Conclusion

China's Civilian Army ◽

10.1093/oso/9780197513705.003.0013 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 225-230

Author(s):

Peter Martin

Keyword(s):

Nuclear Weapons ◽

Political System ◽

Global Finance ◽

Advanced Degrees ◽

Previous Generation

Chinese envoys today are in some ways unrecognizable from those who started out as the country’s first diplomats in 1949. They are more professional, more cosmopolitan, and more expert than any previous generation, studying for advanced degrees at top global universities, mastering obscure languages, and developing specialist expertise on topics from global finance to nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, China’s political system sets real limits on the ability of its diplomats to be persuasive. It’s also a system that leaves its practitioners with little space to improvise and show flexibility, little room to take the initiative, and therefore not much chance of changing the viewpoints of people they interface with. It leaves them effective at garnering influence through inducements or threats but poorly equipped to make real friends.

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Nuclear weapons in the service of man

Review of International Studies ◽

10.1017/s0260210500116109 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 89-101 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Peter Calvocoressi

Keyword(s):

Eastern Europe ◽

Nuclear Weapons ◽

Political System ◽

European History ◽

Self Determination ◽

The Past ◽

French And English ◽

National Languages

Some time before the middle of this century Europe ceased to be a self-regulating political system. This is much the most upsetting event in European history for centuries. It means that Europeans now look beyond their continental confines, not if and when and where they wish, but because they must. During the past 500 years or so—from the emergence of strong centralized French and English monarchies to the disruption of the polyglot empires of eastern Europe by self-determination—Europe has been increasingly articulated into secular sovereign states constructed and fuelled by national languages and national passions. These states have existed in a condition of conflict with one another. But their conflicts, however intense, were never perpetual, so that conflict itself became systematized and found its most characteristic expression in two things: in changes of alliance for the purpose of preserving the multinational system and in war. Europe was a political system which operated through alliances, reversals of alliances and war; and whenever one state threatened to become powerful enough to destroy or atrophy the system, there was always at hand an alliance of other states capable of checking its advance and ensuring the system's essential fluidity. There was, in consequence, no need to go outside the system in order to preserve it.

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Pakistan in 2004: Running Very Fast to Stay in the Same Place

Asian Survey ◽

10.1525/as.2005.45.1.105 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 45 (1) ◽

pp. 105-111 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Charles H. Kennedy

Keyword(s):

Foreign Policy ◽

Nuclear Weapons ◽

Political System ◽

Military Regime

During 2004, Pakistan's civilianizing military regime continued its attempts to balance two seemingly irreconcilable goals: to democratize and stabilize Pakistan's deeply divided political system and to maintain official support, despite nearly unanimous domestic opposition, for U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan and Iraq. This delicate balancing act was further complicated by the A. Q. Khan nuclear weapons affair.

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