Browse

Drawing on primary sources from both sides of the Atlantic, Britain and the Bomb explores how economic, political, and strategic considerations have shaped British nuclear diplomacy. The book concentrates on Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s first two terms of office, 1964-1970, which represent a critical period in international nuclear history. Wilson’s commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and his support for continued investment in the British nuclear weapons program, despite serious economic and political challenges, established precedents that still influence policymakers today. The continued independence of Britain’s nuclear force, and the enduring absence of a German or European deterrent, certainly owes a debt to Wilson’s handling of nuclear diplomacy more than four decades ago. Beyond highlighting the importance of this period, the book explains how and why British nuclear diplomacy evolved during Wilson’s leadership. Cabinet discussions, financial crises, and international tensions encouraged a degree of flexibility in the pursuit of strategic independence and the creation of a non-proliferation treaty. The book shows us that British nuclear diplomacy was a series of compromises, an intricate blend of political, economic, and strategic considerations.

This book is the first to theorize third party mediation in crises between regional nuclear powers. Its relevance flows from two of the most significant international developments since the end of the Cold War: the emergence of regional nuclear rivalries; and the shift from the Cold War’s bipolar context to today’s unipolar international setting. Moving away from the traditional bilateral deterrence models, the book conceptualizes crisis behavior as “brokered bargaining”: a three-way bargaining framework where the regional rivals and the ‘third party’ seek to influence each other to behave in line with their crisis objectives and in so doing, affect each other’s crisis behavior. The book tests brokered bargaining theory by examining U.S.-led crisis management in South Asia, analyzing three major crises between India and Pakistan: the Kargil conflict, 1999; the 2001-02 nuclear standoff; and the Mumbai crisis, 2008. The case studies find strong evidence of behavior predicted by the brokered bargaining framework. They also shed light on several risks of misperceptions and inadvertence due to the challenges inherent in signaling to multiple audiences simultaneously. Traditional explanations rooted in bilateral deterrence models do not account for these, leaving a void with serious practical consequences, which the introduction of brokered bargaining seeks to fill. The book’s findings also offer lessons for crises on the Korean peninsula, between China and India, and between potential nuclear rivals in the Middle East.

This book explores the strategic and institutional dynamics of international relations in East Asian history when imperial China was the undisputed regional hegemon. It draws on both Chinese and Western intellectual traditions to develop a relational theory of grand strategy and fundamental institutions in regional relations. The theory is evaluated with three case studies of Sino-Korean, Sino-Japanese, and Sino-Mongol relations during China’s early Ming dynasty (1368-1424). The book argues that early Ming China and its neighbors adopted a variety of grand strategies in their interactions, including both instrumental strategies and strategies with a distinct Confucian expressive rationality. The strategic patterns showed that expressive rationality embodying Confucian relational affection and obligation was an essential, though not dominant, feature of regional relations. This finding challenges the Eurocentric International Relations literature that has little conception of expressive rationality. Providing an institutional analysis of the early-Ming East Asian international society of Chinese hegemony, the book also challenges the venerable tribute system paradigm in the traditional historical as well as the more recent International Relations literatures. Contemporary policy implications are suggested by outlining ethical relationalism as a critical and normative theory to critique contemporary Chinese foreign policy and assess the strategic impact of China’s rise.

This book explores the emergence of an anarchic states-system in the twentieth-century Arab world. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Arab nationalist movements first considered establishing a unified regional arrangement to take the empire's place and present a common front to outside powers. But over time, different Arab leaderships abandoned this project and instead adopted policies characteristic of self-interested, territorially limited states. In the explanation of this phenomenon, the book shifts attention away from older debates about the origins and development of Arab nationalism and analyzes instead how different nationalist leaderships changed the ways that they carried on diplomatic and strategic relations. It situates this shift in the context of influential sociological theories of state formation, while showing how labor movements and other forms of popular mobilization shaped the origins of the regional states-system.

This book examines how societies, cultures, political structures, and the global environment affect countries' military organizations. Unlike most analyses of countries' military power, which focus on material and basic resources—such as the size of population, technological and industrial base, and gross national product (GNP)—this volume takes a more expansive view. Its overarching argument is that states' global environments and the particularities of their cultures, social structures, and political institutions often affect how they organize and prepare for war, and ultimately impact their effectiveness in battle. The creation of military power is only partially dependent on states' basic material and human assets. Wealth, technology, and human capital certainly matter for a country's ability to create military power, but equally important are the ways a state uses those resources, and this often depends on the political and social environment in which military activity takes place.

