scholarly journals Americanization Now and Then: The “Nation of Immigrants” in the Early Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 419-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARIA LAURET

Whereas in 1915 Theodore Roosevelt could proclaim with great conviction that there was no room in the United States for hyphenated Americans, today it is common for Americans to identify precisely as hyphenated Americans, proud of their ethnic heritage. And whilst in 2015 the debate on undocumented immigration is perceived to have reached crisis point, the US continues to project itself as a “nation of immigrants.” These reversals and contradictions in American political discourse are scrutinized here in a historical survey of the Americanization movement of a hundred years ago and the concept of the “nation of immigrants” that originated with John F. Kennedy in the Cold War sixty years later. In the analysis of primary and key historiographical sources on twentieth-century American immigration, a change from ethnic shame to ethnic pride is tracked down, revealing both the long-term effects of Americanization as a programme of social engineering and the ongoing ideological work that the “nation of immigrants” slogan performs for American national identity.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Vuving

The strategic environment is best likened to an ever-changing river that consists of a myriad of interacting currents residing at various depths and moving with different speeds. Shaping this environment effectively is not the same as causing changes or making differences, but is similar to swimming efficiently in this river. The most powerful currents in this river are related to climate, demographic, technological and economic changes, great power relations, big catastrophes, and human dynamics. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will have the largest impact on the strategic environment in the short to medium term. Although the directions of many changes brought about by the global plague are still unfathomable as the pandemic continues to unfold, four trends accelerated by the pandemic—the growth in importance of the cyber domain, the bifurcation of the world economy, the intensification of great power competition, and the transformation of international architecture—are constituting the shape of things to come. In the medium to long term, the hegemonic contest between China and the United States will have the largest impact on the strategic environment. Metaphorically speaking, it is creating the largest vortex in the river that is the strategic environment. East Asia and Australia will be drawn into this vortex even against the best effort to stay outside. This chapter argues that, contrary to the belief of many, there is no Thucydides Trap—the structural cause of war—in this hegemonic contest because it is structured as a game of chicken, not a prisoner’s dilemma. It is important for any player in this environment to recognize the strategic structure of the US-PRC hegemonic contest and apply the best strategy for it as suggested by this structure. China has masterfully played the game of chicken with its gray zone tactics, its pursuit of ‘war by other means’, i.e., its weaponization of the non-military, even of risks. The US-PRC hegemonic contest will not resemble the Cold War much beyond this strategic structure. It will be very different from the Cold War in important aspects, including the ideological and economic realm. Most strikingly, the main front lines of the contest will be in the maritime and cyber domains and, consequently, will be far more fluid and unstable than those of the Cold War.


Author(s):  
Abraham L. Newman ◽  
Elliot Posner

Chapter 6 examines the long-term effects of international soft law on policy in the United States since 2008. The extent and type of post-crisis US cooperation with foreign jurisdictions have varied considerably with far-reaching ramifications for international financial markets. Focusing on the international interaction of reforms in banking and derivatives, the chapter uses the book’s approach to understand US regulation in the wake of the Great Recession. The authors attribute seemingly random variation in the US relationship to foreign regulation and markets to differences in pre-crisis international soft law. Here, the existence (or absence) of robust soft law and standard-creating institutions determines the resources available to policy entrepreneurs as well as their orientation and attitudes toward international cooperation. Soft law plays a central role in the evolution of US regulatory reform and its interface with the rest of the world.


2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-702
Author(s):  
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet

In 1946, the entertainer and activist Paul Robeson pondered America's intentions in Iran. In what was to become one of the first major crises of the Cold War, Iran was fighting a Soviet aggressor that did not want to leave. Robeson posed the question, “Is our State Department concerned with protecting the rights of Iran and the welfare of the Iranian people, or is it concerned with protecting Anglo-American oil in that country and the Middle East in general?” This was a loaded question. The US was pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops after its occupation of the country during World War II. Robeson wondered why America cared so much about Soviet forces in Iranian territory, when it made no mention of Anglo-American troops “in countries far removed from the United States or Great Britain.” An editorial writer for a Black journal in St. Louis posed a different variant of the question: Why did the American secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, concern himself with elections in Iran, Arabia or Azerbaijan and yet not “interfere in his home state, South Carolina, which has not had a free election since Reconstruction?”


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 12-47
Author(s):  
Yinan Li

The development of the PRC’s armed forces included three phases when their modernization was carried out through an active introduction of foreign weapons and technologies. The first and the last of these phases (from 1949 to 1961, and from 1992 till present) received wide attention in both Chinese and Western academic literature, whereas the second one — from 1978 to 1989 —when the PRC actively purchased weapons and technologies from the Western countries remains somewhat understudied. This paper is intended to partially fill this gap. The author examines the logic of the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States in the context of complex interactions within the United States — the USSR — China strategic triangle in the last years of the Cold War. The first section covers early contacts between the PRC and the United States in the security field — from the visit of R. Nixon to China till the inauguration of R. Reagan. The author shows that during this period Washington clearly subordinated the US-Chinese cooperation to the development of the US-Soviet relations out of fear to damage the fragile process of detente. The second section focuses on the evolution of the R. Reagan administration’s approaches regarding arms sales to China in the context of a new round of the Cold War. The Soviet factor significantly influenced the development of the US-Chinese military-technical cooperation during that period, which for both parties acquired not only practical, but, most importantly, political importance. It was their mutual desire to undermine strategic positions of the USSR that allowed these two countries to overcome successfully tensions over the US arms sales to Taiwan. However, this dependence of the US-China military-technical cooperation on the Soviet factor had its downside. As the third section shows, with the Soviet threat fading away, the main incentives for the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States also disappeared. As a result, after the Tiananmen Square protests, this cooperation completely ceased. Thus, the author concludes that the US arms sales to China from the very beginning were conditioned by the dynamics of the Soviet-American relations and Beijing’s willingness to play an active role in the policy of containment. In that regard, the very fact of the US arms sales to China was more important than its practical effect, i.e. this cooperation was of political nature, rather than military one.


