, a shrinking formal job sector, and a lack of social security programs or other safety nets. She debates the pros and cons of shifting the delivery of health services to the nongovernmental sector in the context of new concepts of the role of the state. Many of the schemes to privatize the purchase and sale of pharmaceuticals reverse decades of United Nations work challenging the power of the multinational drug industry. Turshen weighs these policy changes in light of the World Bank’s eclipse of the World Health Organization as the premier UN health policy agency. Until now, no book has disputed the World Bank’s plans to privatize health care in Africa. This is the first book-length analysis of policy changes in light of monetarism and globalization.
Throughout the book, Turshen examines the implications of privatization for gender equity. She also provides a case study of Zimbabwe and comparative material from Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia. Her study makes a contribution to current debates on the impact of structural adjustment policies on health and the design of health services in the Third World.
The paradox of progressivism continues to fascinate more than one hundred years on. Democratic but elitist, emancipatory but coercive, advanced and assimilationist, Progressivism was defined by its contradictions. In a bold new argument, Marilyn Lake points to the significance of turn-of-the-twentieth-century exchanges between American and Australasian reformers who shared racial sensibilities, along with a commitment to forging an ideal social order. Progressive New World demonstrates that race and reform were mutually supportive as Progressivism became the political logic of settler colonialism.
White settlers in the United States, who saw themselves as path-breakers and pioneers, were inspired by the state experiments of Australia and New Zealand that helped shape their commitment to an active state, women’s and workers’ rights, mothers’ pensions, and child welfare. Both settler societies defined themselves as New World, against Old World feudal and aristocratic societies and Indigenous peoples deemed backward and primitive.
In conversations, conferences, correspondence, and collaboration, transpacific networks were animated by a sense of racial kinship and investment in social justice. While “Asiatics” and “Blacks” would be excluded, segregated, or deported, Indians and Aborigines would be assimilated or absorbed. The political mobilizations of Indigenous progressives—in the Society of American Indians and the Australian Aborigines’ Progressive Association—testified to the power of Progressive thought but also to its repressive underpinnings. Burdened by the legacies of dispossession and displacement, Indigenous reformers sought recognition and redress in differently imagined new worlds and thus redefined the meaning of Progressivism itself.
Spreading democracy abroad or taking care of business at home is a tension as current as the war in Afghanistan and as old as America itself. Tracing the history of isolationist and internationalist ideas from the 1890s through the 1930s, Nichols reveals unexpected connections among individuals and groups from across the political spectrum who developed new visions for America’s place in the world.
From Henry Cabot Lodge and William James to W. E. B. Du Bois and Jane Addams to Randolph Bourne, William Borah, and Emily Balch, Nichols shows how reformers, thinkers, and politicians confronted the challenges of modern society—and then grappled with urgent pressures to balance domestic priorities and foreign commitments. Each articulated a distinct strain of thought, and each was part of a sprawling national debate over America’s global role. Through these individuals, Nichols conducts us into the larger community as it strove to reconcile America’s founding ideals and ideas about isolation with the realities of the nation’s burgeoning affluence, rising global commerce, and new opportunities for worldwide cultural exchange. The resulting interrelated set of isolationist and internationalist principles provided the basis not just for many foreign policy arguments of the era but also for the vibrant as well as negative connotations that isolationism still possesses.
Nichols offers a bold way of understanding the isolationist and internationalist impulses that shaped the heated debates of the early twentieth century and that continue to influence thinking about America in the world today.
"The conversation between political psychology and constructivism is essential and long overdue. By exploring the interaction of individual cognition and social processes, this 'ideational alliance' more fully explains how ideas work all the way down to shape world politics."
---Theo Farrell, King's College London
"This is a worthwhile and engaging volume. Political psychology is gaining ground as an essential perspective to consider when analyzing international relations, and the book's focus on constructivism provides key insights into the relationship between identity, norms, and behavior---bedrock concepts in understanding the social underpinnings of global politics."
---Mira Sucharov, Carleton University
"An indispensable guide to understanding what distinguishes and what unites psychology and constructivism. A wonderful resource for political psychologists, constructivists, and their critics."
---Jonathan Mercer, University of Washington
Constructivist IR scholars study the ways in which international norms, culture, and identities---all intersubjective phenomena---inform foreign policy and affect the reaction to and outcomes of international events. Political psychologists similarly investigate divergent national self-conceptions as well as the individual cognitive and emotional propensities that shape ideology and policy. Given their mutual interest in human subjectivity and identity politics, a dialogue and synthesis between constructivism and political psychology is long overdue.
The contributors to this volume discuss both theoretical and empirical issues of complementarity and critique, with an emphasis on the potential for integrating the viewpoints within a progressive ideational paradigm. Moreover, they make a self-conscious effort to interrogate, rather than gloss over, their differences in the hope that such disagreements will prove particularly rich sources of analytical and empirical insight.
Jacket illustration © Ocean Photography/Veer
Global health problems require global solutions, and public–private partnerships are increasingly called upon to provide these solutions. Such partnerships involve private corporations in collaboration with governments, international agencies, and nongovernmental organizations. They can be very productive, but they also bring their own problems. This volume examines the organizational and ethical challenges of partnerships and suggests ways to address them. How do organizations with different values, interests, and world-views come together to resolve critical public health issues? How are shared objectives and shared values created within a partnership? How are relationships of trust fostered and sustained in the face of the inevitable conflicts, uncertainties, and risks of partnership?
This book focuses on public–private partnerships that seek to expand the use of specific products to improve health conditions in poor countries. The volume includes case studies of partnerships involving specific diseases such as trachoma and river blindness, international organizations such as the World Health Organization, multinational pharmaceutical companies, and products such as medicines and vaccines. Individual chapters draw lessons from successful partnerships as well as troubled ones in order to help guide efforts to reduce global health disparities.
During combat, soldiers make life-and-death choices dozens of times a day. These individual decisions accumulate to determine the outcome of wars. This work examines the theory and practice of military ethics in counterinsurgency operations. Marcus Schulzke surveys the ethical traditions that militaries borrow from; compares ethics in practice in the US Army, British Army and Royal Marines Commandos, and Israel Defense Forces; and draws conclusions that may help militaries refine their approaches in future conflicts. The work is based on interviews with veterans and military personnel responsible for ethics training, review of training materials and other official publications, published accounts from combat veterans, and observation of US Army focus groups with active-duty soldiers. Schulzke makes a convincing argument that though military ethics cannot guarantee flawless conduct, incremental improvements can be made to reduce war’s destructiveness while improving the success of counterinsurgency operations.
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