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Begin New Search Topic Diplomacy Political Geography North America Content Type Journal Article Publication Year within 10 Years Publication Year within 5 Years

31. Can the U.S. Still Be an Example to the World?

Author:
Renee M. Earle
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Between January 6 and January 20, disbelieving viewers in America and throughout the world watched two weeks of American history, unlike any before, cascade across their TV screens like a 33vinyl record played at 78 RPMs. Cameras recorded the dizzying transformation of the Capitol from take-for-granted placidity, to unimaginable desecration, and finally to a stage festooned to welcome the inauguration of a new president. Foreign Service friends and colleagues in Washington, DC and abroad wondered what the world would take away from these images. We had often encountered military and armed police patrolling cities in other countries—but never in OUR capital. A Department of Justice colleague worried that our work abroad, such as justice system reform in countries from Colombia to Afghanistan, might now be at risk. After witnessing the January 6 events on Capitol Hill, would our overseas partners embrace us with as much confidence? The Constitution and citizen participation in a democracy played a large role in my career abroad as a public diplomacy foreign service officer with the State Department. In the years after the Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain fell, supported by the FAS (Freedom Support Act) and SEED (Support for East European Democracy) Congressional appropriations, helping the people of Central Europe and the former Soviet Union construct, or reconstruct, democratic institutions and practice was an important focus for our embassies in East and Central Europe. These programs were broadly welcomed by our host countries.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Democracy, and January 6
Political Geography:
North America, Global Focus, and United States of America

32. Time to Rethink Development Assistance in the Sahel

Author:
Mark Wentling
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
The main assistance theme of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. embassies, other donors, and host government agencies in the impoverished Sahel Region of Africa has been focused for a decade on strengthening the resilience of rural households eking out a living on the edge of the Sahara Desert. More than 40 million people reside in this marginal arid geographic area, mostly pursuing subsistence agricultural and pastoral livelihoods. The countries most concerned by this effort to build rural resilience are Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Rural, Development Aid, USAID, and Resilience
Political Geography:
Africa, North America, Mali, Sahel, Niger, United States of America, and Burkina Faso

33. The Impact of Climate Change on U.S. Foreign Policy and the National Interest

Author:
John Harbeson and Keith P. McCormick
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Editor’s note: In September 2020 the DACOR Bacon House Foundation invited climate experts from government, science, diplomacy, the academy, and media as well as an audience of foreign affairs professionals to examine the current state of knowledge on climate change and its impacts on U.S. foreign policy and the national interest. A summary of the conference proceedings follows.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Climate Change, and Diplomacy
Political Geography:
North America, Global Focus, and United States of America

34. Is Diplomacy Back? Making the Case to the American People

Author:
Mary Thompson-Jones
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Within hours of being sworn in, President Joe Biden put the United States on track to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization. A week later, he signed a new START Accord with Russian President Vladimir Putin, extending the nuclear missile nonproliferation treaty for another five years. These actions—along with many others—were important messages to a world that had grown accustomed to seeing America walk away from treaties. Why would Biden prioritize the international community? Americans are far more concerned about the pandemic, the events of January 6, the faltering economy, and scores of pressing domestic issues. Clearly, the early attention was a chance to give substance to his inaugural promise that “we will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again.” Biden underscored the change of focus in a speech to the State Department in which his now-familiar line, “diplomacy is back,” has become a rallying cry for a crowd eager to resume the day-to-day operations that underpin diplomacy. They can now proceed with the confidence that their work will be valued by the boss.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Treaties and Agreements, International Community, and Joe Biden
Political Geography:
North America, Global Focus, and United States of America

