scholarly journals Concept of Sea Power

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Torsten Albrecht ◽  
Konstantinos Tsetsos ◽  
Philipp Grunwald

AbstractIn this chapter different perspectives on the concept of sea power are considered. On the one hand, sea power is defined accordingly, whereby it must be emphasized that sea power is not only composed of the number of ships or material but also of the degree to which it can influence and compel other countries/actors. The concept of sea power is then examined based on the International Relations theories of Realism and Liberalism. In order to understand the origins and also the development in the twentieth century of the concept of sea power, the most important cornerstones of the leading naval thinkers of the “blue-water school,” Alfred Thayer Mahan and Sir Julian Corbett, are presented. This work ends with a review of the concept of sea power during the Cold War.

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Anwar Mohamed Faraj ◽  
Tara Taha Othman

Constructivism emerged at the end of the Cold War and entered into IR theories debate by criticizing the rationalists (neo-liberal and neo-realist) on the one hand and critics on the other, accusing them of failing to predict and explain the end of the Cold War. While rationalists focus on material and economic factors, constructivists focus on cultural factors, the influence of ideas, norms and identities on the explanation of processes of interest formation, how to define survival and defining mechanisms of international politics, and emphasize that interest and identity interact through socio-historical processes and constitute each other. Thus, constructivism belongs to the fourth debate in the theoretical study of International Relations and it is one of the post-positivist theories, but it attempts to serve as a bridge between the positivist and post-positivist approaches. For example, if post-positivist theories are criticized, because of suffering from providing a realistic alternative versus of the description and explanation offered by rational theories, constructivism tries to overcome this criticism and it is able to provide the research program required to remove the post-positivist dilemma, by providing the practical hypotheses required by the establishment of a theory to describe and explain the reality of international relations. However, constructivism is not immune from criticism, it is accused that it does not offer anything new and exaggerates the understanding of cultural factors such as norms and identities and their impact on the reality of international relations, as well as its epistemological and methodological problems and its internal divisions between modern constructivists and postmodern constructivists.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-112
Author(s):  
Zhang Jiadong

The traditional theory of international relations, whether it is realism, liberalism, constructivism, or scientific behaviorism, define sovereign states as a unified body in international arena. It has consistent interests, and naturally also has consistent foreign policy goals and means. In the 20th century, and especially during the two World Wars and the Cold War, this conceptual abstraction was very accurate. But after the end of the Cold War, especially in the 21st century, this concept gradually went against the reality of international relations. On the one hand, the comprehensive strength of a country cannot directly transform competitive advantages in specific areas; on the other hand, the main resistance of many countries, including superpowers, may not be another power, but different domestic interest groups as well as international non state actors. This has caused traditional international relations theories, from hypotheses to conceptual and inferential levels, to be unable to explain the world today.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Aswasthama Bhakta Kharel

 Non-Aligned Movement commonly known as NAM has played a useful role in the common cause of World peace and prosperity. It has succeeded in steadily emerging as a central international forum. The newly independent nations of the world that have come into the one fold of this Movement have determined their own and resist the coercion of the World powers and their attempt to exploit them. During the cold war and in the present context, the Non-Aligned Movement examines its objectives and achievements in both periods. The main goals of NAM during block policy of more extraordinary powers, the structure of bipolar in international relations, the constant support and through its conferences and in the United Nations for World peaceful environment, détente, and disarmament, and prevention of the world into the block division (East and West). Despite these changes, several others new challenge that are arising, and its member states for the achievement of peace and security for humankind.


2012 ◽  
pp. 10-14
Author(s):  
Miranda Corcoran

Emphasising the manner in which literary texts often serve to express the collective hopes and fears of their respective cultures or communities, my research explores the representation of social paranoia in a selection of Cold War American and Soviet Russian novels. Although the antagonism between these two opposing superpowers, and their struggle for ideological supremacy, shaped the course of twentieth- century international relations, my research proposes that an examination of the literary and cultural output of these two apparently irreconcilable socio-political systems reveals a parallel preoccupation with a number of typically paranoid concerns. These shared anxieties include the unsettling reality of state surveillance and similar methods of social control, the ever-present threat of enemy infiltration, and the politicisation of science which resulted in the terror of the Nuclear Age. Indeed, much of the fiction produced in Russia from the Stalinist era onwards and in the U.S. during the Cold War ...


