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42971. God, guns, and … China? How ideology impacts American attitudes and policy preferences toward China

Author:
Peter Gries, Michael Crowson, and Huajian Cai
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
What impact does ideology have on American attitudes and policy preferences toward China? Based on two large N surveys, we first utilize exploratory factor analysis to uncover six distinct American ideological dimensions and two distinct dimensions of attitudes toward China that distinguish between its government and its people. We then utilize structural equation modeling to explore how attitudes toward the Chinese people (i.e. prejudice) and attitudes toward the Chinese government differentially mediate relationships between ideological beliefs, on the one hand, and Americans' China policy preferences, on the other. Results suggest both direct and indirect effects of ideology on policy preferences, with the latter effects being differentially mediated by prejudice and attitudes toward the Chinese government.
Political Geography:
China and America

42972. Strategizing aid: US–China food aid relations to North Korea in the 1990s

Author:
Taekyoon Kim
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This study sets out to analyze strategic relations of two major donors – the United States and China – in delivering food aid to North Korea in the 1990s. By reviewing the historical evolution of US–China strategic relations in line with food aid and adopting a game model to verify historical findings, it addresses two significant observations. First, the North Korean food aid dynamics were constructed and crystallized by donors' strategic interactions, rather than humanitarian intention to save the famine-stricken North Korea. Both donors first took into account strategic interests in aid dynamics, and then utilized food aid as a strategic instrument for their own purposes. Second, any multilateral cooperation for delivering food aid to North Korea dooms to failure, despite the potential of aid coordination among donor states. Donors' competition for the primacy in the region of Northeast Asia hampered policy coordination for institutionalizing aid networks. It is concluded that the two donors were bound to strategize food aid as a logical outgrowth of their own interests in the wake of North Korea's humanitarian disasters.
Political Geography:
United States, China, North Korea, and Northeast Asia

42973. Diplomacy in an asymmetric alliance: reconciling Sino-Australian relations with ANZUS, 1971–2007

Author:
Shannon Tow
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
There is an assumption in international relations literature that junior allies must choose between supporting a dominant global alliance partner and engaging with a rising power. Yet, Australian policy-makers have paradoxically managed to deepen Sino-Australian relations despite their bilateral alliance with the United States. They have developed a discrete China policy on the assumption that they could persuade Washington to accept it over time. They reasoned that this outcome was more likely if Australia used diplomacy to facilitate Sino-American cooperation and to develop an Australian China policy non-prejudicial to ANZUS. This article explores how this 'diplomatic formula' supported expansion of Sino-Australian relations under the Whitlam, Hawke, and Howard Governments. It explains Australia's intra-alliance influence and paradoxical foreign policy behavior and contributes to understanding the dynamics of asymmetric alliances during power transition.
Political Geography:
United States, China, Washington, and Australia

42974. Korea–European Union relations: beyond the FTA?

Author:
Robert Kelly
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
In 2009, Korea and the European Union (EU) signed a free trade agreement. Using a traditional list of state goals in foreign policy–national security, economic growth, prestige-seeking, and values-promotion–I examine the prospects for cooperation and integration in the future. I find that deeper engagement is unlikely. Most importantly, neither side is relevant to the basic security issues of the other. Specifically, the EU cannot assist Korea in its acute security dilemma, and 'sovereigntist' Korea does not share EU preferences for soft power, regionalization, and multilateral collective security. However, Korea is likely to pursue the relationship for cost-free prestige-taking. And the EU will under-stand this 'Asian bridge'as a success for the promotion of liberal-democratic values in a non-European context. Pro-regionalist elites, most notably the 'eureaucracy', may pursue 'inter-regional'ties for internal institutional reasons, but deep Korean attachment to the Westphalian state model will likely stymie such efforts.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Europe and Korea

42975. Japanese popular culture in East Asia: a new insight into regional community building

Author:
Hiro Katsumata
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This article seeks to enhance our understanding of an East Asian community by focusing on its cultural aspect. The specific focus of analysis is Japanese popular culture, whose elements include J-pop music, TV dramas, movies,manga (comic books), and anime (animations). This article sheds light on the progress of community building in the cultural sphere by demonstrating that Japanese popular culture has been favored by the people in the East Asian region. By so doing, it modifies our common beliefs about the characteristics of an East Asian community and our conventional expectations of the nature of an East Asian regional identity.
Topic:
Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Japan and East Asia

