Showing papers on "Expansionism published in 2012"

Between Polis and Empire: Aristotle's Politics

Abstract: Aristotle lived during a period of unprecedented imperial expansionism initiated by the kings of Macedon, but most contemporary political theorists confine his political theorizing to the classical Greek city-state. For many, Aristotle's thought exhibits a parochial Hellenocentric “binary logic” that privileges Greeks over non-Greeks and betrays a xenophobic suspicion of aliens and foreigners. In response to these standard “polis-centric” views, I conjure a different perceptual field—“between polis and empire”—within which to interpret Aristotle's Politics. Both theorist and text appear deeply attentive to making present immediate things “coming to be and passing away” in the Hellenic world. Moreover, “between polis and empire,” we can see the Politics actually disturbing various hegemonic Greek binary oppositions (Greek/barbarian; citizen/alien; center/periphery), not reinforcing them. Understanding the Politics within the context of the transience of the polis invites a new way of reading Aristotle while at the same time providing new possibilities for theorizing problems of postnational citizenship, transnational politics, and empire.

Assessing Cultural and Regime-Based Explanations of Russia's Foreign Policy. ‘Authoritarian at Heart and Expansionist by Habit’?

Abstract: Scholars disagree on how to interpret Russia's assertive foreign policy. According to some observers, Russia's authoritarian culture and political system have historically required the Kremlin to depend on the Western threat image at home and to engage in revisionist behaviour abroad. These observers recommend that Western nations abstain from engaging Russia as an equal contributor to shaping the global system. This article assesses the validity of the authoritarian expansionism theory by comparing it to other prominent perspectives on foreign policy, realism and constructivism. The article argues that, by perceiving Russia's historical and institutional distinctness as fundamentally threatening to the West, the theory overlooks important sources of foreign policy contestation at home and potentially varying directions abroad. The article selects the historically important cases of the Crimean War, the Cold War and the Russia–Georgia War to demonstrate the theory's flaws and to highlight the rol...

The evolution of a conception of citizenly duty towards military service 1854–1914: a study of London press discourse

Abstract: This dissertation investigates how personal military service, which during the immensely popular Crimean War of 1854-6 was regarded as the business only of an abstract and lowly soldier-class, had by the eve of the Great War taken on the aspect of a clear and universal citizenly duty in London press discourse. It utilises text-searchable digitised newspaper archives to exhaustively review the whole body of relevant press debate in thirteen key London periodicals, identifying key shifts and trends in press conceptions of civilian military obligation over the six decades between the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 and the eve of the Great War in 1914. The analytical narrative that emerges highlights the importance of key events, including the Crimean War, Indian Mutiny, wars of Prussian expansionism, and Boer War, in promoting and shaping the coherent conception of citizenly duty towards military service that would go on to underpin not only the mass enlistments of 1914 but also the acceptance of conscription in 1916. It suggests also the important role of broader cultural and political trends – in particular, the advent of militarist Imperialism, the growing legitimacy of the state, the shift towards a more collectivist ‘social democratic’ liberalism, and the emergence of ‘contractual’ theories of citizenship – in facilitating a reconciliation between the military imperative towards mass civilian military participation and existing liberal values and ideologies. This dissertation reveals that the societal consensus on the duty to enlist in 1914 was by no means a foregone cultural conclusion, nor indeed the relic of an earlier heroic age, but rather the dynamic product of evolution and contestation over six decades. The present study not only provides vital context to our understanding of the ‘rush to the colours’ of 1914, but also represents the first historical investigation of an important and much-neglected aspect of the relationship between war and society.

The American National State and the Early West

Abstract: 1. Property war 2. Martial economics 3. A bordered land 4. Webs of commerce 5. The national state in Indian country 6. Bureaucratic expansionism.