The examination of wars and conflicts of the twenty-first century immediately draws one to their culture and sectarian dimensions. The contributors to this volume reflect on the following fundamental questions; where and how is culture important in a national security and foreign policy context? Is cultural understanding important, or is it merely a fad? What constitutes cultural data? What frameworks should be used to analyze culture? What are the challenges of cultural data collection and application? Part I (encompassing chapters’ one through three) examines the theory to methodology of culture and conflict. Two formal intelligence disciplines, Cultural intelligence (CULINT) and ethnographic intelligence (ETHINT), and their incorporation into existing joint intelligence infrastructure are examined. Part II (encompassing chapters four through ten) takes us from methodology to practice, and addresses some of the lessons of Afghanistan. Here, the authors frame Taliban’s successful expansion into Pastuhn areas and the critical role religious authorities’ play in Afghanistan’s present conflict. The IO assessment tool is depicted, illustrating its various uses, most importantly, the ability to quantify the success or failure of an operation. This book draws on the research, analysis’s, and experiences of its scholars’ to conclude that the success of a country intending to invade and occupy another is in large part dependent on its fundamental knowledge and sensitivity to the relevant cultural processes and dynamics.

The inviolability of diplomatic personnel and premises is a cornerstone of interstate relations and international law. As epitomized by the murder of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, host countries are not always willing or capable to protect foreign diplomats and missions, which have become increasingly vulnerable to terrorism and other forms of political violence. Consequently, states with a large diplomatic presence have complemented host countries protection with a host of additional measures ranging from relocating embassies to fortified suburban locations to the deployment of military, police, and private security guards. By increasing the separateness of foreign envoys from local societies and informing local societies’ perceptions of the sending states, however, diplomatic security policies may not simply protect diplomats, but also reshape the institution and practice of diplomacy. In spite of its theoretical and policy relevance, diplomatic security has received very sporadic scholarly attention. This volume fills this gap by providing a comparative analysis of diplomatic protective policies enacted by the US, China, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Israel and Turkey. Moreover, the book investigates the reasons underlying the evolution of diplomatic security policies over time and their variations across countries, examining the factors underlying the choosing of protective actors and arrangements. It then examines the effectiveness of these arrangements analyzing how diplomatic security policies have been reformed in response to major incidents and the extent to which they can secure diplomats without hindering their ability to interact with local society and tarnishing the image of the sending state.

This book takes as its focus a simple yet critical question: Does foreign direct investment lead to weakened environmental regulation, thereby turning developing countries into “pollution havens?” The author examines the development of Chinese law governing the environmental impact of foreign investors, describes how regional competition for investment has influenced environmental regulation, and analyzes the environmental practices of foreign and Chinese companies. He finds only modest evidence that integration with the global economy has transformed China into a pollution haven. Indeed, after China opened its domestic market, the entry of foreign firms largely strengthened the environmental protection regime, including the oversight of foreign firms' environmental practices. Nevertheless, foreign firms (and the competition to lure them) have posed new challenges to controlling industrial pollution. The author identifies the conditions under which foreign investment contributes to and undermines environmental protection, offering readers a solid understanding of China's environmental challenges. He also builds on existing theory and provides hypotheses that can be tested with other developing nations.

Because authoritarian regimes like North Korea can impose the costs of sanctions on their citizens, they constitute “hard targets.” Yet such regimes may also be immune—and even hostile—to economic inducements if those inducements imply reform and opening. Can economic carrots and sticks by used effectively with respect to such systems? This book draws on an array of evidence—trade data, surveys of Chinese and South Korea firms doing business in North Korea, and an analysis of the country’s political structure—to capture the effects of sanctions and inducements. The book also provides a detailed reconstruction of the role of economic incentives in the bargaining over North Korea’s nuclear program. While it highlights the difficulties sanctions have faced, it also shows the reluctance of the leadership to weaken its grip on foreign economic activity, suggesting that inducements may have limited effect as well. The case is made through a detailed reconstruction of negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear program. Discussing parallels to Iran, the book urges policy makers to think in terms of gradual strategies—including informational ones—that may have effects only over the long run.

