scholarly journals Where’s the Diplomacy in Diplomacy? Using a Classic Board Game in “Introduction to International Relations”

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (01) ◽  
pp. 162-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Arnold

ABSTRACTOne of the challenges of teaching American undergraduates in an “Introduction to International Relations” course is finding a way to make topics and themes seem relevant to students. This article recounts the author’s experiences using the board game “Diplomacy” in his course. The game places students in the role of decision makers in the international arena and simulates the international politics of pre-World War I Europe. In addition to being a powerful simulation of the difficulties of international relations, the game teaches students about one of the most debated wars in the history of the discipline.

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-18
Author(s):  
William C. Wohlforth

The article examines the major events of the two previous centuries of international relations through main concepts of political realism. The author argues that in order to understand the present dilemmas and challenges of international politics, we need to know the past. Every current major global problem has historical antecedents. History from the late 19th century constitutes the empirical foundation of much theoretical scholarship on international politics. The breakdown of the Concert of Europe and the outbreak of the devastating global conflagration of World War I are the events that sparked the modern study of international relations. The great war of 1914 to 1918 underlined the tragic wastefulness of the institution of war. It caused scholars to confront one of the most enduring puzzles of the study of international relations, why humans continue to resort to this self-destructive method of conflict resolution? The article shows that the main explanation is the anarchical system of international relations. It produces security dilemma, incentives to free ride and uncertainty of intentions among great powers making war a rational tool to secure their national interests.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-396
Author(s):  
Maja Spanu

International Relations scholarship disconnects the history of the so-called expansion of international society from the presence of hierarchies within it. In contrast, this article argues that these developments may in fact be premised on hierarchical arrangements whereby new states are subject to international tutelage as the price of acceptance to international society. It shows that hierarchies within international society are deeply entrenched with the politics of self-determination as international society expands. I substantiate this argument with primary and secondary material on the Minority Treaty provisions imposed on the new states in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe admitted to the League of Nations after World War I. The implications of this claim for International Relations scholarship are twofold. First, my argument contributes to debates on the making of the international system of states by showing that the process of expansion of international society is premised on hierarchy, among and within states. Second, it speaks to the growing body of scholarship on hierarchy in world politics by historicising where hierarchies come from, examining how diverse hierarchies are nested and intersect, and revealing how different actors navigate these hierarchies.


Author(s):  
Alexander Naumov

This article reviews the role of Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 in escalation of crisis trends of the Versailles system. Leaning on the British Russian archival documents, which recently became available for the researchers, the author analyzes the reasons and consequences of conclusion of this agreement between the key European democratic power and Nazi Reich. Emphasis is placed on analyzing the moods within the political elite of the United Kingdom. It is proven that the agreement became a significant milestone in escalation of crisis trends in the Versailles model of international relations. It played a substantial role in establishment of the British appeasement policy with regards to revanchist powers in the interbellum; policy that objectively led to disintegration of the created in 1919 systemic mechanism, and thus, the beginning of the World War II. The novelty of this work is substantiated by articulation of the problem. This article is first within the Russian and foreign historiography to analyze execution of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement based on the previously unavailable archival materials. The conclusion is made that this agreement played a crucial role in the process of disintegration of interbellum system of international relations. Having officially sanctioned the violation of the articles of the Versailles Treaty of 1919 by Germany, Great Britain psychologically reconciled to the potential revenge of Germany, which found reflection in the infamous appeasement policy. This launched the mechanism for disruption of status quo that was established after the World War I in Europe. This resulted in collapse of the architecture of international security in the key region of the world, rapid deterioration of relations between the countries, and a new world conflict.


2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deniz Kuru

This article aims to present a history of International Relations (IR) that looks at the role of three big American foundations (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Rockefeller, and Ford foundations) in the development of IR as an academic field in continental Europe. Its framework goes beyond the usual disciplinary history narratives that focus on IR’s US or UK trajectories, pointing instead to American foundations’ interwar and early post–World War II influence on French and German IR. The cases emphasize US foundations’ interactions with European scholars and international scholarly organizations as major factors shaping IR’s developmental pathways. This study offers a way to consider foundations’ role in IR’s gradual academic institutionalization by connecting disciplinary historical approaches to disciplinary sociology. Its sociologically conscious position underlines the significance of American philanthropies in a historical narrative and recognizes the relevance of transnational dynamics by going beyond usual emphases on ideas and national contexts.


