Showing papers on "Expansionism published in 2016"
Book•
02 Dec 2016
TL;DR: A Critical Political Economy Approach to Grand Strategy Analysis as discussed by the authors has been proposed to analyze the social sources of American Grand Strategy The Puzzle of Continuity and Change in U.S. Grand Strategy.
Abstract: Introduction 1. The Social Sources of American Grand Strategy The Puzzle of Continuity and Change in U.S. Grand Strategy. The Contribution from Elite Studies and Class Analysis. A Critical Political Economy Approach to Grand Strategy Analysis 2. Three Waves of Non-territorial Expansionism: American Grand Strategy from the Civil War to the Cold War Capitalist Expansionism and Expansionist Foreign Policy. From Territorial Expansionism to the First Wave of Open Door Imperialism. The Second Wave: The Great Depression and the Pax Americana. The Third Wave: The 1970s Crisis and U.S.-Centered Neoliberal Globalization. The Ends and Means of Open Door Imperialism 3. America's Post- Cold War Grand-Strategy Makers and Corporate Elite Networks The Role of Corporate Elite Networks in Grand Strategy Formations. Analyzing Social Networks of Grand-strategy Makers: Data and Method. Governmental Career Paths of post-Cold War Grand-strategy Makers. Corporate Affiliations of the Clinton, Bush and Obama Administrations. The Shared Policy-Planning Network. Conclusion 4. American Grand Strategy after the Cold War: Clinton's Grand Strategy Makers and Neoliberal Globalization Clinton's Grand-strategy Makers. The Global Context: The End of the Cold War as an Opportunity for Expansionism. The Open Door Worldview under Clinton : Expansionism under the Banner of Globalization. A Grand Strategy of Neoliberal Globalization: Financial Markets, Free Trade and Airstrikes. Conclusion 5. American Grand Strategy after September 11: Bush's Grand-Strategy Makers and the Neoconservative Shift Bush's Grand-Strategy Makers. The Neoconservative Response to a "Squandered Decade": Context and Discourse. The Open Door Worldview under Bush: The Neoconservative Shift. A Neoconservative Grand Strategy: The War on Terror, Regime Change and Unyielding Neoliberalism. Conclusion 6. American Grand Strategy after the Global Financial Crisis: Obama's Grand Strategy-Makers and Imperial Restoration Obama's Grand-Strategy Makers. The Global Context: Eroding Legitimacy, Power Shifts and the Financial Crisis. The Open Door Worldview under Obama: Renewing American Leadership. A Grand Strategy of Imperial Restoration: Maintaining the Open Door from the Asia Pivot to the Drone Wars. Conclusion Conclusion
40 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a materialist understanding of foreign policy predicated on contrasting sovereignty regimes is applied to current conflicts between China and the United States and its allies in the South China Sea.
Abstract: This article outlines how a materialist understanding of foreign policy predicated on contrasting sovereignty regimes might be applied to current conflicts between China and the United States and its allies in the South China Sea. A stark divergence between liberal and realist commentary, policy prescriptions, and policy practices has emerged in both China and the United States. We provide a critical overview of the dispute before arguing that these disparities are, at root, symptoms of a material contradiction between the benefits and risks of economic interdependence and territorial expansionism. These symptoms are consequently founded upon a real-world paradox, refracted through fundamentally different modalities of practicing state sovereignty, and will ultimately be resolved politically. An intensification of interstate rivalry is fast becoming the outcome of a period of unprecedented economic interconnectedness, to which these variegated sovereignty regimes are contributing.
31 citations
TL;DR: This article argued that the Meiji government's programs of colonial migration to Hokkaido established the intellectual foundation for the earliest wave of Japanese trans-Pacific migration to the US and colonial expansion in the South Pacific and Latin America between the 1880s and 1894.
Abstract: This article argues that the Meiji government’s programs of colonial migration to Hokkaido established the intellectual foundation for the earliest wave of Japanese trans-Pacific migration to the US and colonial expansion in the South Pacific and Latin America between the 1880s and 1894. The experiences of migration-based colonial expansion and the trans-Pacific diaspora in modern Japan have been studied in isolation in existing literature. This article shows that these two experiences are actually inseparable from each other. The ideological origins of both were the migration-driven expansionism that emerged from the Meiji government’s colonial project in Hokkaido from 1869 to 1882.
20 citations
TL;DR: This article examined documents generated by two migrating groups important in the making of U.S. global power: Afro-Caribbeans who traveled to construct the Panama Canal; and soldiers who served in the War of 1898 and the Philippine-American War.
Abstract: The acquisition of an empire that stretched across North America, the Caribbean, Central America, and the Pacific world transformed the United States during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. While scholars have examined many aspects of U.S. expansionism, a neglected issue involved the imperial labor migrations it required. From across North America, the Caribbean, southern Europe, and Asia, men and women were recruited to labor in the service of building U.S. global power at the turn of the twentieth century. Officials saw recruiting and moving laborers from far away as necessary to ensure productivity and discipline. This required U.S. government and corporate leaders to experiment with labor management in ways that shaped the “long twentieth century” of U.S. history. Mobility was not only central to the logic of the U.S. Empire; when possible, workers also deployed it for their own ends. Therefore migration became a terrain of struggle between workers and government officials. This paper looks in particular at documents generated by two migrating groups important in the making of U.S. global power. Afro-Caribbeans who traveled to construct the Panama Canal; and soldiers who served in the War of 1898 and the Philippine-American War.