Do international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) matter? When do they influence human security? This book offers a comprehensive framework for understanding the effects of international non-governmental organizations (international NGOs or INGOs) on a variety of human rights and development outcomes. According to much of the extant International Relations literature, INGOs are assumed to be purely principled or altruistic actors, existing only to solve the world’s problems. This is a strong assumption, as many in International Relations assume that all actors are self-interested and strategic. This book extends the canonical theoretical literature on INGOs by relaxing the oft-assumption that all INGOs are motivated with shared values or principles. The book then investigates how the existence of the presence of INGOs with multiple motivations complicates the interactions of INGOs with both sub-state and international actors and, thus, influences the sector’s ability to actually influence human security at the ground level. The findings of this project highlight both the power and the shortcomings of INGOs, implying that a realistic look at the potential and motivations of INGOs is necessary for improvements in human rights and development. The book concludes with policy recommendations for aid foundations, donor governments, and target or host governments, as well as providing policy recommendations for INGOs themselves.

Why do countries go to war over disputed lands? This revisionist study identifies the process of decolonization as the root of contemporary Asian interstate territorial conflicts. It does so by foregrounding the political implications of identifying a fixed territorial homeland as a necessary starting point for international recognition as well as establishing national identity. It concludes that, rather than potential economic gains or historic grievances, disputed lands are important because territorial conflicts expose contradictions in the body of the assumed-to-be unitary nation-state, namely, that fixed territorial borders inevitably incorporate non-national communities into new states while leaving other national entities outside it.

This book challenges the proposition that regional organizations across the world exhibit increasing similarities with the European Union as a result of norm diffusion. It examines how and to what extent Indonesian foreign policy stakeholders—the government, civil society, legislators, the academe, the press and business representatives—sought to influence reforms of Southeast Asian regionalism by adopting ideas and norms of regional integration championed by the EU. Triggering the Indonesian debate on regionalism was the decision of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Indonesia is a founding member, to draft an ASEAN Charter, a quasi-constitutional document adjusting the grouping’s repository of cooperation norms to a changing international environment. Applying and developing further Amitav Acharya’s theory of “constitutive localization,” the analysis of the ASEAN Charter debate shows that—to varying degrees—Indonesian foreign policy stakeholders transfer the terminology of European integration to ASEAN’s organizational structure, but that they adopt only partially, if at all, the normative substance of the EU model for regional integration. Instead, they skillfully reconcile alien norms with local norms, with the effect of retaining what could be called an Indonesian way of foreign policy-making.

This book calls for us to rethink what trade most often looks like and how it shapes global institutions, fostering peace among states. It argues that our understanding of trade has not kept pace with its changing nature in the twenty-first century. Existing models, rooted in Ricardo’s theories, regard trade uniformly as taking place between entities and countries that offer different commodities and operate according to the logic of comparative advantage. Though this type of exchange does take place, intra-industry trade—international trade of the same or similar commodities, in which foreign and domestic brands compete—is increasingly prevalent. The book argues that our current academic and policymaking focus on the total volume of trade, rather than its composition, is misplaced. Trade composition matters, not just because it gives us a fuller understanding of how trade works, but also because intra-industry trade increases the likelihood of positive institutional relations and cooperation between states. To illustrate their point, the authors demonstrate that intra-industry trade promotes preferential trade agreement formation, reduces World Trade Organization disputes and militarized conflict, and paves the way for new and fortified alliances.

This book analyzes how ideas, or political ideology, can threaten states and how states react to ideational threats. It examines the threat perception and policies of two Arab, Muslim majority states, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in response to the rise and activities of two revolutionary “Islamic states,” established in Iran (1979) and Sudan (1989). Using these comparative case studies, the major theme running through the book—that transnational ideologies may present a greater and more immediate national security threat than shifts in the military balance of power—has two main components. First, ideology, or ideational power, triggers threat perception and affects state policy because it can undermine domestic political stability and regime survival in another state. Second, states engage in ideational balancing in response to an ideological threat. The analytical framework for understanding strategic interaction in this realm of international politics is called an “ideational security dilemma.” The book has significant implications for international relations theory, including religion and international affairs, and engages important debates in comparative politics about authoritarianism and Islamic activism. Its findings about how an Islamist regime or state behaves will provide vital insight for policy creation by the US and its Middle East allies should another such regime or state emerge.

This book explicitly links capitalism to Japan's particular foreign economic policy choices, offering a historically informed account of the nature and evolution of the Japanese challenge to neoliberalism. Central to its analysis are the historically and socially constructed Japanese conceptions of Japan's economic identity—conceptions that have shaped Japan's interest in challenging the American-led neoliberal world order. With historical analysis beginning in the 1870s, the book explicates several of Japan's key foreign policy choices, including the Asian Monetary Fund decision in 1997, and draws out the future policy implications of these choices.

