Joseph Harrington is the author of Things Come On (an amneoir) (Wesleyan University Press, 2011), a mixed-genre work relating the twinned narratives of the Watergate scandal and his mother’s cancer; it was a Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection. He is the author of the chapbooks Earth Day Suite (Beard of Bees, 2010) and Of Some Sky (Bedouin, forthcoming), as well as the critical work Poetry and the Public (Wesleyan University Press, 2002). His creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bombay Gin, Hotel Amerika, Colorado Review, 1913: a journal of forms, and Fact-Simile, among others. Harrington is the recipient of a Millay Colony residency and a Fulbright Chair. The Spirit of the Laws

The Spirit of the Laws

This course explores the history of early-modern and modern China, from the seventeenth century to the present. We will examine the rise and fall of China’s last empire, the emergence of a modern nation-state, the sources and development of revolution, and the implications of complex social, political, cultural, and economic transformations in the People’s Republic of China. Course materials include scholarly monographs, a memoir, primary sources, and visual and material artifacts that offer diverse perspectives. We will meet twice a week for a combination of lectures, discussion, and viewing of visual texts.

The search for modern China

From a former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose government service spanned six presidencies, this is the inside story of the role of America and the agency in the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Gates provides descriptions of the atmosphere, culture and politics of the CIA and the National Security Council and draws candid appraisals of presidents and key officials. Among his many disclosures are: how Carter laid the foundations for Reagan's covert wars against the Soviets; CIA predictions of a conservative coup against Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union; CIA and KGB \"black operations\" against each other; the secret relationship between Pope John Paul II and the Soviets; and the three secret CIA-KGB summits.

A Review Essay of Robert M. Gates's Memoirs@@@From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War

The Japanese Way of Politics.

There may be no denying China's growing economic strength, but its impact on the global balance of power remains hotly contested. Political scientist Aaron L. Friedberg argues that our nation's leaders are failing to act expeditiously enough to counter China's growing strength. He explains how the United States and China define their goals and reveals the strategies each is now employing to achieve its ends. Friedberg demonstrates in this provocative book that the ultimate aim of Chinese policymakers is to \"win without fighting,\" displacing the United States as the leading power in Asia while avoiding direct confrontation. The United States, on the other hand, sends misleading signals about our commitments and resolve, putting us at risk for a war that might otherwise have been avoided. A much-needed wake-up call to U.S. leaders and policymakers, A Contest for Supremacy is a compelling interpretation of a rivalry that will go far to determine the shape of the twenty-first century.