35. Interpreters as Diplomatic Actors in the Trump Era

Author:
Seckin Baris Gulmez, Nihal Yetkin Karakoc, and Didem Buhari Gulmez
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
This article investigates the impact of interpreters on the US foreign policy that is defined with a tradition of anti- diplomacy in the Trump era. The literature in both International Relations and Translation Studies often overlooks the impact of interpreters on diplomacy and fails to consider interpreter as an actor per se. In this context, the study will investigate the initiatives undertaken by interpreters in order to fill the emerging gap in the diplomatic sphere in terms of diplomatic language, customs and actors in the Trump era. Accordingly, the article first comparatively examines the role of interpreters and diplomats and then, discusses the key roles of interpreters in diplomacy under two main categories: “communication filter” involving time-gaining strategy, moderation and gatekeeping and “conciliation” that includes the roles of scape goat, crisis prevention and mediation. Overall, this study demonstrates that interpreters have a greater space of manoeuvre than is generally assumed in terms of influencing diplomatic processes. By establishing the missing link between International Relations and Translation Studies, this study aims to become a pioneering work that contributes to the debate about whether interpreters can be considered as an important diplomatic actor.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Politics, Translation, and Donald Trump
Political Geography:
Turkey, North America, and United States of America

36. Twitter Diplomacy in Turkey - US Relations

Author:
Ali Sevket Ovali
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
The use of Twitter has become an important part of foreign policy making and conducting in the recent years. Since it is seen as the most powerful and popular tool of digital diplomacy, foreign policy makers increasingly use Twitter for sending messages to their counterparts and to inform their followers on certain issues, problems or current topics on their country’s foreign policy agenda. Taking the popularity of Twitter use in foreign policy, this study aims to discuss the role of Twitter diplomacy on Turkey-US relations. In this respect, how and for which purposes foreign policy makers in Turkey and the US use Twitter, which topics are mostly covered by the tweets of the selected top- level decision-makers’ accounts, the positive and negative impacts of Twitter on the current status of bilateral relations and the role that Twitter is likely to play in the future of relations are the points that are going to be dealt within the framework of this study.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Social Media, Donald Trump, and Twitter
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

37. The Logic of Geopolitics in American-Russian Relations

Author:
Allen C. Lynch
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Warsaw East European Review (WEER)
Institution:
Centre for East European Studies, University of Warsaw
Abstract:
One of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s first requests as President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor in 1977 was to ask the Pentagon for its plans – including targets – for nuclear war against “Russia”. Brzezinski was outraged when he was presented with the plan for nuclear war against the Soviet Union. He could not believe that the U.S. military had no plans to spe- cifically weaken the Russian core of the Soviet empire. For the Pentagon planners, Russia and the Soviet Union were one and the same.1 I begin with this anecdote because it reflects well an enduring geopolitical logic to American-Russian relations: American policy toward Russia, whether it be in the Tsarist, Soviet, or post-Soviet period, has not been based on opposing a strong Russian state per se. (That state married to communist ideology was something else altogether.) In the after- math of the Russian Civil War, for instance, the United States delayed recognition of Baltic independence until 1922, two years after Soviet Russia had recognized the independence of Estonia in the Treaty of Tartu, on the grounds that Polish and Finnish independence apart nothing should be done to call into question the territorial continuity of the Russian Em- pire.2 Indeed, American officials seldom viewed the Soviet Union as an empire, as the Pen- tagon war plans just cited illustrate. Historically, the logic of geopolitics i.e., the influence of organization in space on international political relationships has often tended to frame American-Russian relations in terms of complementarities of interest. Of course, geopolitics is not the only logic in AmericanRussian relations; ideology, domestic politics, as well as vested institutional interests all play their role in varying degrees under varying circum- stances. But historically, insofar as geopolitical factors have prevailed, American-Russian relations have generally been harmonious, if also remote and indirect in nature. (By indirect I mean that each sees the other mainly in terms of other powers or processes, e.g., the state of the balance of power in Europe and/or Northeast Asia.) Let us recall that Russia, whether it be under Imperial, Soviet, or post-Soviet auspices, is an essentially continental Eurasian power. Its primary state interest for centuries has been to build and consolidate a trans-continental, multi-national and imperial state while also man- aging international power politics with a series of powerful adversaries throughout Asia and Europe. Above all, Russia sought to ensure that no powerful coalition of external (and in Eu- rope technologically superior) powers could unite to challenge the Russian Empire’s territorial or political integrity. Russian diplomats and rulers thus learned to play the European balance of power with considerable finesse (e.g., the Treaty of Nystadt, 1721, under Peter the Great; the Congress of Vienna, 1815, under Alexander I; the Treaty of Rapallo between Soviet Russia and Weimar Germany, 1922; the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, 1939; the Grand Alliance with the United States and Great Britain, 1941–45; and the Helsinki Final Act, 1975, to name just a few instances). As with Great Britain, maintaining a favorable European balance of power has been central to Russian statecraft.3 The United States, by contrast, is functionally an insular power (albeit on a continental scale) with respect to the rest of the world, surrounded as it is by two great oceans and militarily weak and isolated neighbors (i.e., Canada and Mexico). America’s primary foreign policy concern throughout most of its history has thus been, like Russia’s, to prevent the emergence of a hostile European hegemon that could threaten the country’s expansion in North America and its own hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. Once the United States had stabilized its independence from Britain after the War of 1812, U.S. and British geopo- litical interests tended to coincide.4 In this context, American and Russian interests have more often been complementary than antagonistic. It has been primarily the intrusion of ideological elements, reflecting for example Americans’ global democratic aspirations or the Soviet Union’s ultimate objec- tive of the triumph of communism worldwide, that have rendered the bilateral relationship intransigent and even dangerous.5
Topic:
International Relations, Cold War, Diplomacy, Bilateral Relations, Hegemony, Post Cold War, and Rivalry
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Soviet Union, North America, and United States of America

