Showing papers on "Expansionism published in 1984"

Religion and Empire: The Dynamics of Aztec and Inca Expansionism

Abstract: List of illustrations 1. Introduction 2. The Aztec imperial expansion 3. The Inca imperial expansion 4. Precolumbian imperialism: theories and evidence 5. Ideology and cultural evolution Bibliography Index.

The Diplomacy of Isolation: South African Foreign Policy Making

Abstract: its actual substantial assistance to corrupt and repressive regimes. In the same vein, the lack of special focus on U.S. economic interests as a motivating factor of foreign policy in Africa, particularly as regards South Africa, tends to diminish the significance of this volume. NA TO, the Warsaw Pact and Africa not only offers a 'study of NATO's involvement in Africa from the date of its inception', but also attempts to 'lay to rest some of the more doubtful claims of NATO collusion with South Africa', as well as to 'highlight what many African states have identified as a quite different challenge from the Warsaw pact' (p. xi). Christopher Coker first of all identifies the basic events and processes that have shaped western strategic thinking and planning in Africa since I 949, and traces N.A.T.O.'s concerns to the perception in the West that Soviet expansionism must be opposed. He discusses the differences in approach and policy among the western powers, as well as the problems engendered by decolonisation in Africa which have rendered their strategic planning and activities ever more elusive and uncertain. In addition, Coker examines the Warsaw Pact involvement in Africa since 1959, and focuses on attempts to gain and maintain a foothold in Southern Africa. He discusses the economic importance of Africa to Eastern Europe, as well as the problems and uncertainties faced in trying to maintain stable client-states which could facilitate long-term trade arrangements for the export of raw materials to the member-states of the Warsaw Pact. Finally, the author examines the activities of the Western Alliance and the Soviet challenge to its influence in postindependence Africa. This book is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on western and eastern foreign policies in Africa, and should prove useful to all those who are interested in a critical understanding of the roots and current status of East-West competition in the continent. Particularly important is Coker's critical analysis of the mechanisms employed by the Soviet Union and its allies to maintain an uninterrupted flow of raw materials from client-states in Africa. One major shortcoming, however, appears to be the author's inability to use the wealth of data and analysis to examine the long-term implications of such competing foreign policies. Those who read this serious study may wonder if Africa will forever remain a victim in the East-West struggle for strategic dominance and economic exploitation.

Germany and Republican China

Abstract: IntroductionThe history of China since the mid-nineteenth century has been closely intertwined with global economic, political, and intellectual developments. Despite its best efforts and better judgment, the Ch'ing dynasty was forced to deal with the West on the West's own terms, even as it sought to acquire the most obvious elements of Western strength without jeopardizing its own cultural and institutional uniqueness. For Republican governments that followed the collapse of the Empire in 1911, the fact that China was inescapably caught up in the whirlpool of international currents was at once dangerous and promising.The risk lay in being overwhelmed by the imperialist expansionism of more powerful, qmodernizedq states. The promise lay in China's status as a qlate-comerq to the modern world. If China was hardly a qblank piece of paperq on which new directions could be written, it did have the advantage of studying the experiences of other, relatively qmodernq nations. As China's political and ideological structures collapsed with the Ch'ing, and as the nation's social fabric became increasingly threadbare in the twentieth century, leading Chinese political and intellectual figures had laid before them a plethora of potential foreign models for development from which to pick, choose, and adapt to their own circumstances. If the ultimate goal was a return to Chinese wealth and power, the means by which this was attempted often involved the emulation and appropriation of the experiences of other nations.One way that foreign models came to China was as qisms,q as political or philosophical constructs with universal application. Republicanismncould appeal to a generation of Chinese revolutionaries both as the most modern political form yet developed and as the best means of preventing a restoration of the old order.' Constitutionalism seemed to the reformers of 1898 as a process of invigorating the ties between ruler and ruled, and to politicians of the Peking government after 1916 as a method of establishing an orderly structure for the resolution of differences. Sun Yat-sen and other early Kuomintang leaders studied European socialism during the years 1905-7, not as a cure for the ills of capitalist industrialization but as a preventive. To the youthful founders of Chinese communism, Marxism-Leninism offered a recipe for national renewal that involved both the overturning of existing social relations and the expulsion of imperialist influences from the land. And in the 1930's, fascism appeared to some Kuomintang leaders as a means for both mobilizing and disciplining the populace; it was the leading qismq of the day. n n n n

Nkrumahism as an Ideological Embodiment of Leftist Thought Within the African World

Abstract: One of the most serious deficiencies facing the African World today is its apparent lack of ideological clarity and unity. This grave weakness leaves the African masses without that most effective weapon to harness their energies throughout the world in an effort to guide them toward collective action in the pursuit of common aims and objectives. This problem, nay crisis, is especially distressing in light of the abundance of historical evidence that substantiates the supposition that Africans on the mainland and those in the diaspora have been suffering from and responding to a common historical experience in a manner that has not been qualitatively different from one region of the world to another (Padmore, 1931; James, 1969; DuBois, 1970). That this common historical experience has been shaped by centuries of political-economic domination resulting from European insufficiency and expansionism is without question.