18 citations
TL;DR: The authors revisited the nature of American expansionism in the Progressive Era and argued that prior British experience and political thought were consistently rhetorically privileged by American administrators within the trans-imperial marketplace of ideas surrounding colonial governance.
Abstract: This article revisits the nature of American expansionism in the Progressive Era. It contends that the figure of Evelyn Baring, the first Earl of Cromer, and the British “Veiled Protectorate” over Egypt shaped the internal American retention debate regarding the Philippines in terms directly compatible with the political dichotomy between liberal advocacy of “self-government” and conservative calls for “good government” that lay at the heart of British imperial policy. It further argues that prior British imperial experience and political thought were consistently rhetorically privileged by American administrators within the trans-imperial marketplace of ideas surrounding colonial governance. In doing so, it builds on previous transnational and comparative scholarship on U.S. imperialism of this period, typified by the work of Paul A. Kramer and Frank Schumacher. It rejects renewed exceptionalist attempts to artificially isolate American colonial state-building via Jeremi Suri’s “Nation-Building” paradigm and the “American Umpire” concept recently advanced by Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman.
16 citations
01 Apr 2016
TL;DR: This paper argued that the Pan-Asianism that inspired the Dojinkai at the turn of the century was more complicated and nuanced than that which would later justify Japanese expansion and lead to the coopting of the DoJinkai itself as an imperial agent.
Abstract: (ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Japan's relations with the world were in transition at the turn of the twentieth century. Having in quick succession experienced the high of victory in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and the shame of the Triple Intervention, in which Tokyo bowed to foreign pressure to restore Chinese territory, Japan then watched as Western powers divided China into spheres of influence in the Far Eastern Crisis of 1897-98. The Boxer Rebellion in 1900, however, allowed the Japanese an opportunity to enhance their position in the eyes of West when Japanese soldiers joined their Western counterparts in breaking the anti-foreign Boxers' siege in north China. After acquitting themselves well against the Boxers, Japan's status climbed even further with an alliance with Britain in 1902 and a victory over Russia in 1905. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century Japan had successfully joined the ranks of the Western powers.In conjunction with this rise in Japan's international status was the evolving framework of Japanese Pan-Asianism. Moving away from calls for a union or alliance based on equality with their Asian neighbors, Japanese Pan-Asianists, in general, came to regard other Asian nations in the same light as the Western imperialists: as uncivilized countries that needed to be helped along the path to modernity. Unlike the Western imperialists, however, many Japanese believed that Japan, having recently modernized themselves and sharing historical cultural heritage with China, could mediate China's development as a modern nation. Rather than viewing China as an equal partner in their effort to stop Western encroachment, Japanese Pan-Asianists began advocating that Japan take the lead in saving China from its backwardness.Despite professing this goal, Japanese Pan-Asianists often struggled to implement programs that offered tangible benefits to China's modernization. However, there was at least one Pan-Asianist organization that took an active and, in some instances, a beneficial role in aiding China: the Dojinkai ... (Association for Universal Benevolence). Founded in 1902, this association supported the advancement of medicine and medical science in China by establishing medical schools, clinics, and hospitals, as well as by exporting Japanese medical expertise and technology to the continent. Its members went beyond simple platitudes of a shared cultural heritage to convey to the Chinese a non-Western alternative path to reaching modernity, one which, while founded on Western scientific principles, was translated in a more accessible Asian cultural paradigm by the Japanese. The Dojinkai, in effect, attempted to harness ideological power of two competing notions, the societal benefits of a future looking modernity based on advanced medicine and science and a shared cultural heritage between China and Japan rooted in the past, to achieve its Pan-Asianist goal of a collectively stronger East Asia.Until the establishment of the Dojinkai, the development of Western medicine in China had been frequently linked to Christian missionaries from the West. The Japanese, through the Dojinkai, provided the Chinese with a secular approach to medicine that advanced modernization without, they believed, threatening Chinese cultural heritage. In this way, the Dojinkai represents a concrete effort by Japanese Pan-Asianists at the turn of the century to effect change in China. Scholars have often maligned the Dojinkai, and Pan-Asianism in general, as an agent of Japanese imperialism owing to its activities on behalf of the Japanese army in China after the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. This article argues, however, that the Pan-Asianism that inspired the Dojinkai at the turn of the century was more complicated and nuanced than that which would later justify Japanese expansion and lead to the coopting of the Dojinkai itself as an imperial agent. In examining the organization's earlier activities prior to the 1930s, it becomes clear that the Dojinkai was not so much an agent of Japan's expansionism but a conduit for the promotion of the Japanese model of modernization in the making. …
8 citations
TL;DR: The authors investigated interwar Indian preoccupation with Fascism and National Socialism in articulating the discursive ground of Indian nationalism and found that Indian nationalists cautiously admired elements of National Socialist and Fascist ideology and expressed their distress with imperialist expansionism, racism, and anti-Semitism that accompanied the two regimes.