42976. Rockefeller, Carnegie, and the limits of American hegemony in the emergence of Australian international studies

Author:
James Cotton
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This essay contributes to the emerging debate on the origins of international studies, focusing on evidence regarding Australia. While neither Carnegie nor Rockefeller had a primary interest in international studies, the largest US foundations had a major impact on the emergence of the subject in Australia ca. 1920–60. This impact was direct, through the provision of funding to individuals (via fellowships) as well as to organizations; it was also indirect by virtue of the support given to the Institute of Pacific Relations (a proportion of which was actually for specific Australian purposes). How this impact is to be characterized turns in part on methodological questions; it cannot however be seen as a clear case of the imposition of Gramscian-style hegemony in the realm of ideas. The most apparent influence of the foundations was to direct the attention of a selected body of Australian intellectuals, of sometimes diverse views, beyond Empire to transnational concerns.
Political Geography:
America and Australia

42977. The Making of Northeast Asia

Author:
T. J. Pempel
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
Considerable research has been devoted to unraveling the complicated warp and woof of East Asia's onrushing regionalism. This book breaks from studies that take as the key unit of regional analysis either ASEAN (presumably in ' the regional driver's seat'), all of East Asia (the prevailing template of recent interactions), or the Asia-Pacific (the unit that most accounts for the preeminent East Asian influence of the United States). Calder and Ye argue instead that 'the increasingly intense and profound economic and social interactions within Northeast Asia…' (p. 251) are forging Japan, China, and South Korea into a far more significant 'synergistic entity'. In stressing the cooperative dimension of relations among these three powerful countries, the book not only calls for a new focus for regional analysis, but it also challenges the more traditional treatment of Northeast Asia as a hotbed of geopolitical tensions and rivalries.
Political Geography:
Japan, China, East Asia, and South Korea

42978. Rising States, Rising Institutions: Challenges for Global Governance

Author:
Isao Miyaoka
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
The global financial crisis of 2008 has strengthened the general impression that the decline of the United States and the rise of new powers such as China and India are simultaneously in progress. A shift in the balance of power must significantly affect the way of global governance. This is a subject of great importance in world politics. In the words of Robert Gilpin, 'the fundamental problem of international relations in the contemporary world is the problem of peaceful adjustment to the consequences of the uneven growth of power among states'. Since around 2010, scholarly attention has been paid to the impact of emerging new powers on global governance. One of the very first books is the volume under this review, Rising States, Rising Institutions: Challenges for Global Governance. This edited volume is the second book that was produced by the collaborative work between the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) – a Canadian think tank based in Waterloo, Ontario – and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. (The first book from this partnership is Can the World Be Governed? Possibilities for Effective Multilateralism.)
Topic:
Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States, China, and India

42979. September 11, 1683: Myth of a Christian Europe and the Massacre in Norway

Author:
Şener Aktürk
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
This essay critically approaches the impact of September 11, 2001 attacks in galvanizing the myth of a Christian Europe, a myth that provided the ideological justification for the recent massacre in Norway. The myth making around the failed Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, an event that provided the inspiration for Anders Breivik's fifteen hundred pages long anti-Muslim manifesto, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, comes under scrutiny. The author argues that Europe has been, not only a Christian, but also a Jewish and Muslim continent for many centuries, using examples from the centuriesold history of Islamic civilization in France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Spain, among other European countries. The author draws attention not only to the total annihilation of historical Muslim communities in places such as Sicily and Spain, but also to the nearly total eradication of Islamic religious heritage and architecture in these countries.
Political Geography:
Europe, Norway, and France

42980. A New Deal for Arab People

Author:
Francis Ghilès
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
In recent years the Arab lands have been reduced to a uniform discourse, which well suited those in America such as Bernard Lewis who tried to convince their political masters that a clash of civilisations between the West and Islam was inevitable. However, over the past twelve months a series of revolts recast the map of the Middle East. When the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt started, many Western commentators failed to understand how young Arabs peacefully managed to overthrow well-entrenched dictators such as Ben Ali and Mubarak. Their initial reactions fitted into a broader collective spirit of Orientalism, which long gave up hope on Arab societies ever joining contemporary trends towards democratization. It was not Islam or poverty that provoked the uprisings – it was the crushing humiliation that had deprived the majority of the Arabs who are under the age of thirty of the right to assert control over their own lives.
Topic:
Islam
Political Geography:
America, Middle East, Arabia, and Egypt