Developing Education Systems in the Oil States of Arabia: Conflicts of Purpose and Focus

Abstract: This article discusses contemporary concepts and systems of education and training in the oil rich states of the Arabian peninsula. The argument focuses upon how education and training affect and are affected by economic and social development in these oil‐exporting states. The speed of change in the states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — facilitated by receipt of oil revenues — makes analysis of educational development especially interesting in itself. The timeliness of such a discussion is enhanced by the fact that, following between one and three decades of development, these states are beginning to evaluate, rather than forge on with expansionism. Indeed, falling world crude oil prices might well oblige some thoughtful consolidation.

The Triangular Route to Vietnam: The United States, Great Britain, and Southeast Asia, 1945–1950

Abstract: on 1 may 1950, the president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, allocated $10 million in military aid for the French-sponsored governments of Indochina, and approved cin principle' a programme of economic assistance to them. The amount of money involved was paltry in light of the billions the United States had given to western Europe under the Marshall Plan, and no one at the time believed the president's decision to be darkly portentous. In retrospect, however, this decision may well be considered what the authors of the Pentagon Papers called 'a tangible first step' towards deeper American involvement in Vietnam.1 Why did the Truman administration take this step? Robert Blum, who addresses this issue directly in his recent book, argues that the administration's commitment to contain perceived Communist expansionism, reinforced by the conservative 'China Lobby,' was extended to cover Southeast Asia when China came under Communist control in 1949. Other writers, concerned with the larger issue of United States military intervention in Vietnam, have addressed the question tangentially. Frances Fitzgerald suggests that American ethnocentrism caused a generation of policymakers to misunderstand the nature of the Vietnamese conflict and to make judgements that were tragically inappropriate ; this was intervention through cultural ignorance. A neo-Marxist analysis by Gabriel Kolko stresses United States interest in maintaining access to Far Eastern raw materials. Studies by Michael Schaller and William Borden demonstrate that US concern for Japanese economic recovery led policymakers to seek trading partners for Japan in Southeast Asia, and required that the United States protect these markets against Communist subversion or invasion. It might be easiest to say, with two other recent

Destabilization and Intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract: For Latin America and the Caribbean, 1979 was another turning point: The Cuban Revolution celebrated its twentieth anniversary; the New Jewel Movement came to power in Grenada in March; and the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) defeated the Somoza dictatorship in July. The political and economic paths pursued by the revolutionary leaders in these countries confirmed the worst fears of many policymakers, businesspeople, bankers, and trade union leaders in the United States. They became convinced that not since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis had U.S. security and economic interests in the Caribbean and Latin America in general been endangered so seriously. The cordial political and material relations forged between Grenada and Cuba and Nicaragua and Cuba, as well as the growing Eastern bloc trade by the two newest members of the so-called "Marxist triangle," were as conclusive proof as was needed of the alleged and oft-repeated dangers of Soviet/Cuban expansionism in "America's backyard." Events in the Caribbean and Central America have been of concern to national policy since the Monroe Doctrine (1823), and a fear that "foreign" powers might gain a foothold in adjoining territories is a preoccupation that dates from at least 1811 (Connell-Smith, 1974: 46). Considering direct military intervention alone, the Caribbean has suffered the presence of U.S. troops on its shores and soil more than any other region. Even prior to 1898 and the Spanish-Cuban-American War, U.S. troops had landed in the Caribbean and Mexico more than thirty times (U.S. Congress, 1969). Then there are the better-known and longer military occupations of this century: Panama, 1903-1914; the Dominican Republic, 1903, 1905, 1916-1924, 1965-1967; Cuba, 19061909, 1912; Honduras, 1907; Nicaragua, 1909, 1912-1925, 1926-1933; Haiti, 1915-1934; and Grenada, 1983; among others. Of course these interventions were due to geography and economics, but that is just the

The Second World War resettlement of the Bukovina‐Germans

Abstract: Responding to the denationalizing measures of the Bucharest government during the interwar period and Soviet expansionism after the outbreak of war, Bukovina's German population opted for voluntary transfer to the Reich in 1940. Their resettlement in the western provinces of Poland annexed by Germany proved only a temporary interlude, since with the advance of the Soviet armies they joined the countless number of refugees streaming westward. Their assimilation into West German society has been hastened by the Bonn government which has provided a legal basis for the economic and political integration of its millions of displaced persons and expellees. Despite their wartime losses and postwar hardships, there is no reason to believe that the Bukovina‐Germans would have fared better had they remained in their homeland.