Abstract: While looking at the world’s politics and ideologies for a vision of the future nation state, India’s anti-British freedom activists and intellectuals remained deeply ambivalent about drawing lessons from Europe’s experience of Fascism and National Socialism. Indian nationalists cautiously admired elements of National Socialist and Fascist ideology and expressed their distress with imperialist expansionism, racism, and anti-Semitism that accompanied the two regimes. This article draws on the exemplary “global biography” of one such Indian internationalist thinker, Taraknath Das, to investigate interwar Indian preoccupation with Fascism and National Socialism in articulating the discursive ground of Indian nationalism.
8 citations
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: The authors examines William Davenant's Interregnum drama, The Siege of Rhodes (1656), and its political and aesthetic interventions in debates about sovereignty and the emergent possibilities of English imperial power under Cromwell's Commonwealth government.
Abstract: This article examines William Davenant’s Interregnum drama, The Siege of Rhodes (1656), and its political and aesthetic interventions in debates about sovereignty and the emergent possibilities of English imperial power under Cromwell’s Commonwealth government. Davenant’s play, which dramatizes the imperial power of the Ottoman Turks against European forces in the Mediterranean, should be contextualized in relation to Cromwell’s Western Design, a plan for foreign policy that sought to advance English colonialism in the West Indies. Although Davenant’s play at first appears to support English expansionism, Davenant’s language and stagecraft reveal the limits and contradictions of the desire for empire.
8 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the relationship between Brazilian foreign policy under President Lula (2003-2010), U.S. hegemonic decline, and the commodity boom that provided economic resources to sustain Brazil's position in world politics.
Abstract: In this paper we examine the BRICS by focusing on one of its member states: Brazil. More specifically, we focus on the relationship between Brazilian foreign policy under President Lula (2003-2010), U.S. hegemonic decline, and the commodity boom that provided economic resources to sustain Brazil’s position in world politics. With the world financial crisis of 2008, Lula’s belle epoque came to an end. Without the abundant resources of commodity exports, Lula’s successor, Dilma Rousseff, tried unsuccessfully to combat the economic slowdown by further strengthening the economic role of the state. With this expansionist economic policy, she was elected for a second term in office, but immediately embraced the previous orthodox economic policies, what coupled with lack of support from the Congress, threw the government into crisis. As a result, not only has the political economy of Brazil re-aligned with the interests of financial capital, but also its foreign policy has returned to its historical alignment with the United States. Our contention is that the BRICS will soon be of no relevance to Brazil.
8 citations
16 Mar 2016
TL;DR: Fast freezing, developed from the 1920s, preserved food quality, taste, and appearance better than earlier techniques as mentioned in this paper and was used to integrate the agricultural products of occupied and allied areas into a continental European economy under German control.
Abstract: Fast freezing, developed from the 1920s, preserved food quality, taste, and appearance better than earlier techniques. After 1933, the National Socialists encouraged fast freezing in Germany because it promised to solve wartime supply problems and aligned with their ideas about modernity, efficiency, and centralization. During World War II, they used freezing to integrate the agricultural products of occupied and allied areas into a continental European economy (Grossraumwirtschaft) under German control. Although occupied populations might have been expected to reject the German-led spread of fast freezing, French responses to these initiatives suggest that some occupied people interpreted them more positively. French experts saw German fast freezing as a continuation of pre-war projects and an investment for the post-war, when they hoped to see France use new infrastructures to gain a pivotal position in a broader European food economy. After surveying alignments between National Socialist expans...
20 Dec 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, a gigante extraterrestre de treinta y nueve kilómetros de estatura y oriundo de la región de Sirius realiza un viaje espacial, interesado en las ciencias y la metafísica de los diversos planetas del sistema solar.
Abstract: n gigante extraterrestre de treinta y nueve kilómetros de estatura y oriundo de la región de Sirius realiza un viaje espacial, interesado en las ciencias y la metafísica de los diversos planetas del sistema solar. Irónico, Voltaire afirma al pasar que el cosmonauta había estudiado, “según la costumbre, en el colegio de los jesuitas de su planeta”1. Faltó poco para que la broma, publicada en Micromégas (1752), fuera extemporánea: ocurre algunos años antes de las primeras expulsiones de los jesuitas de los reinos católicos —sangría sólo interrumpida por la amputación de la Compañía en 1773—. Por lo demás, describe bien cómo los tiempos de Voltaire percibían la impresionante expansión de los jesuitas por el orbe conocido, empujándolos, incluso, a los mundos imaginables. U
TL;DR: Anievas and Nisancioglu as mentioned in this paper argue that it was the superior army of the Ottoman tributary mode that halted European expansionism, forcing European powers to look elsewhere--the East and West Indies--for necessary feudal agricultural expansion and merchant trade.
