Guarding the Interest Frontiers

Author(s):  
Andrea Ghiselli

The Chinese government’s changing understanding of the relationship between non-traditional security issues and foreign policy, that is, the same process behind the awareness of the necessity to protect the interest frontiers, has driven and shaped China’s military footprint in Africa and the Middle East since the 1990s. Hence, it is not surprising that the quantity, the type, and the ways that Chinese military assets have been deployed there started to change as Chinese policymakers became more convinced of the necessity to use military tools to support the efforts to protect the lives and assets of Chinese nationals and firms. A Chinese multidimensional security architecture has emerged in recent years with the newly opened base in Djibouti at its center. The presence of Chinese soldiers changed from being country- to subregion-focused and from single- to multipurpose-oriented. Yet, this chapter also shows how two key issues—the difficulties of acting through the United Nations and technical and legal uncertainties—have shaped this process.

Author(s):  
Manu Bhagavan

This chapter discusses India’s association with the United Nations. Guided by the vision of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, the country initially had a highly successful grand strategy guiding its foreign policy that placed that UN at the centre of its diplomatic efforts. Things took a sharp downward turn, however, during the administration of Indira Gandhi, and the relationship has lacked cohesion and meaningful direction ever since. In recent times, India has sought to become a permanent member of the Security Council and has relatedly but unsuccessfully attempted to wield influence, though large questions about its purpose and goals remain. Contemporary crises, though, now make the answers ever more urgent.


2020 ◽  
pp. 097359842094343
Author(s):  
Anupama Ghosal ◽  
Sreeja Pal

The issue of Human Rights features as a prominent agenda of the United Nations and its related international organizations. However, when it comes to precise formulation of a country’s foreign policy in bilateral or multilateral forums, the issues of trade and national security find priority over pressing human rights violations occurring within the countries engaged in the diplomatic dialogue. An often-employed reason behind such an approach is the need to respect sovereignty and non-interference of a country in diplomacy. This article aims at analysing the potential which diplomacy holds to pressurize recalcitrant regimes to respect human rights. In doing so, the article tries to explore the ambit of Human Rights Diplomacy and the relationship between agenda of politics and human rights.


1992 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 49-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evanthis Hatzivassiliou

In the second half of the 1950s, Greek foreign policy was dominated by the Cyprus question, while in the Middle East the same period was marked by a series of crises. The developments in the Middle East were important to the Greek government partly because Cyprus’s fate depended primarily on British decisions — and these decisions were connected to Britain’s position in the Middle East. Simultaneously, the turbulence in the region endangered the Greek communities in it, mainly the large community in Egypt. Yet, it may be said that Athens was rather slow in making an approach to the Arabs, on whose votes the United Nations debates on Cyprus largely depended: such approach took place only in Spring 1956, after the British had deported the Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios, and after the new government of Constantinos Karamanlis had scored its first electoral victory.


Author(s):  
Lawrence S. Kaplan

Commander Stassen returned to his naval duties after the San Francisco Conference adjourned. The war in Europe had ended. The United Nations was a major preoccupation in this period, and he used the momentum of the conference to publicize his convictions about the relationship between US foreign policy and the United Nations. He addressed his message to young Republicans, encouraging them to bring “an expanded vision of the realities of world conditions. The continuing clash with Russia at the UN makes it imperative that our Republican party proposes a positive far-reaching foreign policy in 1948 and seek Democratic agreement upon it as a bipartisan policy and enlist general public approval for it as an American policy.” Stassen’s passion for restructuring the United Nations to make it a fit vehicle for association with US foreign policy never dimmed. Confident of his ability to achieve higher office, Stassen decided not to run for the US Senate in 1946. This was a race he could have won against isolationist representative Henrik Shipstead, a paragon of Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-3) ◽  
pp. 228-237
Author(s):  
Marina Shpakovskaya ◽  
Oleg Barnashov ◽  
Arian Mohammad Hassan Shershah ◽  
Asadullah Noori ◽  
Mosa Ziauddin Ahmad

The article discusses the features and main approaches of Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East. Particular attention is paid to the history of the development of Turkish-American relations. The causes of the contradictions between Turkey and the United States on the security issues of the Middle East region are analyzed. At the same time, the commonality of the approaches of both countries in countering radical terrorism in the territories adjacent to Turkey is noted. The article also discusses the priority areas of Turkish foreign policy, new approaches and technologies in the first decade of the XXI century.


Author(s):  
Bakare Najimdeen

Few years following its creation, the United Nations (UN) with the blessing of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) decided to establish the UN Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKO), as a multilateral mechanism geared at fulfilling the Chapter VII of the UN Charter which empowered the Security Council to enforce measurement to maintain or restore international peace and security. Since its creation, the multilateral mechanism has recorded several successes and failures to its credit. While it is essentially not like traditional diplomacy, peacekeeping operations have evolved over the years and have emerged as a new form of diplomacy. Besides, theoretically underscoring the differences between diplomacy and foreign policy, which often appear as conflated, the paper demonstrates how diplomacy is an expression of foreign policy. Meanwhile, putting in context the change and transformation in global politics, particularly global conflict, the paper argues that traditional diplomacy has ceased to be the preoccupation and exclusive business of the foreign ministry and career diplomats, it now involves foot soldiers who are not necessarily diplomats but act as diplomats in terms of peacekeeping, negotiating between warring parties, carrying their countries’ emblems and representing the latter in resolving global conflict, and increasingly becoming the representation of their countries’ foreign policy objective, hence peacekeeping military diplomacy. The paper uses decades of Pakistan’s peacekeeping missions as a reference point to establish how a nation’s peacekeeping efforts represent and qualifies as military diplomacy. It also presented the lessons and good practices Pakistan can sell to the rest of the world vis-à-vis peacekeeping and lastly how well Pakistan can consolidate its peacekeeping diplomacy.


The United Nations Secretary-General and the United Nations Security Council spend significant amounts of time on their relationship with each other. They rely on each other for such important activities as peacekeeping, international mediation, and the formulation and application of normative standards in defense of international peace and security—in other words, the executive aspects of the UN’s work. The edited book The UN Secretary-General and the Security Council: A Dynamic Relationship aims to fill an important lacuna in the scholarship on the UN system. Although there exists an impressive body of literature on the development and significance of the Secretariat and the Security Council as separate organs, an important gap remains in our understanding of the interactions between them. Bringing together some of the most prominent authorities on the subject, this volume is the first book-length treatment of this topic. It studies the UN from an innovative angle, creating new insights on the (autonomous) policy-making of international organizations and adding to our understanding of the dynamics of intra-organizational relationships. Within the book, the contributors examine how each Secretary-General interacted with the Security Council, touching upon such issues as the role of personality, the formal and informal infrastructure of the relationship, the selection and appointment processes, as well as the Secretary-General’s threefold role as a crisis manager, administrative manager, and manager of ideas.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document