Differing Global and Regional Perceptions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yukon Huang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
The West ◽  
World Views ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World

Deng Xiaoping’s death in 1997 marked the end of an era and provides the starting point for a discussion about public perceptions. Today’s China emerged from his reforms, which opened the country to the outside world. Views of outsiders have shifted markedly over the past several decades. The majority of Americans see China’s rise as a threat to their country’s global stature, but Europeans are less preoccupied with power politics. Both groups wrongly see China as the leading economic power contrary to the rest of the world which see the United States. Popular feelings toward China vary widely across and within regions; they are influenced by proximity and colored by history and ideology. This chapter discusses the geopolitical factors that shape these opinions in the West, among the BRICS, in the developing world, and among China’s neighbors, as well as China’s efforts to influence these opinions.

From Partial Peace to Real Peace in the Mideast

Worldview ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (12) ◽  
pp. 6-11
Author(s):  
George W. Ball
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Persian Gulf ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Persian Gulf

For America in the fall of 1979 the strategic center of the world is the Persian Gulf, and I shall discuss the effect of Middle Eastern developments on the security of that area. Certainly, nothing that has occurred within the past few months is reassuring. Iran is ruled by a regime—one can hardly call it a government—that practices an indigenous form of fascism with a medieval Islamic overlay. Its basic outlook is xenophobic; it opposes Western concepts of progress and, therefore, the West itself—and particularly the United States.

The Power to Divide

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy W. Crawford
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Alliance Politics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Future Performance ◽  
The World ◽  
Great Power Politics

This book examines the use of wedge strategies, a form of divisive statecraft designed to isolate adversaries from allies and potential supporters to gain key advantages. With a multidimensional argument about the power of accommodation in competition, and a survey of alliance diplomacy around both world wars, the book artfully analyzes the past and future performance of wedge strategy in great power politics. It argues that nations attempting to use wedge strategy do best when they credibly accommodate likely or established allies of their enemies. It also argues that a divider's own alliances can pose obstacles to success and explains the conditions that help dividers overcome them. The book advances these claims in eight focused studies of alliance diplomacy surrounding the world wars. Through those narratives, the book adeptly assesses the record of countries that tried an accommodative wedge strategy, and why ultimately, they succeeded or failed. These calculated actions often became turning points, desired or not, in a nation's established power. For policymakers today facing threats to power from great power competitors, the book argues that a deeper historical and theoretical grasp of the role of these wedge strategies in alliance politics and grand strategy is necessary. The book drives home the contemporary relevance of the analysis with a survey of China's potential to use such strategies to divide India from the United States, and the United States' potential to use them to forestall a China–Russia alliance, and closes with a review of key theoretical insights for policy.

scholarly journals The great Chinese transformation: cynicism and the future of the world (article two)

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Grzegorz W. Kolodko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese Economy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Chinese Characteristics ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Right ◽  
Supranational Level

The huge leap made by the Chinese economy over the past four decades as a result of market reforms and openness to the world is causing fear in some and anxiety in others. Questions arise as to whether China’s economic success is solid and whether economic growth will be followed by political expansion. China makes extensive use of globalization and is therefore interested in continuing it. At the same time, China wants to give it new features and specific Chinese characteristics. This is met with reluctance by the current global hegemon, the United States, all the more so as there are fears that China may promote its original political and economic system, "cynicism", abroad. However, the world is still big enough to accommodate us all. Potentially, not necessarily. For this to happen, we need the right policies, which in the future must also include better coordination at the supranational level.

Analogies at War

2005 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. CHRISTOPHER JESPERSEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
The World ◽  
Current Events

The frequent use of the Vietnam analogy to describe the situation in Iraq underscores the continuing relevance of Vietnam for American history. At the same time, the Vietnam analogy reinforces the tendency to see current events within the context of the past. Politicians and pundits latch onto analogies as handles for understanding the present, but in so doing, they obscure more complicated situations. The con�ict in Iraq is not Vietnam, Korea, or World War II, but this article considers all three in an effort to see how the past has shaped, and continues to affect, the world the United States now faces.

Counterterrorism and the Western Response

2019 ◽  
pp. 51-75
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Affective Response ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
The U.S ◽  
United Nation

There has been a neglect on the part of Western governments with focus on the U.S. to take seriously the internet campaign that ISIS has been waging since 2014 and the affective response that still draws citizens from across the world into their promise of a civilized, united nation for Muslims. It is possible that the West, even with a severely increased commitment to fighting the Islamic State, may be too late. This chapter will explore responses by Western governments including the United States to fight internet-enabled terrorism.

