The Evolution of the “American Empire”

1973 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
José A. Cabranes

Today, the anniversary of the death of Franklin Roosevelt, is especially appropriate for a discussion of the political evolution of two territories whose development, before and after his death, was shaped by Roosevelt’s enlightened vision of world public order. The Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) was an inheritance of a war waged by the United States in affirmation of “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live.” Puerto Rico’s progressive dismantlement of colonial government had its origins in the New Deal. It was furthered by Roosevelt’s support of Puerto Rico’s Popular Democratic Party and a policy favoring self-determination and decolonization entrusted by Roosevelt to a succession of sympathetic and imaginative administrators. Both territories emerged in the postwar period as natural objects of the concern of the world community which Roosevelt helped to organize.

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 382-411
Author(s):  
Chris Madsen

Henry Eccles, in classic studies on logistics, describes the dynamics of strategic procurement in the supply chain stretching from home countries to military theatres of operations. Naval authorities and industrialists concerned with Japanese aggression before and after Pearl Harbor looked towards developing shipbuilding capacity on North America’s Pacific Coast. The region turned into a volume producer of merchant vessels, warships and auxiliaries destined for service in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Shipbuilding involved four broad categories of companies in the United States and Canada that enabled the tremendous production effort.


This book considers the global responses Woolf’s work has inspired and her worldwide impact. The 23 chapters address the ways Woolf is received by writers, publishers, academics, reading audiences, and students in countries around the world; how she is translated into multiple languages; and how her life is transformed into global contemporary biofiction. The 24 authors hail from regions around the world: West and East Europe, the Middle East/North Africa, North and South America, East Asia and the Pacific Islands. They write about Woolf’s reception in Ireland, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Russia, Egypt, Kenya, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, the United States, China, Japan and Australia. The Edinburgh Companion is dialogic and comparative, incorporating both transnational and local tendencies insofar as they epitomise Woolf’s global reception and legacy. It contests the ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ binary, offering new models for Woolf global studies and promoting cross-cultural understandings.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sōsefo Fietangata Havea

<p>On April 2, 1987, the Treaty on Fisheries Between Governments of Certain Pacific Island States and the Government of the United States of America was signed. The signatories to the Fisheries were the 16 members of the South Pacific Forum and the United States of America. After six difficult years of negotiations, the Treaty permitted American fishing vessels to fish in Pacific Islands’ waters in exchange for a substantial access fee. This thesis identifies key aspects of that treaty and examines what it meant from both a theoretical and practical standpoint. How did a collection of small, comparatively weak Pacific states strike a satisfactory deal with the most powerful state on the planet? What did the agreement mean in terms of its political, legal and environmental consequences? As well as looking at the events and negotiations that led to the treaty, this thesis also attempts to discern the key political lessons that flow from this case that might be relevant for the future development of the Pacific island States in the key area of fisheries regulation. The thesis argues that disputes between Pacific nations and the United States over tuna resources and the presence of the Soviet Union in the Pacific region were the two critical factors that led to the adoption of the Treaty. From the United States’ perspective, the Treaty was seen (at the time) as the only viable option if it were to reconsolidate its long and prosperous position in the Pacific region. The US did not want the Soviet Union to capitalize on American fishing disputes with the Pacific islands, and it could not afford for the Soviet Union to establish a strong association with the Pacific islands. The Treaty therefore served three purposes for Washington: (i) it maintained its long friendship with the Pacific islands, (ii) it maintained its fisheries interests in the region, (iii) and it kept the Pacific communist-free. This fusion of US economic and strategic interests gave Pacific Island States a stronger hand in the negotiations than their size and power would have otherwise offered.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Wallis ◽  
Anna Powles