Debate surrounding “China's rise” and the prospects of its possible challenge to America's preeminence in international relations in East Asia has focused on two questions, rooted in power-balancing theory: whether the United States should “contain” or “engage” China; and whether the rise of Chinese power has inclined other East Asian states to “balance” against Beijing by alignment with the United States. By drawing on alternative theoretic approaches—most especially “balance-of-threat” theory, political economic theory, and theories surrounding regime survival in multilateral rather than bilateral contexts—the author of this book creates an explanation of what is in motion in the region that differs widely from the traditional “strategic vision” of national interest. He concludes that China's primary international relations aim is not to match U.S. military might or the foreign policy influence which flows from that power, and that its neighbors are not balancing against its rising power. This is because, in today's guns-versus-butter fiscal reality, balancing policies would entail forfeiting possible gains that can accrue from cooperation, economic growth, and the application of GDP to nonmilitary ends. Instead, most East Asian countries have collectively pivoted to a strategy of elite legitimacy and regime survival based on economic performance.

This book presents a detailed description and analysis of the last major security negotiation between the countries of NATO and the former Warsaw Pact as the Cold War was ending, and the creation of the resulting first European security agreement of the post-Cold War era. The book shows that the security bureaucracies, and especially the intelligence bureaucracies, of the two superpowers were reluctant to enter into this negotiation and still had conceptions of security (and of each other) which were out of step with the evolving situation. Accordingly, these powerful bureaucracies tried to hobble the negotiation. It was only the intervention of the two Presidents of the US and the USSR, and the efforts of smaller countries involved in the negotiation, which enabled these perceptions to be overcome and a successful outcome to the negotiation to be achieved. The book extracts lessons from this experience which are highly relevant to today's world with respect to the negotiation of international agreements, and also with respect to the importance of cooperative confidence-building as a means to overcome suspicion and mistrust between adversaries.

What drives the politics of majority nationalism during crises and peace mediations? In this innovative work on the comparative politics of majority nationalism, Neophytos Loizides answers this important question—for both policy-makers and scholars—by investigating how peacemakers succeed or fail in transforming the language of ethnic nationalism and war in their communities. Politics of Majority Nationalism focuses on the Middle East and the Balkans to explore crises, stalemates and peace mediations involving Turkey and Greece and including EU, Kurdish, Cypriot, Syrian and (Slav) Macedonian issues. In addition to employing a novel mixed-method research design to study frames, crisis behavior, and mediation analysis, the book also extends its arguments to the post-communist transitions in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. Drawing on new datasets, elite interviews, and parliamentary debates, the book analyzes and explains the under-emphasized linkages between institutions, symbols, and framing processes that enable or restrict the choice of peace. Exploring systematically, and for the first time, the politics of majority nationalism in its various manifestations, Loizides shows how ethnopolitical frames influence crisis behavior, protracted stalemates, and ultimately the choice of peace. He provides a comprehensive account of the failures and successes of accommodation mechanisms in the Middle East and the Balkans, identifies the ideational pre-conditions of peace and conflict—including how ideas become institutionalized in both national and regional environments—and identifies for mediators and policy-makers a set of tools to use when communicating peace messages to local and national constituencies.

In a world dominated by considerations of material and security threats, Japan provides a case for why, and under what conditions, a state would choose to adopt international norms and laws that are seemingly in direct conflict with its domestic norms. Approaching compliance from within a constructivist framework, this book analyzes three treaties—addressing refugee policy, women's employment, and the use of land mines—that Japan has adopted. It probes how international relations and domestic politics both play a role in constructing state identity, and how state identity in turn influences compliance. The author argues that, although state desire for legitimacy is a key factor in norm adoption, to achieve anything other than a low level of compliance requires strong domestic advocacy. She offers a comprehensive theoretical model that tests the explanatory power of two understudied factors: the strength of nonstate actors and the degree to which international and domestic norms conflict. The author evaluates how these factors, typically studied and analyzed individually, interact and affect one another.

This book examines one of the most important changes in Chinese foreign policy since the country opened to the world: China's gradual move to support the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, missiles, and their related goods and technologies. Once a critic of the global nonproliferation regime, China is now a supporter of it, although with some reservations. The author analyzes how and why Chinese nonproliferation policies have evolved so substantially since the early 1980s. He argues that U.S. diplomacy has played a significant and enduring role in shaping China's gradual recognition of the dangers of proliferation, and in its subsequent altered behavior.