Foreign Investment and Indigenous Peoples: Options for Promoting Equilibrium between Economic Development and Indigenous Rights

Abstract: Introduction 628 I. The Impacts of FDI and Its Historical Analogs on Indigenous Peoples over Time 633 A. Conflicts in the Exploration and Colonialism Eras 633 1. Spanish Conquests in the Americas 633 2. Anglo-American Colonialism and Expansionism 635 B. FDI on Indigenous Lands in the Modern Era 637 1. Investments in Latin America 637 2. Investments in the Asia-Pacific Region: FDI in the Philippines 640 3. Investments in Developed Countries 645 II. Recent Progress Toward Protecting Indigenous Rights, and How It Falls Short of What Is Needed 653 A. Progress at the Domestic Level 654 1. Domestic Indigenous-Rights Protections 654 2. Alien Tort Statute Jurisprudence 657 B. Progress at the International Level 660 1. The Inter-American Human Rights System 660 2. Guidelines, Standards & Model Contractual Provisions 661 3. U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 664 III. Proposed Next Steps 669 A. The Possibility of Converting UNDRIP Wholesale into a Binding Convention 670 B. Measures Targeted at the Private Sector 673 1. The Basis for Applying UNDRIP to the Private Sector .... 673 2. Ways to Make UNDRIP Binding on Private Actors and Give Indigenous Peoples an Effective Private Right of Action 674

Methodological universalism in science and its limits. imperialism versus complexity

Abstract: Universalism in science, when conceived in methodological terms, leads to the problem of the limits of science. On the one hand, there is "methodological imperialism," which in principle involves a form of universalism. On the other hand, there is the multivariate complexity – structural and dynamic, as well as epistemological and ontological – which represents a huge problem for methodological universalism, as may be seen with the obstacles for scientific prediction. Within the context of the limits of science, there is a better understanding of the issues of expansionism and imperialism.

Chinese economic expansionism in Africa: A theoretical analysis of the environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis in the forest sector in Cameroon.

Abstract: This paper, which is conceptually located at the intersection of trade–economics, resource politics, and environmental assessment, is a narrative-analytic review of Chinese economic expansionism in Africa especially its quest for the continent’s natural resources in the past 10 years. We seek to examine the environmental, ecological, and sociopolitical impacts of the current China–Africa engagement within the context of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. The EKC hypothesis posits that an inverted U-shape relationship exists between economic growth and environmental quality. This implies that the quality of a country’s environment will initially decrease due to its economic growth, but will soon start to improve when the country attains a certain threshold level of economic development/income per capita. We argue that by virtue of its ‘omission’ and/or ‘commission’ factors, the EKC hypothesis can be misleading if not dangerous. Using the case study of China’s engagement with Cameroon in the ...

No ““Perfect Garden””: American Constructions of Hawaiian Landscapes and the Making of a Climatic Borderland

Abstract: Based on earlier published descriptions by missionaries and others, the US Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842, under Charles Wilkes, expected to find Hawai‘‘i a fertile tropical garden. Instead, they found a significantly westernized climatic borderland between tropical and temperate zones. Wilkes’’s report is a case of landscape creation. It represented Hawai‘‘i in terms of comparison to American readers’’ experience and expectations. In presenting Hawaiian landscapes as distinct from the tropics, the expedition made the islands seem more inviting to American expansionism.

German Expansionism, Imperial Liberalism and the United States, 1776–1945

Abstract: Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction 1. Soil, liberty, and blood: Germans and American westward expansion before 1871 2. From theory to practice: German colonialism and American westward expansion before the Great War 3. The American South and racial segregation in the German colonies 4. America, race, and German expansionism from the Great War to 1945 Conclusion. Imperial liberalism, Nazi expansionism, and the continuities of German history Bibliography Index.

Globalism and Liberal Expansionism in Meiji Protestant Discourse

Abstract: This essay discusses the domestic moral and cultural reformism and the liberal expansionist discourses of leading Japanese Protestant journalists at the turn of the 20th century. It gives special attention to Uchimura Kanzō and examines his important theoretical relationships with the leading proponents of imperialism at the time, such as Tokutomi Sohō, Yamaji Aizan, and Takekoshi Yosaburō. Although it is important to consider Uchimura’s religiosity and intellectual biography because they are essential to his resistance to imperial Japan, it is also necessary to compare Uchimura’s journalistic writings with those of his friends and contemporary rivals and consider them together in the context of the intellectual currents of the time. As I argue, amid developing imperialism in East Asia at the turn of the 20th century, Protestant intellectuals overall championed cosmopolitanism, promoted liberal education and international comity and ethics over jingoism, and urged sophisticated cultural development comparable to that of the West. Uchimura and other Protestants, moreover, supported liberal expansionism, that is, Japan’s expansion through peaceful and economic means in tandem with British and American imperialism and emigration overseas. Furthermore, liberal expansionism was inspired by a historicist view that the development and expansion of liberalism and capitalism would inevitably lead Japan and the rest of the world to peaceful coexistence and higher moral civilization.