Abstract: Alex Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Global Capitalism, Pluto, London, 2015; 400 pp: 0745336159, 24.99 [pounds sterling] (pbk) Introduction Eight hundred years of global history explained! Anievas and Nijancioglu's book is an ambitious attempt to amalgamate discussions in the fields of international relations, global history, Marxism, world-systems theory and historical sociology into a great machine of explanation, the side of which is stamped with the newly repainted letters 'Uneven and Combined Development'. The Trotskyist theory, re-outlined by IR theorists and displayed for discussion and reassemblage, now provides the screen across which the past of the global proletariat can unscroll, and on which to better project the future that awaits it. Through post-colonial and political theory, the Introduction argues persuasively for an ever more complex understanding of capitalism (p. 9), but also firmly attempts to swat away two erroneous and yet arguably dominant Marxist stories of capitalism's development. In order to battle these theories, the authors draw on the work of a wide breadth of global scholars, slowing down the centripetal force of Europe on world history to understand the dynamics of other agents instead--whether of control or rebellion--in the expansive universe of capitalism's ascendency. Leon Trotsky's theory of 'combined and uneven development' is given a robust defence in Chapter 2. Terms such as 'the whip of external necessity', 'substitutionalism' and 'privilege of backwardness' are put back into a history of party politics and the Bolshevik general's marshaling of his terminology, along with his troops and coterie. The authors do not shrink from providing some obvious criticisms. This includes explaining the theory's reliance on the teleological terms of 'advanced' and 'backward' societies (p. 56), reinterpreting these instead as 'asymmetries and 'imbalances' between societies, rather a directional flow. These opening chapters thus make clear that this is an autocritical work in which the authors wish to correct the racist and patriarchal mistakes of Marxist theory, incorporating not only the histories of production beyond the European frontier, but also the analyses by feminist and non-European scholars. This is an extraordinary ambition: surely few contemporary projects of historical writing have quite so audacious a mission or scope. Chapter 3 begins the historical journey with the nomadic mode of production on the Mongol grasslands, moving across the trade routes, with the Black Death upon them, into feudal Europe and the demographic crisis which, the authors claim, catapulted Europe into capitalism. Chapter 4 argues for the distinction between tributary and feudal modes of production. The authors then claim that that it was the superior army of the Ottoman tributary mode that halted European expansionism, forcing European powers to look elsewhere--the East and West Indies--for necessary feudal agricultural expansion and merchant trade. In both chapters, Europe reaps the 'privileges of backwardness' in relation to other modes of production. Chapter 5 moves overseas with the merchant adventurers, first through the Spanish legal theories of Amerindians and the influence of New World map-making on European's conceptions of their home territory, and then the twin rise of New World slavery and industrial capitalism, these last as combined and mutually intertwined systems of production and circulation. Chapter 6 works as a moment of repose in the global whirlwind, turning back to the conflicts within Europe which had begun to be outlined in Chapter 4, and arguing that it was the preoccupation of the majority of European powers either with New World expansionism or battling the Ottoman Empire that allowed Holland and England the geopolitical space' (p. 184) for the political primacy of merchant capital and the early appearance of bourgeois revolutions. …
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: The recent revelation of 324 letters written in December 1869 by applicants to the Union Colony at Greeley offers vital demographic information about the pioneers who settled territorial Colorado in the early 1870s.
Abstract: The recent revelation of 324 letters written in December 1869 by applicants to the Union Colony at Greeley offers vital demographic information about the pioneers who settled territorial Colorado in the early 1870s. These letters provide insight into how pioneers in the Reconstruction era understood their own participation in westward expansion. This thesis explains the Union Colony as a physical intersection of nineteenth-century ideologies including utopianism, communitarianism, temperance, westward expansionism, and Manifest Destiny. It presents the widely-circulated New York Tribune as a vehicle of utopian socialism in the midnineteenth century, through which Union Colony founder Nathan Meeker both developed and disseminated his communitarian ideals. Finally, this thesis articulates why the term “frontier utopianism” offers an illuminating description of the unique marriage of communitarian ideology and expansionist conceptions of agrarian settlement which gave rise to the Union Colony.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the notion of informal imperialism in East Asia and extended the related historiographical debate to the Italian case-study by focusing on liberal Italy's concession at Tianjin city port from 1902 through 1922.
Abstract: This article examines the notion of ‘informal imperialism’ in East Asia and extends the related historiographical debate to the Italian case-study by focusing on liberal Italy's concession at Tianjin city port from 1902 through 1922. By doing so, it provides a fresh perspective on Italy's sole concession in China as well as offering specific theoretical insights and historical details that have not been sufficiently discussed in the literature pertaining to Italian expansionism in the liberal years. Within the context of an Italian informal imperial structure at its inception, the study carries out an historical investigation by using the economic lens on the one hand, and the political-administrative one on the other. In this way, it advances the current discussion about informal imperialism(s) in Tianjin by surveying issues pertaining not only to Italian trade, finance, and investments in imperial settings but also to foreign self-government and the establishment of an Italian Municipal Council as tools of imperial power relations. Based on a variety of Italian-language historical sources, archival material, and related academic works, the analysis is further enriched with comparisons drawn from the English-language scholarship on the British and the Japanese informal empires.