An Unpersuasive Argument for Overcoming China's A2ad Capability

Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century

THESE GRAND WORDS sound like something Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Hu Jintao or Premier Wen Jiabao might say in explaining their agenda of "constructing a harmonious society" as they manage China's "peaceful rise" to great power status In fact, they were spoken in October 1989, just months after Hu's political patron, Deng Xiaoping, ordered the military to suppress a peaceful, nationwide protest movement The occasion was a government-sponsored celebration of the 2,540th year of the birth of Confucius In the brief welcoming remarks quoted above, party elder Gu Mu, an economic reformer under Deng, argued that there was an urgent need to look back to Chinese tradition and its emphasis on "harmony" (in Chinese, hexie) The idea of "building a harmonious society" has a history, one thread of which is very recent and the other thousands of years old A weaving together of the strands places current CCP propaganda and PRC political discourse in a larger pattern of thought Moving between ancient and contemporary meanings, as well as philosophical and political usages, may offer a better understanding of why so many people in China are talking about "harmony" Studying the epiphenomenon of "harmonious society" rhetoric raises important questions about China's current vector in the broad sweep of its remarkable history, marked by revolutionary rupture and continuity with the past The pseudo-Confucianization of the CCP THE CCP PAYS more attention to linguistic nuance than the average political organization On the one hand, this results in a dearth of spontaneous official language Every speech by a party leader and every proclamation by a party organ seems like a recording rather than a performance, as if there are no real-time speech acts, but only recitations of preapproved transcripts Yet this very scriptedness is the hermeneutic key to unlocking CCP discourse Departures from established scripture are easier to identify And because of the care with which the CCP scripts itself, changes in terminology signify shifts in power or policy with greater predictability than is the case in more anarchic linguistic environments, as in countries with less constricted media, better articulated public opinion, or more open political competition An important recent twist in party scripts is the prominence given to words drawn from the classical vocabulary of the Chinese tradition, as opposed to those originating in Western revolutionary discourses Founded in 1921, the CCP drew on Marxist-Leninist theory for its core political concepts Party history also traces its ideological roots back to the May Fourth protest movement that erupted in Beijing in 1919 The May Fourth movement itself, epitomized in the demand for "Mr Science and Mr Democracy," was part of a modernist revolt against traditional Confucian culture Mao Zedong, who determined CCP orthodoxy from the early 1930s until his death in 1976, held classical values in open contempt as he dragged his "new China" down a revolutionary path On those occasions when Mao did invoke heroes from the annals of Chinese history, they were rebels against the Confucian mainstream, like the autocratic founding emperors of the Qin and Ming dynasties or utopian Taiping revolutionaries of the nineteenth century CCP leaders have long insisted on doing things their own way, or, in the well-worn phrase, "with Chinese characteristics" The party's insistence on sinifying the revolution goes back to tensions with the Soviets over leadership of the international communist movement But until recently, if "Chinese characteristics" referred to tradition at all, it was as a yoke to be lifted The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76) was the last and perhaps most destructive phase in Mao's effort to make China blaze its own revolutionary path by razing its heritage to the ground In the wake of the Cultural Revolution, societal and state actors started picking up the pieces of China's "smashed" cultural inheritance …

"Harmonious" in China

Based on a close reading of Gu Yanwu’s masterpiece of statecraft reform thought, Record of Daily Learning , this article maps out Gu’s attempt to mix two rival “constitutional” systems, the centralized junxian system and devolutionary fengjian model, so as to reorder the late imperial polity. Tapping both Confucian and Legalist streams of reformist political discourse, Gu devised a “mixed constitution” that would solve the basic problems he saw exposed by the fall of the Ming Dynasty – local despotism of predatory elites and centralized despotism of autocratic emperors. Restoring Gu’s ideas to their early Qing context and examining the intellectual sources upon which he drew allows for a clearer picture of his carefully balanced plan for devolutionary centralism that he hoped would ensure both good local governance as well as a strong central state.

Gu Yanwu's Mixed Model and the Problem of Two Despotisms

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama boldly promised to enhance US engagement with North Korea (Democratic People`s Republic of Korea; DPRK). But in his first term as president, his administration was determined to significantly lower the foreign policy priority of North Korea and carried out a policy of concerted disengagement, an approach the administration called “strategic patience.” The strategy of disengagement showed disappointing results by late 2010, and so the United States made a begrudging, tactical adjustment by starting tentative bilateral talks with the DPRK. When the preliminary result of those talks-the “Leap Day Deal”-fell apart in 2012 over the satellite launch controversy, the wrong lesson was learned: that neither sanctions nor engagement works with Pyongyang. The real lesson of Obama`s North Korea policy is the failure of disengagement.

The Disappointments of Disengagement: Assessing Obama's North Korea Policy

For U.S. policymakers, the question of China's approach to North Korea is critical, because whether Washington likes it or not, the road to Pyongyang now leads through Beijing. Seoul, too, is looking to Beijing to handle Pyongyang. But South Korean anxieties over China's intentions and American reliance on Beijing's “leverage” obscure a clear picture of China's actual approach to North Korea. When considered with the cold eyes of foreign policy realism, China's approach reveals itself to be “neighborly engagement” based on three prongs: bilateral political ties, bilateral economic cooperation, and multilateral diplomatic engagement (the Six Party Talks). That is the reality with which U.S. and South Korean strategists have to work.

John Delury

Papers

Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century

"Harmonious" in China

Gu Yanwu's Mixed Model and the Problem of Two Despotisms

The Disappointments of Disengagement: Assessing Obama's North Korea Policy

Triple-pronged engagement: China's approach to North Korea