Domestic Transformation and Raison du Monde: Turkey's Nascent Competition State

Abstract: The complex issue of state transformation in the face of global economic integration has constituted the locus of the interdisciplinary globalization literature, attracting a myriad of contributions from the analysts rooted in various weltanschauungs and academic specializations. This study presents a theoretically informed comparative political economy analysis focusing on various manifestations of the competition state with special reference to Turkey. To this end, an overview of the competition state literature is presented in order to convey the main dynamics of political globalization under pressures for increased economic integration. Analytically, four crucial policy shifts propounded by the competition state theorists are taken on board. These include the transition from inflationary expansionism to neoliberal monetarism; the shift from macroeconomic to microeconomic governance; the shift from extensive interventionism to strategic targeting; and the shift from maximization of social welfare to pr...

'Hollowing out' versus the new interventionism: Public attitudes and welfare futures

Abstract: The traditional interventionist-Keynesian European form of state is no longer in crisis. Most commentators have abandoned any hope of a return to the comfortable security of post-war expansionism. Now the welfare state is undergoing 'restructuring', 'transformation' or 'transition'. The key question is whether a butterfly or a slug will emerge from the metamorphosis.

Ethnicity, Cultural Identity and Bordering : A Tornedalian Negro

Abstract: This article examines how experiences of internal colonialism may be expressed in literary writing, through an analysis of Bengt Pohjanen's poem Rat- tipaat (Ragheads). The article discusses the poem and its embedding in a Meankie- li (Tornedalian Finnish) grammar book, Meankielen kramatiikki (Pohjanen & Kentta 1996). The theme explored is the tensions arising between homogenising modernity in a Swedish nation-building context and the particular situation of the Tornedalian Finnish minority in northern Sweden. Colonial complicity and vernacular cosmopolitanism are key concepts used in describing these tensions. The article proposes that the poem represents a remapping of the 'national' and the 'international' as allegiances are established between the Swedish national minority of the Tornedalians and migrants in European metropolitan centres. Hence the Tornedalians in the northern borderlands are presented as symbolic citizens in new migrant cartographies. This implies that a new myth of belong- ing is created, which unifies national minorities with metropolitan migrants. From the vantage point of the political and administrative centre of the Swed- ish nation-state located in the area of Stockholm, the Tornedalian borderlands up in the north have always been regarded as a marginal and culturally alien territory inhabited by the Sami people and Tornedalian Finns. The idea of a northern fringe of the nation-state was enhanced after Sweden lost Finland at the conclusion of the 1808-09 war with Russia. The peace treaty resulted in the border of 1809, which separates Sweden and Finland in the Torne Valley. The Tornedalian Finns on both sides of the border rivers consequently became citizens of different states. During the period that followed, there was a fear amongst the Swedish elite of Russian expansionism. Finland, which had become a Russian Grand Duchy, was seen as a space from where potential threats to Swedish sovereignty might emerge (Aselius 1994; Rodell 2009). From a perspec- tive based on the notion of the geographical centre of the Malardal region as a norm for national culture, the Finno-Ugric peoples of the sparsely populated north constituted a strange element in the national imagined community (cf. Anderson 2006).

Pacific Islands Diaspora Groups and Foreign Policy

Abstract: The original meaning of diaspora is derived from the Greek verb speiro, meaning ‘to sow’ and the preposition dia, meaning ‘over’. In this context, the ancient Greeks considered diaspora as a positive action because it involved migration and the productive colonization of Asia Minor (Mohan, 2002, pp. 80–1). In later centuries the meaning of the word extended rather negatively to explain the forced displacement of people through various types of conflicts as seen in the enslavement and exile of Jews from the Promised Land to Babylon around 586 BC. Much later diaspora saw the displacement of East and West Africans through slavery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and in the 1940s, the displacement of Palestinians through Israeli expansionism (ibid., p. 83).