09 Sep 2016
TL;DR: Asimov's own view of science fiction was to not only write engaging fiction with imaginative visions of future but also to help the humankind itself toward a better future as mentioned in this paper, which is the key to understanding his work.
Abstract: In Asimov’s own view, he was trying to not only write engaging fiction with imaginative visions of future but to help the humankind itself toward a better future. This reliance on the power of science fiction, which for Asimov rises from a reliance on science, becomes the key to understanding his work. Isaac Asimov came to be one of the central writers of the 1940s to 1950s formative period of American science fiction. One of the key characteristics of his work is the emphasis on the genre’s societal and political importance. Although his science fiction is nearly always set in the distant future, Asimov imagines the same kind of power games and technocratic approaches to society that both American and global politics saw in the aftermath of the Second World War, and at the beginning of the Cold War. What is more, Asimov’s work consistently draws on an understanding of history to explain where these developments emerge from.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors look at the fracturing of certainties that began in the 1970s, at the end of the period described as "les trente glorieuses" in France, but a period that was also, to a more modest extent, a period of economic expansionism and intellectual optimism in the UK.
Abstract: This article looks at the fracturing of certainties that began in the 1970s, at the end of the period described as ‘les trente glorieuses’ in France, but a period that was also, to a more modest extent, a period of economic expansionism and intellectual optimism in the UK. At the level of political discourse and policy options, the economic crisis of the late 1970s prepared the ground for a marked divergence between France and the UK: on the one hand, the ‘socialisme aux couleurs de la France’ that was to characterise the ambition of the socialist years under Francois Mitterrand, and on the other, a return to the corner-shop capitalism of thrift and endeavour that was at the heart of Margaret Thatcher’s remedy for the UK’s ills. Looked at, however, from the perspective offered by theories of convergence, underlying that manifest divergence was a deeper gravitational pull to the same path as both countries endured the loss of old ideological certainties and grappled, as we shall argue, with a new i...
TL;DR: The mooring of the Third French Republic, at the beginning of the 1880s, depended as much on the will of the Opportunistes (for the most part men linked to Gambetta) as on the Moderes, given that colonial expansionism represented a neutral terrain on which these men could meet as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The mooring of the Third French Republic, at the beginning of the 1880s, depended as much on the will of the Opportunistes —for the most part men linked to Gambetta—as on the Moderes , given that colonial expansionism represented a neutral terrain on which these men could meet. The local level, that of the petites patries , here Lyon, provides a methodological space to attempt to understand how this Republique des hommes d’affaires , to use Jean Garigue’s expression, constructed both the French Imperial project and the way to run this project. It allows us also to understand how the liberal lyonnaises elites—mercantile, industrial, and financial—played a role in shaping its economic implantation in Indochina, particularly in Tonkin and Annam. At the turn of the century, a small nebula of patrons and local politiques , of national and imperial dimension, gathered around Ulysse Pila—the Lyonnais paragon of colonization in East Asia and Southeast Asia—played a crucial role in the first phase of Indochinese industrialization. Their dynamism reveals a play which can be read on three levels: local (Lyon/Tonkin), national (France/Indochina), and international (Colonial empire/East Asia and Southeast Asia). More than a mere form of municipal imperialism, their commitment, both financial and ideological, allows the elucidation of a constructive network of the French patronat , on the eve of the Belle Epoque .
Journal Article•
TL;DR: The surge in popularity of paramilitary units across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has also manifested itself in strikingly different ways across the region, according to as discussed by the authors, where they have varying degrees of legitimacy and state support, depending on the nature of the perceived threat and the ideological foundations of the groups.
Abstract: One of the less publicised consequences of the geopolitical turmoil that came to characterise 2015 was the surge in popularity of paramilitary units across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).If this trend is particularly observable in countries directly affected or alarmed by the violence in eastern Ukraine or the large influx of refugees from conflict areas, it has nevertheless manifested itself in strikingly different ways across the region. Indeed, the generic term "paramilitary" refers to "a group that is not an official army but that operates and is organised like an army"1 and as such these organisations take on a variety of forms, such as militias, vigilante groups or home guard units.Although they all operate in parallel to their national armed forces and share features including military training, uniforms and in some cases access to weapons, they have varying degrees of legitimacy and state support, depending largely on the nature of the perceived threat and the ideological foundations of the groups.Bolstering Baltic DefencesIn the Baltic States and Poland, this development is mostly the result of renewed fears over Russian expansionism. Harbouring large Russian minorities (in the case of Estonia and Latvia), unnerved by the military buildup in the neighbouring Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and traditionally wary of their powerful eastern neighbour, these states view "Russian propaganda" with unease and are concerned about a "potential repetition of the Donbas scenario," says Ilvija Bruge, a researcher at the Latvian Institute of International Affairs.2As a result of this volatile security environment, the enthusiasm for home guard groups has been welcomed by respective governments as a "valuable contribution" to national defence, according to Martin Hurt, former