2018 ◽  
pp. 43-70
Author(s):  
Laurent Bonnefoy

Among the various challenges Yemen has to face, the fragmentation of its state throughout history and in its contemporary form, has deep implications. This second chapter examines how the contested legitimacy of the various Yemeni governments has shaped its international relations. A divided history has facilitated the domination of two actors: the United States on the one hand, Saudi Arabia on the other, which have both impeded in their own way on the capacity of the central state to monopolize power and violence. During the Cold War, in the frame of the unification process and then later during the so-called ‘Yemeni Spring’ and the war waged by the Arab coalition against the Huthi movement since 2015, such a division is an interesting, and yet often neglected variable, to understand the Middle East and international relations.


2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georges-Henri Soutou

This study attempts to explain how in the twentieth century the concept of a European order which had evolved from the European balance of the nineteenth century, but with an added democratic dimension after 1919 and 1945, played a role in international relations, despite the two world wars which almost put an end to it; how it helped to sustain the concept of a minimum of European solidarity, despite numerous national and ideological conflicts; and how, at the start of a new century, this concept may again be significant for a continent that has not had a similar opportunity to establish a lasting peace since the Congress of Vienna. The concept of a European order may in particular serve as a way of accommodating Russia, which has no real prospect of becoming a member of the European Union.


2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM C. WOHLFORTH

Scholars interested in international relations theory and history are indebted to Mark Kramer for his splendid review of new historical evidence on the role of ideas and power during the Cold War. I agree with Kramer that new evidence by itself never settles learned debates such as the one he reviews. However, the sharper the debate, the bigger the potential payoff from fresh evidence. Toward that end, I have three comments.


Author(s):  
Phyllis Lassner

Espionage and Exile demonstrates that from the 1930s through the Cold War, British Writers Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, Ann Bridge, Pamela Frankau, John le Carré and filmmaker Leslie Howard combined propaganda and popular entertainment to call for resistance to political oppression. Instead of constituting context, the political engagement of these spy fictions bring the historical crises of Fascist and Communist domination to the forefront of twentieth century literary history. They deploy themes of deception and betrayal to warn audiences of the consequences of Nazi Germany's conquests and later, the fusion of Fascist and Communist oppression. Featuring protagonists who are stateless and threatened refugees, abandoned and betrayed secret agents, and politically engaged or entrapped amateurs, all in states of precarious exile, these fictions engage their historical subjects to complicate extant literary meanings of transnational, diaspora and performativity. Unsettling distinctions between villain and victim as well as exile and belonging dramatizes relationships between the ethics of espionage and responses to international crises. With politically charged suspense and narrative experiments, these writers also challenge distinctions between literary, middlebrow, and popular culture.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 52-79
Author(s):  
V. T. Yungblud

The Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations, established by culmination of World War II, was created to maintain the security and cooperation of states in the post-war world. Leaders of the Big Three, who ensured the Victory over the fascist-militarist bloc in 1945, made decisive contribution to its creation. This system cemented the world order during the Cold War years until the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the destruction of the bipolar structure of the organization of international relations. Post-Cold War changes stimulated the search for new structures of the international order. Article purpose is to characterize circumstances of foundations formation of postwar world and to show how the historical decisions made by the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition powers in 1945 are projected onto modern political processes. Study focuses on interrelated questions: what was the post-war world order and how integral it was? How did the political decisions of 1945 affect the origins of the Cold War? Does the American-centrist international order, that prevailed at the end of the 20th century, genetically linked to the Atlantic Charter and the goals of the anti- Hitler coalition in the war, have a future?Many elements of the Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations in the 1990s survived and proved their viability. The end of the Cold War and globalization created conditions for widespread democracy in the world. The liberal system of international relations, which expanded in the late XX - early XXI century, is currently experiencing a crisis. It will be necessary to strengthen existing international institutions that ensure stability and security, primarily to create barriers to the spread of national egoism, radicalism and international terrorism, for have a chance to continue the liberal principles based world order (not necessarily within a unipolar system). Prerequisite for promoting idea of a liberal system of international relations is the adjustment of liberalism as such, refusal to unilaterally impose its principles on peoples with a different set of values. This will also require that all main participants in modern in-ternational life be able to develop a unilateral agenda for common problems and interstate relations, interact in a dialogue mode, delving into the arguments of opponents and taking into account their vital interests.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Xhavit Sadrijaj

NATO did not intervene in the Balkans to overcome Yugoslavia, or destroy it, but above all to avoid violence and to end discrimination. (Shimon Peres, the former Israeli foreign minister, winner of Nobel Prize for peace) NATO’s intervention in the Balkans is the most historic case of the alliance since its establishment. After the Cold War or the "Fall of the Iron Curtain" NATO somehow lost the sense of existing since its founding reason no longer existed. The events of the late twenties in the Balkans, strongly brought back the alliance proving the great need for its existence and defining dimensions and new concepts of security and safety for the alliance in those tangled international relations.


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