The Making of an American Imperialist: Major Edward Austin Burke, Reconstruction New Orleans and the Road to Central America

Abstract: The period of Reconstruction following the American Civil War, and its legacy, have been the subjects of long debate among historians Scholars, though, have yet to fully explore important connections between American Reconstruction, the New South that followed, and the period of US imperialism in Central America in the late nineteenth century The storied career of Major Edward Austin Burke—a Kentucky-born Louisiana Democrat who went on to become a proponent of expansionism and imperialism in Honduras—illuminates the transnational implications of Reconstruction and its aftermath Through careful examination of personal papers, news accounts, promotional materials, Congressional testimonies and other government records, this thesis finds the roots of Burke’s involvement in Central America in postbellum New Orleans It demonstrates the importance of participation in Reconstruction and New South politics to the long political career of one of the most prominent US imperialists in Central America in the late nineteenth century

“Un-grievable” Lives? Contesting Illegality in Suad Amiry’s “Border Diary” Nothing to Lose but Your Life: An 18-Hour Journey with Murad

Abstract: Palestinian author Suad Amiry crafts a “border diary” in her recently published, English-language text Nothing to Lose but Your Life: An 18-Hour Journey with Murad. The diary discursively frames the lives of undocumented West Bank Palestinian laborers who are forced to cross the Green Line in search of work in Israel. As the economics of this geography emerge, these workers are shown to possess knowledge of an occupied land, a knowledge revealed by their tenuous negotiations of checkpoints, border patrols, and racial profiling. The diary charts the cartography of occupation in the West Bank by highlighting the modes of resistance used by subaltern West Bank workers to contest the “everydayness” of the occupation. It relies on humor as a disruptive strategy to make a political statement about occupation while providing a testimonial to its geography from the “other” side of the occupation, as articulated by the dispossessed. In so doing, Amiry provides a socially and politically committed narrative that humanizes the dehumanized, the underprivileged working-class and the poverty-stricken in their struggle for survival and dignity in the face of Israeli nationalism and Zionist expansionism in the West Bank.

No Dishonour to Be a Pirate: The Problem of Infinite Advantage in Defoe's Captain Singleton

Abstract: In Captain Singleton (1720), Daniel Defoe rehearses the ethical and discursive justifications of predatory capitalism. Through an examination of Defoe's economic writings, I illustrate how the author confronts readers with the moral ambiguity of legal trade by comparing the “litteral” pirate Singleton with the “allegorical” pirates of London's central economic institutions. Through this comparison, Defoe places legal trade on an uncertain continuum with piracy. By extension, he explores the problematic necessity of reconciling the hero-outlaw Singleton's piracy to conceptions of national identity predicated on economic expansionism. Defoe suggests this reconciliation is best achieved by understanding trade in terms of “infinite advantage.” This article contextualizes “infinite advantage” as an imaginative projection onto the world of the conditions necessary to sustain infinite trade, and argues that Singleton appropriates this ideology to palliate fears of Hobbesian scarcity. Thus, the novel examines the...

População, recursos naturais e poder territorializado: uma perspectiva teórica supratemporal

Abstract: The present analysis discusses the sociopolitical and territorial relations that cover the demographic dynamics, natural resources and exercising power at different historical moments. The reflections on contemporary China and its economic development as a strong consumer of natural resources is a parameter for establishing connections with other historical periods in which the combination of power, resources and population as a triad has always been present. Four historical periods are underscored: the passage from Pleistocene to Holocene; the flourishing of the Greek civilization; the 16th Century European restructuring; and the industrializing spurt as of the end of the 18th Century, which introduced a long period of European economic hegemony. Structures of political power, population, and of resources of survival and prominence are crucial in order to understand the organization of expansion projects led by European and non-European countries, especially beginning the 19th century, a moment in which rivalries and geopolitical interests became explosive and organized international labor divisions that reproduced themselves extensively. The analyses and examples described allow questioning if the expansionist ideary is not currently taking over new features, even if no longer exclusively territorialist. There is strong evidence that the grandiloquent collective memory rekindles ancient founding myths that value national identities in barely rational environments, in which the perspective of maximizing profits and opportunities is compelling.

Remembering 1962 Sino-Indian border war: politics of memory

Abstract: How does India remember the 1962 border war with China? The article argues that there are two ways in which the war is recalled in the country and both of them are betrayal narratives, one blaming the Chinese alone and the second blaming the Chinese expansionism as well as the naive leadership of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The main focus of the article will be on a critical analysis of the three primary assumptions made by the betrayal narratives: the legitimacy of Indian claims; the unexpected Chinese aggression; and the singular failure of Indian political leadership. It will argue that these narratives prevent an honest evaluation of the military and diplomatic failure that contributed to the border war.