deputy director of the International Centre for Defence and Security in Tallinn.3In Lithuania, the Lietuvos saulip spjunga (Lithuanian Riflemen's Union) now has around 8,000 members, up from 6,000 two years ago,4 while Latvia's Zemessardze (Latvian National Guard) has also seen its popularity increase, confirms Bruge. In Estonia, the Kaitseliit (EDL, Estonian Defence League) has seen its ranks swell by roughly 10%, to 15,577 members, dwarfing the Estonian military which numbers 6,000 personnel in peacetime.5Unsurprisingly the recurrent, yet unofficial, theme in the war games conducted by these reservist forces has been Russian intervention, in one form or another. As numerous interviews in The Wall Street Journal,6 The Independent1 and The Washington Post8 have highlighted, different simulations have focused on tackling a variety of scenarios, from fullon warfare to Russian-instigated separatism and neutralising soldiers in unmarked uniforms ("little green men") sent over the border (for instance during Operation Wenden,9 jointly conducted by Estonia and Latvia in 2015).Often trained by active military personnel and falling under the responsibility of the national defence ministry, the units in the Baltics serve the clear purpose of shoring up the regular armies' capabilities and act as an additional deterrent against external aggression. All share a commitment to constitutional order and the preservation of national independence, and observe "the codes of conduct of the Defence Forces" (EDL)10 in order to "assist and support military operations" (Latvian National Guard).11Reining in Volunteer Groups in PolandEven in Poland, where such organisations are not as institutionalised and a number of them allegedly have affiliations to extreme right groups (for example, Ruch Narodowy), the government has taken it upon itself to engage actively with these paramilitary formations and to supervise their rapid expansion.On 18 March 2015, a conference gathered about 800 participants from various volunteer militias and citizen's defence groups in Warsaw under the initiative of the Polish administration. …
TL;DR: In this paper, the revival of "Ottomanism" is defined as a threat of returning to the cultural and political norms of the Ottoman Empire, operationalized via the links between Turkey and the local Muslim population among the academic elites in Serbia since the late 1980s.
Abstract: This study addresses the revival of ‘Ottomanism’, defined as a threat of ‘return’ to the cultural and political norms of the Ottoman Empire, operationalized via the links between Turkey and the local Muslim population, among the academic elites in Serbia since the late 1980s. The making of Ottomanism a relevant segment of the nation-building process in post-Yugoslav Serbia has served two goals: (1) forgetting the history of the Yugoslav Federation; and (2) affirming the ‘irreconcilable differences’ between the Yugoslav Muslims and Christians, and subsequently legitimating the violent redrawing of state boundaries. The neo-Ottomanist ‘dangers’ are presented as stemming from: (1) the apparent continuity between the expansionism of the Ottoman Empire and the current policies of Turkey in the Balkans, (2) the failure of the modernization reforms of ‘Ataturkism’, which is attributed to the fact that they were alien to the cultural-religious ‘essence’ of Turkish mentality; and (3) the link between the modernization failure and the resurgence of ‘Islamization’, which is perceived as either not been recognized by Turkey’s Western allies, or as being used by U.S. policymakers as leverage against other Middle Eastern states.
TL;DR: This paper analyzed the media coverage of the sporting "civilizing mission" that the American YMCA initiated in the Philippines, Japan, and China through the founding of the Far Eastern Championship Games (1913-1934), the biggest regional sports event held during the interwar period.
Abstract: This article focuses on media coverage of the sporting “civilizing mission” that the American YMCA initiated in the Philippines, Japan, and China through the founding of the Far Eastern Championship Games (1913–1934), the biggest regional sports event held during the interwar period. It analyzes a number of cartoons printed in Philippine English-language newspapers, which communicated visions of a “modern” Asia meeting Western civilization. Cartoons dealing with the Asian capability for self-government in sports show that between the 1910s and 1930s images of Asian bodily and social deficits and of American expertise were substituted with images showing Asian officials appropriating the “civilizing mission.” The analysis of cartoons about internationalism and egalitarianism illustrates that in 1934 all newspapers saw these ideals as part of “civilization” and rejected Japanese expansionism. Cartoons featuring gender roles reflect the fact that female athletes were still a marginal topic for cartoonists. Finally, the depiction of stadiums promoted development successes.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the power game between China and its neighbours which revolves around these disputes and look into the role that the United States plays in managing these regional tensions and the US leadership's prospects as regards facilitating China's peaceful rise and transforming this potentially dangerous geopolitical flashpoint into an opportunity to build a more cooperative regional order.
Abstract: Since emerging from its century of humiliation, China has repositioned itself as a rising power. China’s great power potential, combined with its latent expansionism and assertive foreign policy behaviour, however, has intensified regional and global security concerns. Among the issues that support the ‘China threat’ theory, that of the South China Sea disputes has become one of the most widely debated security concerns in the region. This study is designed to examine the power game between China and its neighbours which revolves around these disputes. It also looks into the role that the United States plays in managing these regional tensions and the US leadership’s prospects as regards facilitating China’s peaceful rise and transforming this potentially dangerous geopolitical flashpoint into an opportunity to build a more cooperative regional order.
01 Dec 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors reconstruct the most important steps of Europe's rise, with emphasis on the "expansionist" character of the EU and its system has until recently been peaceful.