2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen M Walt

This article uses realism to explain past US grand strategy and prescribe what it should be today. Throughout its history, the United States has generally acted as realism depicts. The end of the Cold War reduced the structural constraints that states normally face in anarchy, and a bipartisan coalition of foreign policy elites attempted to use this favorable position to expand the US-led ‘liberal world order’. Their efforts mostly failed, however, and the United States should now return to a more realistic strategy – offshore balancing – that served it well in the past. Washington should rely on local allies to uphold the balance of power in Europe and the Middle East and focus on leading a balancing coalition in Asia. Unfortunately, President Donald Trump lacks the knowledge, competence, and character to pursue this sensible course, and his cavalier approach to foreign policy is likely to damage America’s international position significantly.


Author(s):  
David M. Edelstein

This chapter traces the deterioration of Soviet-American relations at the end of World War II and into the beginning of the cold war. While the United States and the Soviet Union found common cause during World War II in defeating Hitler’s Germany, their relationship began to deteriorate as the eventual defeat of Germany became more certain. The chapter emphasizes that it was growing beliefs about malign Soviet intentions, rather than changes in Soviet capabilities, that fuelled the origins of the cold war. In particular, the chapter details crises in Iran, Turkey, and Germany that contributed to U.S. beliefs about long-term Soviet intentions. As uncertainty evaporated, the enmity of the cold war took hold.


Author(s):  
Beverley Hooper

From the early 1970s, the US-China relationship was central to diplomatic reporting, with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s visit to Peking in October 1971, President Nixon’s historic visit in February 1972, and the establishment the following year of small liaison offices in Peking and Washington. Following each of Kissinger’s further visits in 1973 and 1974, senior diplomats virtually queued up at the liaison office to find out what progress, if any, had been made towards the normalization of US-China relations. Peking’s diplomats, like some of their colleagues elsewhere in the world, did not always see eye-to-eye with their foreign ministries. There was little chance of their becoming overly attached to Communist China, as the Japanologists and Arabists were sometimes accused of doing for Japan and Arab countries. At the same time, living and breathing the PRC led some diplomats to regard Chinese Communism as being rather more nuanced—and the government somewhat less belligerent—than the Cold War images portrayed in the West, particularly the United States.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quan Li ◽  
Min Ye

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore and test the motivation behind the evolution of China’s vast network of partnerships around the globe since the end of the Cold War. Design/methodology/approach After combing through 24 types of partnerships with 78 countries, the authors empirically tested four hypotheses using data from Correlates of War and World Bank. Findings The analysis indicates that China’s choice to build such an elaborate network is not random. On the contrary, it is largely determined by three factors: the need to counter the US pressure; the necessity of maintaining peace and stability along its borders and achieving the long-term goal of modernization. Originality/value The research is among the first attempts to comprehensively test the possible motivations behind China’s partnership building efforts and provides a stepping stone for analyzing this important aspect of China’s foreign policy.


MANUSYA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 86-102
Author(s):  
Sudarat Musikawong

This paper examines the formation of transnational subjectivity through Thai political engagements in the United States (US). Thai people in the US participate in Thai homeland politics, while negotiating for a Thai immigrant identity in the US. Thai diasporas exist through political and social experiences, in which Thai communities and persons engage in homeland politics. Political acts and protests by Thais in the United States are not new, but emerged in the aftermath of the Cold War. This paper asks how political exiles, popular protests, film festivals, and satellite television challenge what Benedict Anderson has termed “long-distance” nationalism and Arjun Appadurai’s mediascapes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-312
Author(s):  
Wen-Qing Ngoei

This essay examines how the history of the Cold War in Southeast Asia has shaped, and will likely continue to shape, the current Sino-US rivalry in the region. Expert commentary today typically focuses on the agendas and actions of the two big powers, the United States and China, which actually risks missing the bigger picture. During the Cold War, leaders of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) played a critical role in containing Chinese influence, shaping the terms of Sino-US competition and rapprochement, and deepening the US presence in Southeast Asia. The legacy of ASEAN’s foreign relations during and since the Cold War imposes constraints on Chinese regional ambitions today, which militates against the popular notion that Chinese hegemony in East and Southeast Asia is inevitable. This essay underscores that current analyses of the brewing crisis in and around the South China Sea must routinely look beyond the two superpowers to the under-appreciated agency of small- and middle-sized ASEAN actors who, in reality, are the ones who hold the fate of the region in their hands.


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