Coping with a Post-Communist World

2021 ◽  
pp. 159-184
Author(s):  
Alexander Dukalskis
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Image Management ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Group Activities ◽  
Friendship Group ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
General Association

After a broad overview, this chapter analyzes two specific instances of North Korea’s authoritarian image management, spanning both the Cold War and post–Cold War eras. First, it focuses on North Korea’s Japan-based efforts to craft an appealing image among Koreans there through Chongryon (the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan). Second, it discusses the loose network of North Korea sympathizer organizations around the world. The chapter draws on primary North Korean media sources, online evidence of friendship group activities, and fieldwork conducted about Chongryon in Japan in 2019. The main argument is that North Korea’s image management efforts have been effective in some respects, but they appear outdated and ill-suited to the contemporary world because the country was slow and hesitant to adapt to new realities. The system was designed for a context of party-to-party relations and Third World solidarity initiatives that eventually faded in relevance.

Italy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Coticchia
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
First Century ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

Since the end of the bipolar era, Italy has regularly undertaken military interventions around the world, with an average of 8,000 units employed abroad in the twenty-first century. Moreover, Italy is one of the principal contributors to the UN operations. The end of the cold war represented a turning point for Italian defence, allowing for greater military dynamism. Several reforms have been approved, while public opinion changed its view regarding the armed forces. This chapter aims to provide a comprehensive perspective of the process of transformation that occurred in post-cold-war Italian defence, looking at the evolution of national strategies, military doctrines, and the structure of forces. After a brief literature review, the study highlights the process of transformation of Italian defeshnce policy since 1989. Through primary and secondary sources, the chapter illustrates the main changes that occurred, the never-ending cold-war legacies, and key challenges.

Russia’s Changing Relations with Pakistan and Taliban: Implications for India

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vinay Kaura
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
The World ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
The Cold War

Historically, India–Russia cooperation has largely been dictated by geopolitical factors. During the Cold War era, their relationship was defined by their similar strategic perceptions of the world. However, post-Cold War global politics has seen several transformations in geopolitical and geostrategic configurations, influencing the strategic worldview of both New Delhi and Moscow. Recent political trends demonstrate the growing divergence between the strategic approaches of the two states toward various global issues, including Pakistan and the Taliban. The article discusses the implications of the shift in Russia’s South Asia policy as well as India’s counterterrorism efforts.

As the World Bank Turns: Determinants of IDA Lending in the Cold War and After

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
International Development ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Internal Structures ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Allocation Decisions ◽  
Insight Into

How does the internal organization of a foreign aid donor affect its aid allocation decisions? Despite the voluminous literature on the political economy of foreign aid, little systematic scholarship exists on this topic. This paper analyzes the allocations of the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank's lending arm for the poorest countries, to all eligible countries between 1977 and 2005. While factors such as a country's need and its policy environment have consistently impacted IDA's allocation decisions, other factors have changed in important ways. For example, IDA disbursements do not follow US aid disbursements in the post–Cold War period the way they did during the Cold War. And most strikingly, IDA's allocations have become tightly linked to debt owed to IDA's sister organization, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). While IDA used to shy away from countries with higher debt to the IBRD, the last two decades have seen IDA engage in apparently defensive lending for the IBRD, lending more to countries with outstanding balances to that institution. The results suggest greater focus on the internal structures of donors would yield insight into their allocation decisions.

Icons of Dissent

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Prestholdt
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Wide Audience ◽  
Transnational Relations ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Osama Bin Laden ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Che Guevara

The global icon is an omnipresent but poorly understood element of mass culture. This book asks why audiences around the world have embraced particular iconic figures, how perceptions of these figures have changed, and what this tells us about transnational relations since the Cold War era. Prestholdt addresses these questions by examining one type of icon: the anti-establishment figure. As symbols that represent sentiments, ideals, or something else recognizable to a wide audience, icons of dissent have been integrated into diverse political and consumer cultures, and global audiences have reinterpreted them over time. To illustrate these points the book examines four of the most evocative and controversial figures of the past fifty years: Che Guevara, Bob Marley, Tupac Shakur, and Osama bin Laden. Each has embodied a convergence of dissent, cultural politics, and consumerism, yet popular perceptions of each reveal the dissonance between shared, global references and locally contingent interpretations. By examining four very different figures, Icons of Dissent offers new insights into global symbolic idioms, the mutability of common references, and the commodification of political sentiment in the contemporary world.

scholarly journals A genealogy of mediation in international relations: From ‘analogue’ to ‘digital’ forms of global justice or managed war?

