Search

Begin New Search Topic International Relations

3081. Back in the U.S.S.R.? Russia as an Actor in World Politics

Author:
Mette Skak
Publication Date:
07-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
The gap between the structural reality surrounding Russia and the cognitive level of Russian foreign policy making is highlighted. The literature on Russian foreign policy is reviewed, distinguishing between 'optimists' and 'pessimists'. The analysis differentiates between 'milieu goals' and 'possession goals' and traces the pursuit of these goals in Czarist Russian, Soviet and postcommunist Russian foreign policy. The conclusion is that possession goals – hard-core realism, as it were – remain the dominant feature of Russian foreign policy (as in the Soviet era). This challenges the theory of democratic peace. This finding is then subjected to a policy-oriented criticism of Russian foreign policy. Three examples of dysfunctional Russian foreign policy are addressed: the misguided pursuit of multipolarity, myth and reality about regional priorities, and Russian self-destructive partisanship in ex-Yugoslavia. The final section raises the eternal Russian questions of Kto vinovat? and Shto delat'?On the causal factors behind the observed traits of irrationality, the analysis emphasises the volatile, 'praetorian' decision-making environment. Concerning policy implications, the dialogue with Russia must address features of realism, for instance by marketing the virtue of internal balancing, and as for concessions, formally dismiss foreign policy doctrines of spheres-of-influence like the Monroe doctrine as anachronistic in an era of globalization.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Politics
Political Geography:
Russia

3082. Integration Policy: Between Foreign Policy and Diffusion

Author:
Morten Kelstrup
Publication Date:
07-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
This working paper is a discussion of the concept of “integration policy” and its application, in particular to the study of policies of individual states towards European integration. The paper takes its point of departure in traditional studies of foreign policy. It illustrates different approaches to the study of foreign policy. It claims that when we are dealing with policy towards integration, for instance European integration, focus has to be redirected from the study of foreign policy to what we might call integration policy. Different dimensions of integration policy are specified. European integration is interpreted at being somewhere between intergovernmental cooperation and supranational decision making. It is shown how integration policy, as integration become more intense, will develop into a proliferated and multidimensional set of policies and possibly develop further into “diffusion”. The overall contribution of the paper is to conceptualise a new, grey area and to contribute to the study of different kinds of integration policy.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe

3083. The United States, Japan, and China: Setting the Course

Author:
Neil E. Silver
Publication Date:
04-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The political dynamics of China-Japan relations have changed in reaction to three events: the demise of bipolar world politics, China's ''rise,'' and Japan's unexpected economic stall. These changed political dynamics have brought important challenges and consequences for the United States.
Topic:
International Relations and Security
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Israel, East Asia, and Asia

3084. Pruebas Nucleares en el Sur de Asia: Las Razones y las Repercusiones

Author:
Varun Sahni
Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
On May 11, 1998, India conducted three underground nuclear tests, followed by two more 48 hours later. Two weeks later, Pakistan responded with six nuclear tests of its own. The purpose of this document is to analyze the reasons behind the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests as well as their innumerable implications. To facilitate analysis, the study is divided into two parts. In the first, the reasons that propelled the governments of India and Pakistan to a posture of overt nuclearization are analyzed. In both cases, the nuclear tests were the result of diverse factors, ranging from security concerns to domestic political calculations to considerations of international prestige. In the second part of the document the impact of the Indian and Pakistani actions are analyzed on four well-defined levels: internal, bilateral, regional and global.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Middle East, and India

3085. Three and a Half Centuries of the Westphalian State System

Author:
Varun Sahni
Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
This short paper studies how the international system has evolved over the last 350 years through an identification of its most important features. The paper has a pedagogic rather than research orientation, and is divided into three sections. The first section analyzes the most significant features of international relations from the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to the Second World War. It demonstrates how, over the centuries, the evolution of alliances and the rise of a peace norm transformed a war system into a peace system, thereby mitigating the basic systemic condition of anarchy on the salient structural characteristics of the sovereign state system. The second section studies international relations during the Cold War, with the focus on the strategic, economic, ideological and cultural factors that defined the international system during that period. The third section of the paper analyzes international relations since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The various developments and trends that are leading to systemic change are examined. Despite the sundry challenges posed to the state by non-state actors, the rise of new issue-areas and sub-systemic supranational integration, the sovereign state and the Westphalian system is expected to endure.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Development, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
Berlin and Westphalia

