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1. A Guide to Canadian Diplomatic Relations 1925-2019

Author:
Linwood DeLong
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI)
Abstract:
Much has changed since A Guide to Canadian Diplomatic Relations 1925-1983 was first published in 1985. The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia no longer exist. New states have emerged not only in Europe, but also in Africa. Canada quickly established diplomatic relations with the member states of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia after their respective dissolutions. In 2003, Canada recognized Eritrea as a separate state and in July 2011, Canada recognized the new state of South Sudan. Finding the date of Canadian diplomatic recognition of a given country or state, the date when diplomatic relations were established with Canada and the date when the first Canadian ambassador or high commissioner took office continues to be a challenge. The print publication, Canadian Heads of Post Abroad 1880-1989, issued by External Affairs and International Trade Canada in 1991, is an excellent source of information, but it is limited by its publication date. A similar online source, Canadian Heads of Posts Abroad Since 1880 (http://w03.international.gc.ca/headsofpost/searchhp-recherchecm.aspx) provides some information specifically pertaining to heads of posts for Canadian diplomatic missions abroad, but it does not always provide information about the date of diplomatic recognition of any given state. In many cases, only the recent information, rather than the historical information concerning the first diplomatic recognition or the date of establishment of diplomatic relations, is provided. Other important sources of information include Canadian Representatives Abroad, the annual reports or annual reviews of the Department of External Affairs (now known as Global Affairs Canada), the External Affairs communiqués and press releases, the publication called External Affairs (which was issued from 1949-1971) and its successor, International Perspectives (published from 1980 to 1991). In this most recent edition of A Guide to Canadian Diplomatic Relations, the following information (if it could be determined) is included for each country: the date of diplomatic recognition, the date that diplomatic relations were first established and the date when the first diplomatic mission was opened (frequently, a legation staffed by a diplomatic representative of lower rank than an ambassador or high commissioner). It also includes the date when the Canadian ambassador or high commissioner first presented his/her credentials and the diplomatic mission officially became an embassy or a high commission. In those few instances where diplomatic relations between Canada and another state were severed, this date, as well as the date when diplomatic relations were re-established, is also provided.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Government, and History
Political Geography:
Canada, North America, and Global Focus

2. America’s Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations, 6th Edition

Author:
Warren Cohen
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
America’s Response to China has long been the standard resource for a succinct, historically grounded assessment of an increasingly complicated relationship. Written by one of America’s leading diplomatic historians, this book analyzes the concerns and conceptions that have shaped U.S.–China policy and examines their far-reaching outcomes. Warren I. Cohen begins with the mercantile interests of the newly independent American colonies and discusses subsequent events up to 2018. For this sixth edition, Cohen adds an analysis of the policies of Barack Obama and extends his discussion of the Chinese–American relationship in the age of potential Chinese ascendance and the shrinking global influence of the United States, including the complications of the presidency of Donald Trump. Trenchant and insightful, America’s Response to China is critically important for understanding U.S.–China relations in the twenty-first century.
Topic:
History and Asia
Political Geography:
China and Asia
Publication Identifier:
9780231549615
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

3. A History of the U.S. Army Officer Corps, 1900-1990

Author:
Arthur T. Coumbe
Publication Date:
10-2014
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
With the assistance of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, the Army's Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis published a series of monographs that were intended to provide a theoretical and conceptual framework for the development of an Army Officer Corps Strategy. These monographs consider the creation and maintenance of a highly skilled Officer Corps in the context of the nation's continuing commitment to an all-volunteer military, its far flung international interests, and ongoing changes in its domestic labor market. The authors of the various monographs believe that the confluence of these factors demands a comprehensive Officer Corps strategy that recognizes the interdependency of accessing, developing, retaining, and employing talent. In their view, building a talent-focused strategy around this four-activity human capital model would best enable the Army to match individual officer competencies to specific competency requirements.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, War, International Affairs, and History
Political Geography:
United States