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver P Richmond
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
International Intervention ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
International Mediation ◽  
Timor Leste ◽  
New States ◽  
Analogue To Digital ◽  
The Cold War

What does it mean to mediate in the contemporary world? During the Cold War, and since, various forms of international intervention have maintained a fragile strategic and territorially sovereign balance between states and their elite leaders, as in Cyprus or the Middle East, or built new states and inculcated new norms. In the post-Cold War era intervention and mediation shifted beyond the balance of power and towards the liberal peace, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Timor Leste. In the case of Northern Ireland, identity, territorial sovereignty, and the nature of governance also began to be mediated, leading to hints of complex, post-liberal formulations. This article offers and evaluates a genealogy of the evolution of international mediation.

Security Studies and the end of the Cold War

1995 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Baldwin
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
National Security ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Military Threat ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

The end of the cold war has generated numerous reflections on the nature of the world in its aftermath. The reduced military threat to American security has triggered proposals for expanding the concept of national security to include nonmilitary threats to national well-being. Some go further and call for a fundamental reexamination of the concepts, theories, and assumptions used to analyze security problems. In order to lay the groundwork for such a reexamination, the emergence and evolution of security studies as a subfield of international relations is surveyed, the adequacy of the field for coping with the post—cold war world is assessed, and proposals for the future of security studies are discussed. It is argued that a strong case can be made for reintegration of security studies with the study of international politics and foreign policy.

scholarly journals Socialist Constitutional Legacies

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-25
Author(s):  
Sergei Belov ◽  
William Partlett ◽  
Alexandra Troitskaya
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Core Values ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
Russian Law ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
The Cold War

With the end of the Cold War, many assumed that socialism, together with the specific constitutional values and political structures was dead (or dying). This article will challenge these assumptions. Post-Cold War reality did not, however, follow these assumptions. Some countries, especially in Asia, continue to adhere to socialist constitutional approaches. Some cannot fully overcome their socialist legacy. And still others include socialist values in their constitutions and practice. These values and ideas warrant study. Most notably, socialism carries with it a certain set of values and, consequently, a corresponding pressure on legal institutions. The authors, guest editors of this special issue of the Russian Law Journal on the socialist legacies in the world constitutions, outline a general approach for the study of socialist constitutional legacies. The article therefore addresses (a) the methodology of socialist constitutional legacies analysis, (b) the core values of the socialist constitutions and (c) ways in which socialist constitutional ideas and concepts can be combined with the principles of constitutionalism. This analysis raises a number of important – but under-researched questions. One is the extent to which these socialist ideas or concepts are actually socialist. Another is the extent to which these ideas can be included in constitutional discourse.

Discerning the patterns of world order: Noam Chomsky and international theory after the Cold War

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Laffey
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
World Order ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Critical Social Science ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Empirical Record

In this article I argue that Chomsky's political writings, widely ignored in the discipline, are a significant resource for thinking about contemporary world politics, how we should analyse it, and to what ends. This claim is defended through an analysis of recent efforts by IR scholars to interpret the post-Cold War order. When viewed through the analytic perspective articulated by Chomsky, disciplinary accounts of the post-Cold War world as liberal and peaceful are shown to be insufficiently attentive to the empirical record. Chomsky's political writings are also shown to be compatible with standard accounts of critical social science.

scholarly journals Notes on exhaustionism, the latest moment of the global organic crisis

Race & Class ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 030639682110548
Author(s):  
Blake Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
New Left ◽  
World Order ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Capitalist State ◽  
The 2008 Financial Crisis ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Temporal Horizon

This essay seeks to build on the concept of exterminism developed by E. P. Thompson in his 1980 New Left Review essay ‘Notes on exterminism, the last state of civilization’. Thompson’s polemical focus on weapons systems in his analysis was the product of a particular moment in history; one where the most precipitous threat to human security was the Cold War. The concept of exhaustionism developed in this piece describes the governance ideologies and frameworks found within advanced capitalist state/societal complexes in response to the present ‘organic crisis’ of post-Cold War global capitalism; one accelerated by the 2008 financial crisis and Covid-19 pandemic. The exhaustionism of political leadership within the contemporary world order has contributed to widely held assumptions that the collapse of civilisation and the planet is either occurring or imminent. Moreover, it is also implied that it is too late for a novel or fundamental transformation in governing ideology, global governance and political economy to reverse the current predicament. This exhaustionism in many ways mirrors the absurdity and cynicism of the Cold War military technicians and nuclear regimes described by Thompson’s concept of exterminism, but with notable differences related to the host of actors involved, temporal horizon, and emphasis on class, imperialism and supremacism.

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