A New Cold War, a New Moscow–Beijing Axis, and the Decline of American Hegemony

2019 ◽  
pp. 315-332
Author(s):  
Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira
Author(s):  
Sangjoon Lee

This book explores the ways in which postwar Asian cinema was shaped by transnational collaborations and competitions between newly independent and colonial states at the height of Cold War politics. The book adopts a simultaneously global and regional approach when analyzing the region's film cultures and industries. New economic conditions in the Asian region and shared postwar experiences among the early cinema entrepreneurs were influenced by Cold War politics, US cultural diplomacy, and intensified cultural flows during the 1950s and 1960s. The book reconstructs Asian film history in light of the international relationships forged, broken, and re-established as the influence of the non-aligned movement grew across the Cold War. The book elucidates how motion picture executives, creative personnel, policy makers, and intellectuals in East and Southeast Asia aspired to industrialize their Hollywood-inspired system in order to expand the market and raise the competitiveness of their cultural products. They did this by forming the Federation of Motion Picture Producers in Asia, co-hosting the Asian Film Festival, and co-producing films. The book demonstrates that the emergence of the first intensive postwar film producers' network in Asia was, in large part, the offspring of Cold War cultural politics and the product of American hegemony. Film festivals that took place in cities as diverse as Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Kuala Lumpur were annual showcases of cinematic talent as well as opportunities for the Central Intelligence Agency to establish and maintain cultural, political, and institutional linkages between the United States and Asia during the Cold War. This book reanimates this almost-forgotten history of cinema and the film industry in Asia.


2001 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 191-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. John Ikenberry

The United States is today a global superpower without historical precedent. It stands at the centre of an expanding democratic-capitalist world order that is itself, fifty years after its creation, the dominant reality in world politics. Despite expectations that American hegemony would disappear and trigger the emergence of a new and unstable multipolar post-Cold War order, the opposite has in fact happened. American power has grown even greater in the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although American power is not uniformly welcome around the world, serious ideological challengers or geopolitical balancers are not to be found. Scholars who a decade ago were debating the prospect of co-operation and conflict in a post-hegemonic world are now debating the character and future of world politics within an American unipolar order.


Author(s):  
Yasser Ali Nasser

Abstract As the Cold War prompted anxieties throughout Asia about the status of postcolonial state-building and decolonization, the possibility of friendship and cooperation between China and India despite their differing political and economic systems inspired hope and political repercussions far beyond their borders. This paper reveals how Japanese commenters, in their analysis of Sino–Indian friendship and both countries' respective political trajectories, saw the two countries as providing a rubric for a new type of politics. Utilizing an array of published, unpublished, and archival sources, I will study how diverse individuals, from the historian Uehara Senroku to burakumin activist Jiichirō Matsumoto, believed that Sino–Indian friendship, unlike the failed project of Japanese imperialism, could unite “Asia” in its struggle against imperialism amid the Cold War and accelerating decolonization. In following this model, they also believed that Japan could escape American hegemony and become “Asian” again. Japanese analyses of “China–India” as offering an “Asian” recipe for overcoming imperialism and navigating bloc politics help showcase how ideas of Asia continued to serve as a space for contemplating political possibilities during the early Cold War, transforming Japan from the region's former tutor to its pupil.


1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL DEUDNEY ◽  
G. JOHN IKENBERRY

Debates about the future of relations among the advanced industrial countries after the Cold War hinge on theories about the sources of international political order. Realism advances the most defined—and pessimistic—answers drawing on theories of anarchy, balance, and hegemony. But these theories are not able to explain the origins and continuing stability of relations among the United States and its European and Asian partners. This article develops a theory of liberal international order that captures its major structures, institutions, and practices. Distinctive features mark postwar liberal order—co-binding security institutions, penetrated American hegemony, semi-sovereign great powers, economic openness, and civic identity. It is these multifaceted and interlocking features of Western liberal order that give it a durability and significance.


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