Griboedov's Project of the Russian Transcaucasian Company and the Ideas of the European Enlightenment

Abstract: God! How come it did not strike him before: Transcaucasia, you know, is a colony! (1) --Yuri Tynianov The project of the Russian Transcaucasian Company was written in 1828 in Tiflis by Alexander Griboedov, who at the time served as Russian minister plenipotentiary in Persia, and Petr Zaveleisky, the vice-governor of Tiflis. (2) The text of the project is lost except for two surviving pieces: "A Note on the Founding of the Russian Transcaucasian Company" and "Introduction to the Project of the Charter" of the Russian Transcaucasian Company. (3) However, General Mikhail Zhukovsky's critique of the project on ethical and economic grounds, entitled "Comments on the Note about the Founding of the Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Trade Company," gives us a good idea of the project's main points. (4) The authors of the project were seeking governmental assistance in founding a chartered company in Transcaucasia that would have privileges similar to the ones the British East India Company enjoyed at the time of its beginning. In return they promised to promote economic and cultural development in the region and bring high revenues into the empire's treasury. Their critic, however, thought that the authors' plans to monopolize trade and production in Transcaucasia would benefit neither the empire nor the region, while undermining the principles of social justice. So far scholars have either criticized the project as colonialist and oppressive or justified it as one that would have hastened the advance of capitalism in the Caucasus and thus would have contributed to historical progress. This article seeks to provide a more complex account of both Griboedov and of the project. In doing so, it will situate the project within the context of Russian discourse from that time about imperial expansionism in the Caucasus and also within the context of Enlightenment thinking about human equality, subjugated peoples, and the "Other." Together, the project and Zhukovsky's criticism read as an ongoing polemic about the proper management of the colonies, where each side's argument continues along a thread of thought coming down from the thinkers of the eighteenth century. Zhukovsky criticizes the authors of the project from the viewpoint of a supporter of free trade and free enterprise, whose negative opinion on monopolies and chartered companies was modeled on the ideas of Adam Smith. Griboedov and Zaveleisky's position is close to that of the French Enlighteners, Raynal, Diderot, and other contributors to A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies, whose "discussion of Russia's potential role in East-West trade constituted a brief for imperial expansion." (5) The latter, like Adam Smith, denounced many colonial practices, among them the founding of exclusive chartered companies, as economically ineffective and oppressive towards the inhabitants of the colonies. Yet at the same time Raynal and his collaborators "occasionally revealed enthusiasm" for colonial trade as a stimulator of industrial development worldwide and showed admiration for British successes in this type of endeavor. They encouraged their own country not to give up on its involvement with the colonies, but to seek new mutually beneficial ways of collaborating with them. In some passages, Raynal actually argues in favor of big trading companies, while Diderot goes further to specify certain circumstances when, in his opinion, successful trade requires the existence of a monopoly. The authors of the project for the Russian Transcaucasian Company share the French thinkers' desire for their own country to successfully compete with the British. National pride, which was long recognized as one of the important features of Griboedov's personality, contributed to his ambition to become an entrepreneur who knew "the art of making all other nations tributary to his own. …

Expansionismo brasileiro e subimperialismo

Abstract: Este artigo aborda a nocao de subimperialismo na compreensao do expansionismo brasileiro. O objetivo e apontar para os limites do conceito de Ruy Mauro Marini, arriscando comentarios sobre o capitalismo monopolista no Brasil. This paper intends to discuss the notion of subimperialism in the understanding of Brazilian expansionism. The objective is to point to the limits of the concept of Ruy Mauro Marini, making comments about the monopolistic capitalism in Brazil. Normal 0 21 false false false PT-BR X-NONE X-NONE

Okakura Kakuzō and India: The Trajectory of Modern National Consciousness and Pan-Asian Ideology Across Borders