3086. Drug Trafficking in US-Mexican Relations: The Politics of Simulation

Author:
Jorge Chabat
Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
This document presents the hypothesis that the Mexican and U.S. governments are trapped in their current anti-drug strategy. This strategy causes high levels of violence and corruption in Mexican territory, and cannot be changed because it responds to pressures exerted by American public opinion on its own government. One of the consequences is that the U.S. government is compelled annually to certify the Mexican government's fight against drugs. This certification constrains an accurate evaluation of Mexico's combat against narcotrafficking, because it tends to underestimate failures and exaggerate accomplishments. Nevertheless, the possibility of change in the anti-drug strategy is limited, so this scenario is expected to endure for several years. In this sense on can also expect a better integration f Mexican and U.S. anti-drug policies in the near and medium term.
Topic:
International Relations, Crime, and Government
Political Geography:
United States, America, North America, and Mexico

3087. International Explanations for Stock Market Opening

Author:
Susan Minushkin
Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
Most studies on financial market liberalization focus on wealthy countries, emphasizing international, economic or domestic political factors as explanations for financial liberalization or have specified the conditions under which one factor dominates in causal significance. They have not tested whether their arguments are applicable to the middle-income countries that comprise the 'emerging markets.' Focusing on these countries, this paper seeks to isolate and test a series of propositions derived from international approaches. The main contribution of this article is to provide some first-cut testing of the existing hypotheses, as a guide for other researchers in terms of the timing, pace and style of financial opening in middle-income countries.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance

3088. Identity, Empathy and International Relations

Author:
Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann
Publication Date:
03-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
The insertion of identity politics into international relations undermines the capacity for cosmopolitan empathy, a capacity that might be useful in ameliorating some of the world's social problems. Empathy is the capacity to put oneself into another's shoes and recognize a stranger's humanity. The useful post-modern stress on the mutability of identity has hardened in identity politics into the creation of exclusive social categories of Oppressed and Oppressor. The social creation of such categories through such devices as the politics of amnesia paves the way for isolationist indifference. Yet data drawn both from the sociology of genocide and from the author's own research shows that humanitarian empathy across lines of identity is possible.
Topic:
International Relations, Civil Society, and Imperialism

3089. Building a Partnership, Turkey and the European Union

Author:
David Barchard
Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV)
Abstract:
This paper is an attempt to identify some of the main practical issues and themes involved in Turkey's accession process in the run-up to the appearance of the Accession Partnership document in early November 2000. It is also an attempt to explore ways of bridging the gap between Turkish and EU attitudes on the political issues that have to be resolved before full membership negotiations can be started.
Topic:
International Relations, European Union, Partnerships, and Regional Integration
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, Middle East, and Mediterranean

3090. Coming Home or Moving Home? "Westernising" Narratives in Finnish Foreign Policy and the Re-interpretation of Past Identities

Author:
Chris Browning
Publication Date:
01-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
Since the end of the Cold War it is widely accepted that Finnish foreign policy has oriented increasingly towards the 'West', the most pertinent and concrete example of which, to date, has been accession to the EU. Implicit in many commentaries is the assumption that this orientation is a natural phenomenon, the natural culmination of an effervescent Finnish 'Western' cultural identity. Whilst the rhetorical style perhaps differs espousers of this view draw on Herderian and Hegelian assumptions, essentially arguing that after the unfortunate interruption and deviation from its true path occasioned by the Cold War the Finnish 'national spirit' is now back on its rightful historical and linear course to national fulfilment and blossoming. Looking into the nation's history such discourses see Finland's cultural and political roots as lying in the West and hence posit that with the break-up of the Soviet Union Finland is returning to these organic origins in Western civilisation, with all the effects for foreign policy such a 'Western' identity will entail. This is what we may term the 'Westernising' narrative of current debates about Finnish identity and Finnish foreign policy. On this basis the Finnish Cold War foreign policy of neutrality is characterised, either as having been a total aberration and betrayal of the Finnish 'Western' Self, or, and perhaps more commonly, as having been the best possible option available to the Finnish elite at the time: constrained by the dictates of power, agile Finnish political leaders were able to manoeuvre the Finnish ship of state through the various pitfalls and traps waiting to beguile them in the stormy waters of great power Cold War politics. Now free of such power dictates these current 'Westernising' discourses are attempting to push Finnish foreign policy towards the West, legitimising such a move to the Finnish public and the wider international audience on the grounds of Finland's claimed historical Western identity. To note the title of this panel discussion, “Defining New Identities Between East and West', for Westernising discourses there is no between about it. As an organically Western state why would Finland want to be between East and West any longer? On this basis the Finnish neutrality of the Cold War period merely disguised the true Finnish identity, a ruse so that Finland could in the future once more live as its true self when conditions once again permitted.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, International Political Economy, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
Europe and Finland