Expansionism

About: Expansionism is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 979 publications have been published within this topic receiving 11169 citations.

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.

Consciousness Evolution and Planetary Survival: Psychological Roots of Human Violence and Greed: Paper Presented at the Thirteenth International Transpersonal Conference Entitled Spirituality, Ecology, and Native Wisdom in Killarney, Ireland, June 1995

Abstract: The two most powerful psychological forces in human history have been without doubt violence and greed. The amount and degree of atrocities that have been committed throughout ages in various countries of the world-many of them in the name of God--is truly unimaginable and indescribable. We can think here of the countless Christians, sacrificed in Roman arenas to provide a highly sought-afar spectacle for masses, many hundreds of thousands of victims of the medieval Inquisition who were tortured, killed, and burned in the autos-da-fe, the mass slaughters on the sacrificial altars of the Aztecs, and the millions of soldiers and civilians killed in wars and revolutions of all times. Genghis Khan's hordes sweeping through Asia killing, pillaging and burning villages, Alexander the Great's army conquering all the countries lying between Macedonia and India, the amazing spread of Islam by sword and fire, the expansion of the Roman Empire, the Crusades, the ventures of Cortez and Pizarro, the colonialism of Great Britain and other European countries, and the Napoleonic wars - all these are examples of unbridled violence and insatiable greed. This trend has continued in an unmitigated fashion in the twentieth century. Historically, more people were killed in the last hundred years than have existed from the dawn of humanity up to the last century. A total of twenty million men and women were killed on the battlefields of World War Il and an equal number as a consequence of the wars off the battlefield. The expansionism of Nazi Germany and the horrors of the Holocaust, Stalin's domination of Eastern Europe and his Gulag archipelago, the civil terror in Communist China and in the South American dictatorships, the atrocities and genocide committed by the Chinese in Tibet, the cruelties of the South African Apartheid, the war in Korea and Vietnam, and the recent bloodshed in Yugoslavia and Rwanda are just a few salient examples of the senseless bloodshed we have witnessed during the last fity years The human greed has also found new less violent forms of expression in the philosophy and strategy of capitalist economy emphasizing increase of the gross national product, "unlimited growth", plundering recklessly non-renewable natural resources, encouraging conspicuous consumption, and practicing "planned obsolescence". Moreover, much of this wasteful economic policy that has disastrous ecological consequences has been oriented toward production of weapons of increasing destructive power. In the past, violence and greed had tragic consequences for the individuals involved in the internecine historical events and their immediate families. However, they did not threaten the evolution of the human species as a whole and certainly did not represent a danger for the eco system and for the biosphere of the planet. Even after the most violent wars, nature was able to recycle all the aftermath and completely recover within a few decades. This situation has changed very radically in the course of the twentieth century. Rapid technological progress, exponential growth of industrial production, massive population explosion, and particularly the discovery of atomic energy have forever changed the equations involved. In the course of this century, we have often witnessed more major scientific and technological breakthroughs within a single decade, or even a single year, than people in earlier historical periods experienced in an entire century. However, these astonishing intellectual successes have brought modern humanity to the brink of global catastrophy, since they were not matched by a comparable growth of emotional and moral maturity. We have the dubious privilege of being the first species in natural history that has achieved the capacity to eradicate itself and destroy in the process all life on this planet. The intellectual history of humanity is one of incredible triumphs. We have been able to learn the secrets of nuclear energy, send spaceships to the moon and all the planets of the solar system, transmit sound and color pictures all over the globe and across cosmic space, crack the DNA code and start genetic engineering. …

War or Peace?: Nationalism, Democracy, and American Foreign Policy in Post- Communist Europe

Abstract: For more than forty years, Western policymakers defined communism as the central threat to international peace and stability. They responded by confronting it with a counterbalancing threat of force, and pursuing a strategy of containment. With the collapse of communism, the challenge to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic community has changed. Soviet expansionism has been supplanted by powerful, internal forces arising out of the clash of competing ethnic nationalisms. This challenge, argues Steven L. Burg, cannot be met by force alone, or neutralized through a strategy of containment. It requires Western states to act decisively to influence the internal political development of the post- communist states themselves. Burg surveys the challenges that the ethnic diversity in Eastern Europe present to domestic stability, international peace, and American interests, and suggests policies and practices by which the United States and its allies might contribute to the consolidation of peace in the region. He provides a concise explanation and analysis of the issues, evaluates the usefulness of scholarly approaches to the resolution of ethnic conflicts, and offers a strategy of what he calls preventive engagement by which policymakers may prevent conflicts such as the one that destroyed the former Yugoslavia. War or Peace? offers clear and direct recommendations to guide both interested citizens and national policymakers as they attempt to grapple with the complexities of ethnic and nationalist politics in Europe.

Teacher Education in Canada and Scotland: a response

Abstract: This article argues that a proper understanding of the role of institutions involved in teacher education requires a fuller examination of the political context in which they operate than is attempted in the three preceding papers. It is suggested that teacher educators are often politically naive about the way they are controlled by government agencies. A detailed analysis of the General Teaching Council for Scotland is offered to support the view that educational ‘policy communities’ are established and manipulated as a way of managing consent. The establishment of so‐called ‘independent’ professional bodies is seen as an exercise in political control, bureaucratic expansionism and professional protectionism.

British foreign policy: constraints and opportunities

Abstract: The extent to which foreign policy can be personal is a nice point, perhaps a suitable subject for a Chatham House research paper. Certainly there are too many established channels and institutions, and too many factors beyond the control of any individual, to allow it to become anything approaching an exclusively personal domain-nor would I wish it to be so. The extent to which foreign policy in this country has traditionally been bipartisan is another restraint and a very welcome one. But equally I have no doubt that a Foreign Secretary must put his own personal stamp on the direction and emphasis of his country's actions and words in the outside world. Some of this is no doubt tinkering at the margins of the existing consensus but on the central issues it must be more than this. I should like to express here some of my own convictions and priorities. It is vital that any country should have the clearest possible idea of its interests and objectives and should construct a coherent policy based on them. Reactions to events piecemeal can never be enough, although the best-constructed foreign policy will be of no use if it cannot deal with and adapt to events as they happen. Our major objectives are, as they have long been, first to ensure the security of this country, its people and its dependent territories through a strong and harmonious Alliance, by determination to resist aggression and expansionism, and by a realistic and energetic approach to arms control; secondly, to promote Britain's prosperity through the encouragement of international economic cooperation, the securing of reliable supplies of raw materials at stable prices, and the stimulation of receptive markets for our own exports; thirdly, to work for international stability both as an end in itself and to provide the environment in which the two prime objectives of security and prosperity can best be pursued; and finally, to maintain and improve our reputation as a valuable friend and ally and a potentially dangerous antagonist. But there is, of course, much more to it than that. The cynical view of foreign policy as a narrow and bloodless calculation of national profit and loss is one which makes no sense for a country as deeply engaged in the outside world as Britain is, and one which I find alien. In a parliamentary democracy, foreign policy must be the outward projection of the values and aspirations of the nation as a whole. The British have a generally well-founded suspicion of pious abstractions in foreign policy; they like to think of their own policy as pragmatic. And so it is, but only up to a point; the currents of pragmatism run between firm banks of strongly held belief and deeply ingrained sentiment. Our foreign policy has to reflect our commitment to liberties personal, political and economic. It must reflect old friendships and affinities of culture, language and religion.