Abstract: Many observers posit that a shift in global power has taken place the last many years, away from the West to “emerging powers”, in particular the BRICS. In contrast to this view, this paper accepts Moravcsik’s view that it has been the EU which has developed into the “second superpower”, being the only one to influence matters on a global scale besides, the US. Of particular importance in this context has been the growing attractiveness of the EU market and the considerable “soft power” which the EU exerts in some parts of the world. The paper reconstructs the most important steps of Europe’s rise, with emphasis on the “expansionist” character of the EU. Internal developments in the EU have been crucial for its growing external influence. The “expansionism” of the EU and its system has until recently been peaceful. In the case of Ukraine, however, another (regional) power has applied military force to prevent further EU expansionism. The last part of the paper deals with the Ukraine crisis.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors make a dissection of the recent global economic and financial crisis that is torturing the capitalist world and the effects that the crisis has had on African economies and what is responsible for their liability to this monstrous trend.
Abstract: Capitalism has indubitably proven that it is an economic system that creates a high-class conscious society, and also that it is fraught with internal contradictions and fundamental weaknesses. Periodic economic crises which are inextricably associated with the concept of market are among the inherent contradictions of the system that has proved incapable of transcending them (Rodney 1972, 13). Admittedly, global economy has severally been plunged into economic and financial crises since the emergence of capitalism as the predominant economic ideology. The most recent of these crises erupted in 2007 and has continued to plague global economy since then, leaving it in ruin, shambles and great devastation. African economies could not have been the exception owing to their coercive integration into and orientation to the international capitalist system since the European expansionism of the 15th century. By this ill-fated development, African economies have lost their hitherto self-reliance, self-sustenance and resilience. Thus, they have become highly vulnerable to externally engineered economic distresses. This article makes a dissection of the recent global economic and financial crisis that is torturing the capitalist world. Its emphasis will be on the effects that the crisis has had on African economies and what is responsible for their liability to this monstrous trend. The article also considers the impact of the policy responses to the crisis by various financial institutions and African governments. The Marxist perspective on international economic relations is the framework that guides the analysis of this discourse.Theoretical PerspectiveThe Marxist perspective on international economic relations is very instructive and incisive in elucidating the economic woes that have seized developing economies inclusive of Africans. Generally, Marxism is often used in reference to "those socio-political and economic ideas of Karl Marx which in time formed the basis for comprehensive social theory and political doctrine" (James and Olu 2012, 105). The Marxists argue that international economic relations are dictated by capitalist imperialism. To them, these economic relations are characterized by inequality, domination and exploitation of states that are comparatively weak to those industrialized powerful states of Western Europe, the United States and Japan. Capitalist imperialism is responsible for the integration of African and all third-world economies into the international capitalist market system through trade, colonial domination and capitalist investment with the sole objective of ensuring their structural dependence (Rodney 1972). In this way, capitalist imperialism has transformed economies of colonized Africa and other countries of the global South by integrating their financial and productive structures into an international system of capital accumulation. Capitalist imperialism is "an institutionalized system of control which systematically shapes the institutions and structures of dependent, dominated (African) countries and limits their freedom of action" (Cockcroft, Andre, and Dale 1972). This substantive viewpoint corroborates and validates the position that capitalist imperialism has restructured African economies. Internationalization of the world capital market has been accomplished through the World Bank among other agencies of international ruling class like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Again, capitalist imperialism has integrated the world capitalist economy into the structures of metropolitan multinational corporations (integrated conglomerate enterprises), most of which are based in the United States.Being integrated and oriented towards the international capitalist market system, African economies, having lost self-reliance and self-sustenance, have become prone to the economic shocks and volatility of the capitalist system. The implications of this imperial conquest for African economies have been economic dependency, domination, and subordination of some by powerful capitalist states, which have also imposed endless financial ties of dependency upon the economic institutions in question. …
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: For example, this article pointed out that while domestic economic goals have been preeminent in shaping Chinese foreign policy over the past decade, Beijing's relations with Japan have remained vulnerable to a political backlash because of the historical legacy of more than 60 years of expansionism at China's expense by its much smaller but far more powerful neighbor.
Abstract: Political passions have clouded Sino-Japanese relations through much of this century, most recently during the 1980s. While domestic economic goals have been preeminent in shaping Chinese foreign policy over the past decade, Beijing's relations with Japan have remained vulnerable to a political backlash because of the historical legacy of more than 60 years of expansionism at China's expense by its much smallerbut far more powerful neighbor. This heritage of embittered feelings has prompted Chinese leaders, media, and student demonstrators to react vociferously to perceived provocations ranging from increases in Tokyo's defense budget to the rewriting of Japanese textbooks so as to sanitize Japan's role in China in the 1930s and 1940s. Japanese nationalism remains insensitive to the need to atone for past conquests. Cabinet officials and right-wing leaders repeatedly make remarks that insult and infuriate former victims, especially the Chinese, who suffered more than any. As a result, politics continues to plague economics in Sino-Japanese relations. In fact, for much of the past decade, improvements in Sino-Japanese economic relations have often coincided with a deterioration in political relations. For example, in 1987 China's previously mounting trade deficit with Japanwhich had been a bone of contention between Beijing and Tokyobegan to shrink. That same year, however, marked a low in political relations, with Deng Xiaoping's outbursts prompting a Japanese viceminister of foreign affairs to suggest that China's paramount leader was senile (an accusation that prompted the Japanese official's early retirement shortly thereafter). Conversely, Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita's
TL;DR: The authors considered the largely forgotten inter-war journalistic career of celebrated poet Giuseppe Ungaretti through his contribution to the culture pages of Turin's Gazzetta del Popolo.