Abstract: This paper focuses on Okakura Kakuzō (1863-1913), alias Tenshin, and his immediate historical contexts.1 I shall argue the following two points. First, that The Ideals of the East (Tōyō no risō, 1903), one of the most pronounced manifestations of Asian self-expression during the early twentieth century, was cultivated within the diasporic environment that characterized Okakura’s life. Second, that the conceptualization of “Eastern Art” (Tōyō bijutsu)2 as a means of expressing the cultural identity of a modern Asia was intrinsically predicated on a departure from a narrowly defined nation-state consciousness. What lies behind the notion of “Asia is one” (hitotsu no Ajia)– that is to say, of Asia (Tōyō) as a cultural concept, and furthermore of the fictive framework that is “the East” (Tōyō) along with its fabrication and actualization—without which a notion of a universal history of world art would be inconceivable, is the border-crossing inscribed in Okakura’s life. Recognizing this forces us radically to reexamine, from an Asian perspective, the simplistic praise of diaspora and orientation toward border-crossing in the tenor of recent scholarship on modernism. As recent scholarship has made clear, the formation of the history of modern art in Japan was intimately related to the establishment of the Meiji state.3 If we broaden our purview to extend from the latter half of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, we see that various Asian ethnic groups, under the colonial domination of Western imperial powers, “invented” or reestablished a national or cultural identity in order to resist “the West.” This identity was also pursued as an objective of the state. The framework of “Eastern art history” (Tōyō bijutsushi) was likewise an idea or notion that emerged in unison with such movements. One case worth reexamining from an international perspective is that of Okakura, who has not been given sufficient attention by Japanese historians in this context, until recently. During the period of Japan’s overseas expansionism in the 1940s, the writings of “Tenshin” (especially the seditious text The Okakura Kakuzo and India: The Trajectory of Modern National Consciousness and Pan-Asian Ideology Across Borders Inaga Shigemi

Prison Expansionism, Media, and “Offender Pools”: An Abolitionist Perspective on the Criminalization of Minorities in the Canadian Criminal Justice System

Abstract: Increases in prison construction under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government pave the way for an ever-expanding prison population followed by a persistently growing pool of offenders to ensure prison beds will be filled. This phenomenon of prison expansionism is outlined in Thomas Mathiesen’s (1986) classical text on abolitionism. Informed by Mathiesen’s argument of prison expansionism this paper will explore the role of mass media in conjunction with the criminalization of minorities which ensures a constant pool of offenders to supply the much-needed bodies for prison consumption.

Oil resources in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus : British documents 1885-1978

Abstract: Volume 1. 1886-1920: The earliest period of British investment in oil concessions in the Trans-Caucasus and Roumania, depicting typical commercial procedures, involvement of land owners, and the setback to the industry brought about by the Russian Revolution of 1905 Volume 2. 1920-1922: 1920 did not mark the end of disturbances brought about by the First World War in Russia, especially in Trans-Caucasia: the Caspian Sea, Baku, Batoum and other ports, and the three regions which briefly constituted the republic of Trans-Caucasia were occupied and contested variously by the Allies, by General Deniken and the White Russians, by Turkey, and ultimately by the Bolsheviks Volume 3. 1922-1938: Relations were tense between the UK government, the Soviet Union and Roumania over the unsettled claims, and despite British businesses maintaining a footing in the petroleum trade, the insularity of the Soviet regime during this period led to a steady decline in export/import to western European countries Volume 4. 1939-1945: Main emphasis is on the defence of Soviet and East European supplies and plans to prevent their falling into belligerent hands Volume 5. 1946-1948: Dealing with the legacy of Soviet expansionism, and incipient nationalism, from Austria to Iran Volume 6. 1951-1960: Impact and ramifications of the nationalisation of British companies by foreign governments efforts by British firms to claim for losses Soviet Bloc oil: debates about possible imports into the UK, general reviews of export potential in the context of the continuing issue of outstanding claims Volume 7. 1960-1966: NATO concerns over possibility of increased Russian oil exports, lobbying by the UK reviews of the effects on the non-communist market, January-March 1961. Consideration of a change of British policy to Soviet oil, in relation to the attitudes of USA and European countries, 1961. Soviet oil exports and the EEC, 1962-63, towards an accommodation with the Russians over oil imports, 1962-64 Volume 8. 1967-1978: This volume addresses the period of relaxation of trade sanctions in oil with Eastern European countries and with Russia, brought about by the resolution of the dispute over claims arising from World War ll, and from the conclusion that Russian oil imports would not diminish other UK energy industries Volume 9. 20 colour maps.