3. Global America

2019 ◽  
pp. 42-62
Author(s):  
Andrew Preston
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
World War ◽  
Wealthy Country ◽  
The World ◽  
A Minor

By the end of the nineteenth century, the United States had become the world’s preeminent economic power. Yet for such a large and wealthy country, by 1890 the United States was in a curious position: it was an economic colossus, but a diplomatic and military dwarf. In comparison to the great powers of Europe or Japan, America was a minor actor on the world stage. That would all soon change. ‘Global America’ explores two phenomena—globalization and world war—that brought America deeper into world affairs. By the end of the period, in 1919, the United States had become one of the greatest powers of the world—and yet refused to play its part.

Introduction: There Was a Moment

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Luke Patey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Strong Influence ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Norms And Values ◽  
Technology Leaders ◽  
The World ◽  
Economic Engagement ◽  
Political Economic

China views the decline of the United States and the West as signal to advance its interests, norms, and values on the world stage. But sentiments that one superpower will replace another miss the bigger picture. China’s rise to the commanding heights of the global economy and world affairs is not preordained. Its potential evolution into a global superpower, with a deep presence and strong influence over economic, political, military, and culture abroad, will rather be conditioned by how China behaves toward the rest of the world, and how the world responds. The world’s other large economies, major militaries, technology leaders, and cultural hubs will be significant in shaping the future world. For developed and developing countries alike, there is recognition that economic engagement with China produces strategic vulnerabilities to their own competitiveness and foreign policy and defense autonomy. China will struggle to realize its political, economic, and military global ambitions.

scholarly journals Has Akira Always Been a Cyberpunk Comic?

Arts ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin de la Iglesia
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western World ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Blade Runner ◽  
Genre Awareness

Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, interest in the cyberpunk genre peaked in the Western world, perhaps most evidently when Terminator 2: Judgment Day became the highest-grossing film of 1991. It has been argued that the translation of Katsuhiro Ōtomo’s manga Akira into several European languages at just that time (into English beginning in 1988, into French, Italian, and Spanish beginning in 1990, and into German beginning in 1991) was no coincidence. In hindsight, cyberpunk tropes are easily identified in Akira to the extent that it is nowadays widely regarded as a classic cyberpunk comic. But has this always been the case? When Akira was first published in America and Europe, did readers see it as part of a wave of cyberpunk fiction? Did they draw the connections to previous works of the cyberpunk genre across different media that today seem obvious? In this paper, magazine reviews of Akira in English and German from the time when it first came out in these languages will be analysed in order to gauge the past readers’ genre awareness. The attribution of the cyberpunk label to Akira competed with others such as the post-apocalyptic, or science fiction in general. Alternatively, Akira was sometimes regarded as an exceptional, novel work that transcended genre boundaries. In contrast, reviewers of the Akira anime adaptation, which was released at roughly the same time as the manga in the West (1989 in Germany and the United States), more readily drew comparisons to other cyberpunk films such as Blade Runner.

Instrumental Internationalism: The American Origins of the United Nations, 1940–3

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Wertheim
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Fast Moving ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
American Power ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Indispensable Tool

Why did the United States want to create the United Nations Organization, or any international political organization with universal membership? This question has received superficial historiographical attention, despite ample scrutiny of the conferences that directly established the UN in 1944 and 1945. The answer lies earlier in the war, from 1940 to 1942, when, under the pressure of fast-moving events, American officials and intellectuals decided their country must not only enter the war but also lead the world long afterwards. International political organization gained popularity – first among unofficial postwar planners in 1941 and then among State Department planners in 1942 – because it appeared to be an indispensable tool for implementing postwar US world leadership, for projecting and in no way constraining American power. US officials believed the new organization would legitimate world leadership in the eyes of the American public by symbolizing the culmination of prior internationalist efforts to end power politics, even as they based the design of the UN on a thoroughgoing critique of the League, precisely for assuming that power politics could be transcended.

The Unity of the West and Free Trade: A Report From Washington

Worldview ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 14-16
Author(s):  
Lionel Gelber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Common Market ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Common ◽  
De Gaulle

When the United States fostered the recovery and underwrote the security of Western Europe she had more than sentiment to impel her. That salient zone is a pivotal sector of the world balance, and while she may station fewer of her own troops upon its soil, she can entertain no total disengagement from it. But there is another West European item, the future of the Common Market, which calls for a fresh American scrutiny. The West will be better off if Western Europe acquires more of an ability to stand on its own feet. Gaullism, however, revealed a less modest goal, one that was not confined to France and did not vanish with the departure of General de Gaulle. On the contrary, it may have gained new leverage from his downfall.

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