Abstract: This article considers the largely forgotten inter-war journalistic career of celebrated poet Giuseppe Ungaretti through his contribution to the culture pages of Turin’s Gazzetta del Popolo. His 1931 articles on Egypt are perhaps the most complex of all his prose output, representing a semi-autobiographical revisiting of his birthplace. Ungaretti’s articles are considered within their historical context and the discourses of italianita, colonial and cultural expansionism are considered. Challenging the common perception of Ungaretti as a politically naive poet, this article instead shows him to be an engaged commentator on the society, culture and politics of the ventennio. It demonstrates how his support of Fascism and cultural expansionism under the regime clashed with his cosmopolitan tendencies, and revisits a long-forgotten aspect of his literary career.
04 Jul 2016
TL;DR: The 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition relied on female bodies and beauty to solidify the city's and state's imperial claims as mentioned in this paper, and used women's bodies to advertise the city, fair, and state at the same time amusement concessions displayed them in ways that reaffirmed racial hierarchies.
Abstract: San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition relied on female bodies and beauty to solidify the city’s and state’s imperial claims. Publicists and exhibitors used women’s bodies to advertise the city, fair, and state at the same time amusement concessions displayed them in ways that reaffirmed racial hierarchies. In a reflection of the expansion of white women’s claims to public space, the fair’s Woman’s Board worked to make the fair safe for unaccompanied women and affirmed their status vis-a-vis nonwhite women. Economic interests and changing gender ideals intertwined to expand white women’s public presence at the exposition while simultaneously celebrating American expansionism and the contemporary racial hierarchy.
TL;DR: The authors used Clode's accounts of his experience at Matavai Bay in Tahiti, and his death at Port Jackson, as nodal points through which to trace the moral contours of emergent settler modernities in Pacific Rim worlds.
Abstract: Shocked by the abject failure of the London Missionary Society’s (LMS) first overseas mission to Polynesia, missionaries retreated to New South Wales in 1799 having had their evangelical certainties about morality, culture, religion, and race thoroughly shaken. White settler communities proved almost as disturbing as the islands for the disgraced missionaries. Samuel Clode was brutally murdered soon after arriving; lay missionaries found that their simple communal religious practices would not be tolerated by the established ministers of religion; and co-habiting with convicts, military men, and Aborigines seriously challenged evangelical social mores. John Youl wrote, “no other spot on the face of the Habitable Globe, contains more witnesses of the awful depravity of human Nature” (1801). Humanitarian narratives were central to British evangelical missionary work. Although humanitarian narratives often struggled to emerge in the early Australian colonies given the predominance of aggressive settler expansionism, the isolated voices of individuals associated with evangelical reform deserve attention because they provide troubling accounts of the problems and failures of settler colonialism. This article uses Clode’s accounts of his experience at Matavai Bay in Tahiti, and accounts of his death at Port Jackson, as nodal points through which to trace the moral contours of emergent settler modernities in Pacific Rim worlds. Colonial resistance to evangelical authority by both Europeans and Indigenous people confounded the expectations of the vigorous humanitarian lobby in Britain, and the information garnered by colonial agents provided considerable challenge to European expectations. Yet it also provided considerable ammunition to argue for religious models of the moral empire. In such ways evangelical experiences garnered from colonial locations became part of a globalising knowledge economy and a thriving print culture, which both supported and challenged the dominance of humanitarian narratives.
Book Chapter•
06 Dec 2016
TL;DR: The vast rise in tourist numbers on the seas coincided with the arrival of simpler, hands-on means for capturing the journey's 'fascinating sights' and 'colorful peoples' in moving images, leaving behind an unprecedented visual record of the Pacific tourist experience as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: This chapter outlines the vast rise in tourist numbers on the seas coincided with the arrival of simpler, hands-on means for capturing the journey's 'fascinating sights' and 'colorful peoples' in moving images, leaving behind an unprecedented visual record of the Pacific tourist experience. Image production and consumption are linked to the construction of modern selves: indeed amateur filmmaking, Patricia R. Zimmermann has convincingly shown, was closely tied in the first half of the twentieth century to the assertion of patriarchal, bourgeois and familial self-identities. In amateur films shot on Pacific voyages, color stock would have been chosen for strategic reasons, ideally to supply an impact surpassing what Maxim Gorky referred to as the 'mute, grey' life offered by black and white pictures. By the 1920s and into the early 1930s, this emerging imperial identity was largely structured around a westward-gazing Pacific expansionism, further popularized after First World War through an 'avalanche' of South Seas-themed literary and cinematic fantasy.