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 210-218
Author(s):  
Дмитрий Морозов ◽  
Dmitriy Morozov

This article describes the process of preservation and beautification of military cemeteries and memorials of World War I on the territory of Western Belarus in 1921-1939. Aspects of cooperation between state bodies and public organizations are discussed. The author relies on the legislative acts and periodicals of that period, as well as modern literature and Web-sites of specialized public organizations. The article considers the main legislative acts that manage activities for protection and arrangement of sites of memory of World War I. The questions of the relation of the different people to memory of the victims of Great World are raised; examples of particular actions for its preservation on the territory of the Western Belarus in 1921-1939 are given. The author determines the role of World War I in the history of Belarus and its heritage. The article contains information about key battles on Eastern front, and also about features of burial of soldiers of the Imperial Russian Army. The special attention is paid to joint military burials where Russian and German soldiers were buried and which are symbols of posthumous reconciliation of hostile sides. Various ways integration of sites of memory of Great War´s to modern military patriotic routes, which are urged to inform new generations about this grandiose conflict of the XX century, are considered.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
O. W. Saarinen

Kapuskasing, Ontario warrants special mention in the history of Canadian land use planning. The town first acquired special prominence immediately following World War I when it was the site of the first provincially-planned resource community in Canada. The early layout of the settlement reflected the imprints of both the "city beautiful" and "garden city" movements. After 1958, the resource community then became the focus for an important experiment in urban "fringe" rehabilitation at Brunetville, a suburban area situated just east of the planned Kapuskasing townsite. The author suggests that the role of the Brunetville experiment in helping to change the focus of urban renewal in Canada from redevelopment to rehabilitation has not been fully appreciated.


2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-83
Author(s):  
Seyyed Alireza Golshani ◽  
Mohammad Ebrahim Zohalinezhad ◽  
Mohammad Hossein Taghrir ◽  
Sedigheh Ghasempoor ◽  
Alireza Salehi

The Spanish Flu was one of the disasters in the history of Iran, especially Southern Iran, which led to the death of a significant number of people in Iran. It started on October 29, 1917, and lasted till 1920 – a disaster that we can claim changed the history. In one of the First World War battlefields in southern Iran in 1918, there was nothing left until the end of World War I and when the battle between Iranian warriors (especially people of Dashtestan and Tangestan in Bushehr, Arabs, and people of Bakhtiari in Khuzestan and people of Kazerun and Qashqai in Fars) and British forces had reached its peak. As each second encouraged the triumph for the Iranians, a flu outbreak among Iranian warriors led to many deaths and, as a result, military withdrawal. The flu outbreak in Kazerun, Firoozabad, Farshband, Abadeh, and even in Shiraz changed the end of the war. In this article, we attempt to discuss the role of the Spanish flu outbreak at the end of one of the forefronts of World War I.


2015 ◽  
pp. 85-100
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Wrzesińska

National megalomania in Polish reflection in the early 20th centuryIn the early 20th century, a number of Polish thinkers betrayed a mentality in which was deeply rooted the notion of the Polish nation’s unique character. These thinkers also expressed a conviction that Poles had a special mission both in Europe in general and towards other European nations. The signs of the intellectual elite’s national megalomania were reflected in Polish journalistic writings in the final period of World War I and the initial period of regained independence shortly after it.The article analyzes the views of selected thinkers: the philosopher W. Lutosławski, the journalist and literary critic A. Górski, the publicist A. Chołoniewski, and the historian J.K. Kochanowski. All of them believed in an optimistic picture of Polish history and emphasized the significance of the Polish mission in an ethical dimension understood as a desire to establish European order based both on respect towards the individual and at the same time on national diversity. This attitude was clearly based on Romantic thought – a historiosophy tinted with mesianism. All these authors dealt with the same themes from Polish history, treating them as a justification of their attitudes (such as: the Republic of Nobility as an embodiment of the ideal of freedom, Poland as an intermediary between the East and the West, as well as the propagator of Christian civilization in the East; the prominent role of Poles among the Slavic peoples, the importance of Catholicism). All in all, they created a mythologized vision of the Polish Republic in order to integrate the Polish society and mobilize it to act. This stream of glorification of the Polish statehood met with severe criticism after Poland regained its independence. S. Zakrzewski, F. Bujak, J.S. Bystroń, Bocheński brothers and others protested against falsifying the history of Poland.


Author(s):  
J. Ann Tickner

Almost one hundred years ago women from both sides of World War I came together to design a postwar peace plan, the principles of which were remarkably similar to UN Security Council Resolution 1325. Since then, women activists have worked to place gender issues on the United Nations agenda. In the late 1980s, feminist international relations began to address peace and security from a gendered perspective. With this in mind, this chapter traces the history of the intersection between women’s activism and this emergent feminist scholarship. Feminists scholarship defines security as the physical and economic security of individuals as well as states. The scholars question the essentialist association of women and peace and advocate seeing women as agents in all aspects of peacemaking, positions that the international community is finally beginning to recognize. This chapter, as such, explores how feminist scholars have constructed knowledge that contributes to our understanding of the deeper reasons why women suffer particular physical and structural insecurities.


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