Abstract One of President Joseph Biden's foreign policy priorities is to ‘renew’ and ‘strengthen’ the United States' alliances, as they were perceived to have been ‘undermined’ during the Trump administration, which regularly expressed concern that allies were free-riding on the United States' military capability. Yet the broad range of threats states face in the contemporary context suggests that security assistance from allies no longer only—or even primarily—comes in the form of military capability. We consider whether there is a need to rethink understandings of how alliance relationships are managed, particularly how the goals—or strategic burdens—of alliances are understood, how allies contribute to those burdens, and how influence is exercised within alliances. We do this by analysing how the United States–Australia and Australia–New Zealand alliances operate in the Pacific islands. Our focus on the Pacific islands reflects the United States' perception that the region plays a ‘critical’ role in helping to ‘preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific region’. We conclude that these understandings need to be rethought, particularly in the Pacific islands, where meeting non-traditional security challenges such as economic, social and environmental issues, is important to advancing the United States, Australia and New Zealand's shared strategic goal of remaining the region's primary security partners and ensuring that no power hostile to their interests establishes a strategic foothold.


Author(s):  
Marisa Abrajano ◽  
Zoltan L. Hajnal

This conclusion summarizes the book's main findings and considers their implications for the areas of race, immigration, and American politics. The results confirm the important role that immigration plays in American politics and also highlight the enduring though shifting role of race in the nation. Where African Americans once dominated the political calculus of white Americans, Latinos appear more likely to do so today. The movement of so many white Americans to the right has wide-ranging ramifications for both the future balance of partisanship and likely trajectory of race relations in the country. With a clear majority of the white population now leaning towards the Republican Party and a clear majority of the minority population now favoring the Democratic Party, political conflict in the United States is increasingly likely to be synonymous with racial conflict—a pattern that threatens ever-greater racial tension.


1973 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 21-28
Author(s):  
James M. Wilson ◽  
Angel Calderón-Cruz ◽  
John Tarkong

There can be no doubt that the principle of self-determination is applicable to the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. The UN Charter applies it. The United States as administering authority under its 1947 trusteeship agreement with the Security Council has explicitly and repeatedly recognized its applicability. The real question is precisely what elements of the principle are applicable, how they are to be applied, and within what framework.


2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (127) ◽  
pp. 377-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary E. Daly

In the proclamation that was issued on Easter Monday 1916 the provisional government of the Irish Republic undertook to grant ‘equal rights and opportunities to all its citizens’ and to ‘cherish all the children of the nation equally’. It also emphasised that the Republic was ‘oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from a majority in the past’ and referred to the support given to the Republic ‘by her exiled children in America’. The belief that the Irish nation included all inhabitants of the island was a central tenet of Irish nationalism both before and after 1922, and the numerous visits that nationalist leaders have paid to the United States from the time of Parnell and Davitt to the present testify to the importance that has been attached to the Irish overseas. In November 1948, while introducing the second reading of the Republic of Ireland Bill, the Taoiseach, John A. Costello, noted that ‘The Irish at home are only one section of a great race which has spread itself throughout the world, particularly in the great countries of North America and the Pacific.’


1984 ◽  
Vol 78 (2) ◽  
pp. 484-497
Author(s):  
Arthur John Armstrong ◽  
Howard Loomis Hills

Fourteen years of Micronesian political status negotiations culminated in 1983 with the final signature of the Compact of Free Association between the United States and the Governments of Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). Upon being approved in accordance with its terms and the constitutional processes of the signatory Governments, the Compact will establish bilateral relationships between the United States and the new states emerging from the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. Approval of these future political status arrangements will also provide the basis for termination of the Trusteeship Agreement between the United States and the United Nations Security Council. The Compact defines an international political partnership between the United States and the freely associated states that is without precise precedent in international law or U.S. domestic practice. Under the Compact, each freely associated state will enjoy control over its internal affairs and its foreign relations, including competence to enter into international agreements. Mutual security arrangements, set forth in the Compact and its separate agreements, provide for a U.S. defense umbrella during the life of free association and long-term exclusion of third-country military forces, should any or all of the freely associated states opt for independence at some future date.


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