U.S.-China Relations: From Hostility to Euphoria to Realism

Abstract: For the leaders in Beijing, the People's Republic of China has no eternal allies or perpetual enemies; only its interests are permanent. This principle has guided China's external relations in the past three decades and has shaped its alignments with the USSR, the United States, and other major powers. Foreign policy of the People's Republic will be influenced by these objectives: containment of Soviet expansionism; acquisition of foreign capital and technology to accelerate China's program of modernization; and Taiwan's reunification with the mainland. The United States is a crucial factor in each of these national objectives; hence Beijing seeks good relations with Washington. For domestic reasons, Beijing has inflated the importance of Taiwan in Sino-U.S. relations, but an agreement in August 1982 has provided a framework to manage Sino-U.S. disagreement about Taiwan. Sino-U.S. relations have improved markedly, as attested by the Zhao-Reagan exchange of visits and increasing economic cooperation.

Ideology in archaeology

Abstract: Religion and Empire: The Dynamics of Aztec and Inca Expansionism By Geoffrey W Conrad and Arthur A Demarest Cambridge University Press: 1984 Pp266 £25, $4950

How Much is Enough

Abstract: At least until the late 1960s, the need for a dominant military posture over the Soviet Union was a self-evident proposition to nuclear weapon strategists of all persuasions. Soviet ideological or geopolitical objectives could not be countered without positions of military strength. In the shorthand of the strategic debate, the unadorned requirement was one of superiority. A dominant military posture was not simply the means needed to check Soviet expansionism; it was a source of suasion to encourage moderation and accommodation to Western interests broadly defined.

Soviet Expansionism and Expansive Anti-Sovietism

Abstract: Western capitalist societies and socialist societies simply represent different stages of development; there are differences between them, but they are not fundamental differences.' Nowadays, no one would dare to come out with such a statement in a political meeting of any kind. Anyone who did so would be laughed out of court and would look like a schoolboy trying to cause a sensation rather than a responsible adult. Yet it is in fact a fairly accurate summary of the views held by a number of distinguished economists, sociologists and political observers in the sixties and early seventies. Walt Rostow, Jan Tinbergen, and Sorokin all predicted that in economic and social terms the capitalist and socialist systems would converge and that the technological revolution would transcend them both and produce a synthesis of capitalism and socialism: the affluent society. Other famous figures like Galbraith and Marcuse also took a sympathetic view of this thesis, even though the latter did draw pessimistic conclusions from it, and developed it in various ways. Even Sakharov predicted a scientific and technological revolution in both systems which would, by the year 2000, lead to a world government and to the elimination of contradictions between nations. It might seem easy to sneer at the euphoria of such theories. They flourished almost exclusively in capitalist countries and were the product of an extremely favourable historical environment. The golden sixties meant not only full employment and a standard of living that would have been inconceivable only a few years earlier, but also the conquest of space. At least in its early stages, the conquest of space meant that, in scientific and economic terms, the USSR was catching up with the West. At the same time, the long, slow process of detente had produced a whole series of agreements and treaties in a wide range of areas. It was very tempting to interpret what was in fact only an ephemeral trend as an irreversible movement. It would, however, be a mistake to think that the theoreticians of convergence felt any sympathy towards the Soviet Union. In that sense, the early ideologues of the death of ideology were quite clearly products of their own system. We now live in an age of disillusionment. The 'technostructure' simply maximizes austerity. The only growth area is in unemployment, which is quietly ushering in an era of enforced leisure. For many people, there is no longer any possibility of improving their standard of living. Even the crisis itself is in crisis; detente is collapsing under the sudden impact of divergent conceptions of 'security'. It is one of history's ironies that the scientific revolution which gave rise to so many hopes should have been subordinated to the needs of the arms race. Technology is used primarily for the manufacture of armaments. With all due respect to the alchemists of the sixties, the eighties are likely to be an age of lead rather than an age of gold.

Reagan’s China Policy and the Sino-Soviet Détente

Abstract: We cannot discuss the Reagan administration's China policy outside the general context of its overall foreign-policy goals. These goals are: (a) To end what Reagan considers to be a decade of foreign-policy vacillations and ambivalence; (b) to check the onslaught of Soviet expansionism (which he attributes to the failures of the previous detente policy); (c) to reassert U.S. leadership in the free world; and (d) to ensure the West's access to vital strategic resources. 1 Reagan's anti-Sovietism combines both an instinctive power struggle and a close-to-zero-sum ideological conflict. His strategy calls for both a rearming of America ("to close the window of vulnerability") and an all-out effort to rally all America's allies and friends against the common threat. If previous administrations were more concerned with deterrence, the Reagan team is truly serious about a "war fighting" scenario, at both nuclear and conventional levels.2 In this strategic equation, China's value receives a special twist: If the People's Republic of China (PRC) could be counted on to stand up to the Soviet challenge, it would serve to spare America from having to bear the brunt of the fight, and to neutralize both Communist giants in the process. In this sense, the China "card" has turned into the China "pawn," as it were. To do battle with the Soviet adversary, China must have adequate armor and sword. Hence, repeated offers of arms sales were made to Peking-first in June 1981, during Secretary of State Alexander Haig's visit to Peking, and renewed by