4. American Military History: A Resource for Teachers and Students

Author:
Paul Herbert and Michael Noonan
Publication Date:
08-2013
Content Type:
Book
Abstract:
Teaching America’s military history is an important civic duty because “We the People” are responsible for the common defense and therefore should know something about it. At the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), we encourage teachers to integrate military history into the history that they already teach, and we think they can do so without personal military experience, just as they teach about so many other aspects of American life. Starting in 2006, FPRI teamed up with the First Division Museum at Cantigny to offer the first Teaching Military History Institute for Teachers. This history institute series built upon and expanded the proven FPRI model that has been in operation since 1992. The concept is simple: assemble an audience of dedicated secondary school teachers, bring in first tier scholars of varied perspectives to address them on substantive military topics, and stimulate their interaction over a weekend at the world class setting of the First Division Museum. Omitted are the pedagogical lessons that can be learned back at one’s school. Teachers earn continuing education credits for attendance and are encouraged to develop lesson plans to incorporate knowledge from these weekends into their teaching. Since 2006, nearly 300 teachers have gone through one or more of these Institutes. This volume is a selection of materials presented at the eight Teaching Military History Institutes held since 2006. This e-book can be used as a resource by teachers, students, and the public to expand their understanding of how the U.S. military has helped to shape American history—not only on the battlefield but also socially, politically, economically, and technologically. We believe that our common defense will be better if the public is familiar with our military history. We hope that users and readers will enjoy this collection and use it to further that purpose.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, History, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
United States

5. Tolerance, Democracy, and Sufis in Senegal

Author:
Mamadou Diouf
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
This collection critically examines "tolerance," "secularism," and respect for religious "diversity" within a social and political system dominated by Sufi brotherhoods. Through a detailed analysis of Senegal's political economy, essays trace the genealogy and dynamic exchange among these concepts while investigating public spaces and political processes and their reciprocal engagement with the state, Sunni reformist and radical groups, and non-religious organizations. The anthology provides a rich and nuanced historical ethnography of the formation of Senegalese democracy, illuminating the complex trajectory of the Senegalese state and reflecting on similar postcolonial societies. Offering rare perspectives on the country's "successes" since liberation, the volume identifies the role of religion, gender, culture, ethnicity, globalization, politics, and migration in the reconfiguration of the state and society, and it makes an important contribution to democratization theory, Islamic studies, and African studies.
Topic:
Democratization, Islam, Political Economy, History, and Governance
Political Geography:
Africa and Senegal
Publication Identifier:
9780231162630
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

6. The Invention of International Relations Theory: Realism, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the 1954 Conference on Theory

Author:
Nicolas Guilhot
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
The 1954 conference on theory, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, featured a who’s who of scholars and practitioners debating the foundations of international relations theory. Assembling his own team of experts, all of whom have struggled with this legacy, Nicolas Guilhot revisits a seminal event and its odd rejection of scientific rationalism. Far from being a spontaneous development, these essays argue, the emergence of a “realist” approach to international politics, later codified at the conference, was deliberately triggered by the Rockefeller Foundation. The organization was an early advocate of scholars who opposed the idea of a “science” of politics, pursuing, for the sake of disciplinary autonomy, a vision of politics as a prerational and existential dimension that could not be “solved” by scientific means. As a result, this nascent theory was more a rejection of behavioral social science than the birth of one of its specialized branches. The archived conversations reproduced here, along with unpublished papers by Hans Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Nitze, speak to this defensive stance. International relations theory is critically linked to the context of postwar liberalism, and the contributors explore how these origins have played out in political thought and American foreign policy.
Topic:
International Relations, Political Theory, and History
Political Geography:
Global Focus
Publication Identifier:
9780231526449
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