38. Brexit Waves Will Lap at America’s Shores

Author:
Robert Cox
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Amid the toil and trouble of their own politics Americans might have a moment to note the self-flagellation of their closest European ally. There’s more to come – and the US is going to be drawn into it, whether it likes it or not. Coronavirus has now temporarily obscured the Brexit issue while arguably inflicting upon the European Union the greatest strains since its creation. A stricken EU helps nobody.
Topic:
Diplomacy, European Union, Brexit, and Transatlantic Relations
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, United States of America, and North America

39. Making “Devoted Efforts” Visible: The National Museum of American Diplomacy

Author:
Jane Carpenter-Rock
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
In a 1956 State Department memo, J. Burke Wilkinson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, articulated the Department’s need for a “display room or museum for the preservation and exhibition of documents and objects important in the history of the Department of State and the Foreign Service.” Again in 1958, a series of internal memos urged the creation of a “Department Museum” and the development of a “related presentation program” to include “eighty additional galleries in the U.S. posts all over the world,” an idea supported by then-Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. For over sixty years, the effort to establish a “Department Museum” has waxed and waned. Intervening issues like war, international crises, changes in administration, and the ever-present need for office space, have often taken priority. However, the long-held vision of establishing a Department museum is finally taking shape in the form of the National Museum of American Diplomacy. With a projected opening date of 2022, this long-awaited museum promises to be a platform where the American people can finally see the “devoted efforts of the Department’s officers and employees to further the interest of our nation.” This article will explore the development of the National Museum of American Diplomacy and its goal to shed light on the history and practice of American diplomacy through the stories of its people.
Topic:
Diplomacy, History, and Museums
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

40. How Washington Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the UAE

Author:
Albadr AbuBaker Alshateri
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
When Dubai World Ports (DWP), a Dubai Government-owned entity, sought to purchase the British company Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation (P&O) in 2006, it faced huge opposition from the US Congress, local authority, and national security experts, despite the Bush Administration’s approval of the deal. The acquisition of P&O would have given the Dubai company the concession to run six major ports in the USA.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Exports, Trade, and Imports
Political Geography:
North America, United Arab Emirates, United States of America, and Gulf Nations