Explaining Expansionism: Assessing the Explanatory Power of the Coalition Building Theory and Historical Institutionalism

Abstract: This paper compares and contrasts the coalition building theory with historical institutionalism. It tests the relative power of the two theories in explaining state expansionism in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Germany and Italy were the two states that pursued expansionist foreign policies at the turn of the twentieth century. Both Germany and Italy involved in adventuresome policies in Africa and Europe and wasted a quite amount of their resources for increasing their power and prestige. The coalition building theory explains this foreign policy behavior of Germany and Italy with the relative place of the two states in the international economic system at the time and, more specifically, with the factor-endowment argument. However, I argue that historical institutionalism can better explain the foreign policy behavior of both Germany and Italy in the era concerned. The causes of expansionism should be looked for not in the international structure, such as the position of the state in the international division of labor or the timing of the industrialization of the state, but in domestic social problems rooted in history and sealed by institutions. As a result, we should study that institutional structure rather than the position of the societal actors or the timing of industrialization in order to diagnose and cure those problems. Such an institutionalist approach should be preferred over the coalition-building approach, since only in that case can individuals make history rather than unquestioningly accept what the international structure presents.

China, the USA, and Asia's Future

Abstract: The relationship between the US and China is at the core of both economic and geopolitical trends that will define the future of Asia in this century. China’s economic rise and its more assertive diplomacy have created a new environment for neighboring countries to react. This has necessitated other powers in Asia to work within a regional order that is no longer based on US primacy as the key guarantor of global and regional public goods. Despite relative decline, the Obama administration, first with its unwieldy phrase of a pivot to Asia and the later notion of rebalancing, has indicated clearly that it intends to retain a key role in Asia. The potential danger that this can give rise to is shown by the tension that arises periodically over territorial disputes. Most recently, there have been three unsettling trends. First, is the dispute between the Philippines and China over the Scarborough Shoal, which falls within the long tongue of the South China Seas that China claims as a “core interest.” Second, in mid-June 2012, China announced that it had set up a prefectural city, Sansha, to oversee three South China Sea islands. Third, there has been yet another escalation of sovereignty claims over the Senkaku islands between China and Japan. There have also been territorial spats between Japan and South Korea. Whether the US will be drawn into an avoidable conflict by its allies in the region or whether it will renege on its alliances to maintain a viable relationship with China heightens the insecurity. It is even more important for the US and China to find a way to cooperate in the Asia region than it is for the other countries within the region. There is no alternative leader within the region or group of countries that can provide the kind of balance that will enable the necessary public goods to be produced. This will entail modification of behavior by both the US and China, and it will not be easy. China’s strategic goals are directed to the defense of a continental power with growing maritime interests, as well as to Taiwan’s unification and other sovereignty claims and are largely conservative, not expansionist from their own perspective. China’s continued economic rise may nevertheless spawn a new security dilemma in East Asia, increasing regional instability and undermining China’s attempts at the diplomacy of reassurance. China has always shown itself willing to use force to protect what is sees as “legitimate” territorial claims. To be effective, both the US and China will have to make accommodations. China will have to define its national interest more clearly, and this will mean acknowledging that other principles of its foreign policy may be overridden under certain circumstances. China’s commercial activities have become a major issue in the domestic politics of a number of countries in the region. China needs to feel comfortable with the framework for international governance of which it is now a key member; reduce its suspicion of hostile foreign intent; and adjust its outdated notion of sovereignty to accept that some issues need transnational solutions and that international monitoring does not have to erode the Chinese Communist Party’s power.

Chapter Ten Race, Imperialism and Reconstructing Selves: Late Nineteenth-Century Korea in European Travel Literature

Abstract: This chapter focuses on European discourses on Korea during the second half of the nineteenth century, is a case study in exploring how Europeans have typically understood and viewed Korea and its people. It traces how race and imperialism influenced European constructions of Korea in relation to the power politics the country had to face. The chapter explores the influence that travelers' accounts had in forming European views of Korea. Written from a Korean perspective, it offers an alternative lens through which European attitudes can be examined and sheds light on just how unaware Europeans were of their own biases. At the end of the nineteenth century Korea became the target of European and Japanese expansionism. Just as Europeans often had contradictory opinions about the Korean people and their civilization, the response of Koreans after their encounters with Western people and their civilization was also dichotomous. Keywords:European travel literature; imperialism; Japanese expansionism; Koreans; racial cliches

Nato and the warsaw pact

Abstract: The origins and aims of NATO The formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation had, as its basic origin, the fear of communist expansion. Ironically, it was Roosevelt and Churchill who were probably indirectly responsible in helping the spread of Soviet power. As a result of their sanctioning the Yalta Agreement and ,heir condonation, without any legal right, of Soviet military control over, inter alia, Manchuria and Korea, the basis was laid for communist expansionism in Eastern Europe.