7. Governance Without a State?: Policies and Politics in Areas of Limited Statehood

Author:
Thomas Risse
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Governance discourse centers on an “ideal type” of modern statehood that exhibits full internal and external sovereignty and a legitimate monopoly on the use of force. Yet modern statehood is an anomaly, both historically and within the contemporary international system, while the condition of “limited statehood,” wherein countries lack the capacity to implement central decisions and monopolize force, is the norm. Limited statehood, argue the authors in this provocative collection, is in fact a fundamental form of governance, immune to the forces of economic and political modernization. Challenging common assumptions about sovereign states and the evolution of modern statehood, particularly the dominant paradigms supported by international relations theorists, development agencies, and international organizations, this volume explores strategies for effective and legitimate governance within a framework of weak and ineffective state institutions. Approaching the problem from the perspectives of political science, history, and law, contributors explore the factors that contribute to successful governance under conditions of limited statehood. These include the involvement of nonstate actors and nonhierarchical modes of political influence. Empirical chapters analyze security governance by nonstate actors, the contribution of publicprivate partnerships to promote the United Nations Millennium Goals, the role of business in environmental governance, and the problems of Western state-building efforts, among other issues. Recognizing these forms of governance as legitimate, the contributors clarify the complexities of a system the developed world must negotiate in the coming century.
Topic:
International Relations, Political Theory, and History
Political Geography:
Global Focus
Publication Identifier:
9780231521871
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

8. East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute

Author:
David C. Kang
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
From the founding of the Ming dynasty in 1368 to the start of the Opium Wars in 1841, China has engaged in only two large-scale conflicts with its principal neighbors, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. These four territorial and centralized states have otherwise fostered peaceful and long-lasting relationships with one another, and as they have grown more powerful, the atmosphere around them has stabilized. Focusing on the role of the "tribute system" in maintaining stability in East Asia and fostering diplomatic and commercial exchange, Kang contrasts this history against the example of Europe and the East Asian states' skirmishes with nomadic peoples to the north and west. Scholars tend to view Europe's experience as universal, but Kang upends this tradition, emphasizing East Asia's formal hierarchy as an international system with its own history and character. His approach not only recasts common understandings of East Asian relations but also defines a model that applies to other hegemonies outside of the European order.
Topic:
International Relations and History
Political Geography:
Japan, China, East Asia, Asia, Vietnam, Korea, and Asia-Pacific
Publication Identifier:
9780231526746
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

9. Power and the Past: Collective Memory and International Relations

Author:
Eric Langenbacher (ed) and Yossi Shain (ed)
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Book
Abstract:
Collective memories have long influenced domestic politics and especially international affairs—a fact most recently exemplified by the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. The events and the memories resulting from them became powerful motivating forces for Americans almost overnight. At home, an infrastructure of commemoration quickly arose—in films like United 93 ( 2006 ); memorials including one unveiled at the Pentagon in September 2008 and the Tribute World Trade Center Visitor Center opened in 2006; and even in political campaign discourse, as at the 2008 Republican National Convention. 1 Yet, as with other collective memories worldwide, there is no consensus as to the overall meaning and lessons of September 11 over time. Instead, the continued vehemence of discussions about 9 / 11 reveals still-unresolved struggles over the construction, content, and power of the memory. What degree of prominence should this memory have in American political culture? What historical narratives are offered as explanations? Most importantly, what values and policy implications—both domestically and abroad—ought to follow?
Topic:
International Relations, Human Rights, Politics, Political Theory, and History
Political Geography:
Europe

10. Harmony and War: Confucian Culture and Chinese Power Politics

Author:
Yuan-kang Wang
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Confucianism has shaped a certain perception of Chinese security strategy, symbolized by the defensive, nonaggressive Great Wall. Many believe China is antimilitary and reluctant to use force against its enemies. It practices pacifism and refrains from expanding its boundaries, even when nationally strong. In a path-breaking study traversing six centuries of Chinese history, Yuan-kang Wang resoundingly discredits this notion, recasting China as a practitioner of realpolitik and a ruthless purveyor of expansive grand strategies. Leaders of the Song Dynasty (960–1279) and Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) prized military force and shrewdly assessed the capabilities of China’s adversaries. They adopted defensive strategies when their country was weak and pursued expansive goals, such as territorial acquisition, destruction of their enemies, and total military victory, when their country was strong. Despite the dominance of an antimilitarist Confucian culture, warfare was not uncommon in the bulk of Chinese history. Grounding his research in primary Chinese sources, Wang outlines a politics of power crucial to understanding China’s strategies today, especially its policy of “peaceful development,” which, he argues, the nation has adopted mainly because of its military, economic, and technological weakness in relation to the United States.
Topic:
International Relations, Political Theory, and History
Political Geography:
Asia
Publication Identifier:
9780231522403
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN