Trusting Enemies

Author(s):  
Nicholas J. Wheeler

How can two enemies, locked into a spiral of fear and insecurity, transform their relationship into a trusting one? Trusting Enemies argues that the field of International Relations has not done a good job of answering this question. This is because it has been looking in the wrong place. Where trust-building has been theorized by the discipline of International Relations, the focus has been on the state and the individual. This book argues that there is a need to appreciate the importance of a new level of analysis in trust research—the interpersonal. In its development of a theory of interpersonal trust between state leaders in adversarial relationships, this book argues that the obstacles to leaders sincerely signalling their peaceful intent can be overcome and that trust-based relationships provide the greatest assurance of accurate signal interpretation. This book examines three cases: the interaction between US and Soviet leaders Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev and its role in ending the cold war; the interaction between Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and its role in the Lahore peace process of 1998–9; and the interactions across 2009–10 between Barack Obama and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that did not lead to a breakthrough in the US–Iranian nuclear relationship.

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 1155-1174 ◽  
Author(s):  
VAN GOSSE

On 2–5 June 1984, Ronald Reagan toured Ireland. He was met by widespread protest regarding US policies in Central America, including reproofs from the Irish government, and snubs from the Catholic hierarchy. Yet for Irish diplomats, engaged in a long-term effort to encourage Britain towards a settlement of the civil war in Northern Ireland, the visit was a success. This article argues that these immediate resonances have wider meanings, which complicate our understanding of the Cold War. Both large and small “cold wars” (the US in Central America; the US versus the Soviets; Ireland versus Britain) got mixed up with each other during this visit, contributing to the resolution of all three: the Europeans pushed the US to the negotiating table in Central America; following re-election, Reagan began his rapprochement with Mikhail Gorbachev; in September 1984, the President began nudging his closest ally, Margaret Thatcher, towards a rapprochment with the Irish Republic. The relationship between these overlapping frames underlines the article's claims that “cold wars” are a useful category of international relations, in which small nations can be significant factors. Tensions over Ronald Reagan in Ireland remind us that the global Cold War was always much more complex than superpower rivalries.


2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 177-199
Author(s):  
Chih-Yu Shih

Confucian friendship adds to the literature on friendship distance sensibilities and aims to maintain and even reinforce the Confucian ethical order, whereas contemporary international politics fails to provide any clear ethical order. The use of friendship and the concomitant creation of a friendly role by China indicate an intended move away from the improper order, including the tributary system, the Cold War, imperialism, and socialism. Confucian friendship continues to constitute contemporary Chinese diplomacy under the circumstance of indeterminate distance sensibilities. It highlights the relevance of the prior relations that are perceived to have constituted friendship. This article explores several illustrative practices of a Confucian typology of friendly international relations, divided into four kinds of friendship, according to (1) the strength of prior relations and (2) the asymmetry of capacity, including the policies toward Russia, North Korea, and Vietnam, among others. Such a Confucian friendship framework additionally alludes to foreign policy analysis in general. The US policies for China and North Korea are examples that indicate this wide scope of application.


2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 148-171
Author(s):  
Noel D. Cary

On February 1, 2019, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from a landmark Cold War treaty: the agreement between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev to ban intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe. One day after Trump's announcement, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would also withdraw from the treaty. Allegations of Russian violations in recent years have thus led to actions that threaten to return Europe to some of the most frightening days of the Cold War.


Author(s):  
Beth A. Fischer

Virtually no one anticipated the ending of the Cold War. Understanding how this long-standing conflict was peacefully resolved can give us insight into how to conclude other seemingly intractable conflicts. Triumphalists believe that President Ronald Reagan “won” the Cold War by building up US military power and threatening the USSR. His hard-line policies forced Moscow to reduce its arsenal, adopt democratic reforms, withdraw from its war in Afghanistan, and ultimately collapse. Triumphalists assert that contemporary leaders should follow Reagan’s example bycompelling adversaries into submission. However, triumphalism is a myth, a series of falsehoods about Reagan’s intentions, his policies, and the impact his administration had on the USSR.Drawing upon American and Soviet sources,this book demonstrates that Reagan’s initial hard-line policies brought the superpowers to the brink of war and made it more difficult for Moscow to disarm and reform. Compellence failed miserably. The Cold War was resolved through diplomacy, not threats. President Reagan eventually engaged in dialogue so as to ease Moscow’s security concerns, build trust, and focus on the superpowers’ mutual interest in eliminating nuclear arms. For his part, Mikhail Gorbachev sought to end the arms race so as to divert resources to democratization. He too sought dialogue and trust. The ending of the Cold War demonstrates the importance of moral leadership. Reagan and Gorbachev both rose above their differences and introduced radical new ideas about nuclear disarmament. Consequently, both encountered domestic opposition. Each persevered, however, leading their nations toward a safer, more humane future.


2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen A. Crist

Abstract The Dave Brubeck Quartet's 1958 tour on behalf of the U.S. State Department, part of the grand Cold War project of propagating American-style democracy in opposition to communism, did not advance in an orderly and self-evident manner. Rather it was an extremely contingent enterprise enacted through countless individual actions and statements by a motley assortment of bureaucrats and businessmen, and frequently teetered on the brink of chaos. The story of Brubeck's tour, including its evolution and impact, is complex and multifaceted, involving overlapping and conflicting agendas, governmental secrecy, high-minded idealism, and hard-nosed business. The narrative also raises issues of race and race relations in the context of the Cold War struggle against communism and brings into focus the increasing cultural prestige of jazz and other popular genres worldwide during the period when the ideological premises of the Cold War were being formulated. Thirty years later——in 1988, as the Cold War was waning——the Quartet performed in Moscow at the reciprocal state dinner hosted by President Ronald Reagan for General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev during their fourth summit meeting. The sequence of events leading up to this occasion, including the Quartet's long-anticipated tour of the Soviet Union during the previous year, reveals Brubeck to have been not only a talented musician but a canny entrepreneur as well. By the late 1980s the cultural and political landscape had shifted so dramatically as to be virtually unrecognizable to the Cold Warriors of the 1950s. By all accounts, Brubeck's tours in the 1950s and 1980s were among the most successful of their kind. Though Brubeck attributes their efficacy primarily to the power of an influential idea that came into its own toward the beginning of the Cold War——namely, jazz as democracy——the documentary record makes clear that the impact of his travels involved a multifarious nexus of other factors as well, including reputation, personality, and marketability.


2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-166
Author(s):  
Noel D. Cary

The Berlin Republic of the twenty-first century, writes W. R. Smyser, is destined to be unlike all previous German states. A status quo power and a stable democracy, it is neither the battleground of others nor dominant over them, neither reticent like Bonn nor arrogant like the Berlin of the late Hohenzollerns. The Cold War was “the essential incubator” of this “new Germany” (p. 402). It provided Germany with the tools of change—a role through which to overcome its past, and time to overcome old wounds. Aiding the incubation were contradictory Communist policies, astute Western statesmanship, and bravely pursued Eastern popular aspirations. Two Germans and two Americans, Smyser avers, stand at the heart of the eventual Communist defeat: East German leader Walter Ulbricht, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, President Ronald Reagan, and Smyser’s onetime mentor, General Lucius Clay. Mighty assists go to British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, Soviet leaders Joseph Stalin and Mikhail Gorbachev, and the inspirational Polish Pope. Further down this idiosyncratic hierarchy stand Chancellors Adenauer and Kohl and U.S. President George H. W. Bush.


1986 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 163-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Kubalkova ◽  
A. A. Cruickshank

In the historiography of the Cold War a small but active group of American historians influenced by New Left radicalism rejected the view prevailing in the USA at the time in regard to the assignation of responsibility for the beginning and continuation of the Cold War.1 Although their reasoning took them along different routes and via different perceptions as to key dates and events, there were certain features all US revisionists had in common (some more generally recognized than others). Heavily involved as they were in the analysis of the US socio-economic system, the Soviet Union was largely left out of their concerns and it was the United States who had been found the ‘guilty’ party. The revisionists, of course inadvertently, corroborated Soviet conclusions, a fact gratefully acknowledged by Soviet writers.2


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 272-279
Author(s):  
Balwinder Singh

After the end of Second World War, the two power bloc was raising in world politics and the revelry between the blocs was on top. The Cold War politics emerged as a bitter experience of international relations. Both blocs were mollifying the other countries of the world. It had to become stronger because of many newly independent countries. For the sake their independence many countries choose the third path to avoiding war and keeping their independence, they framed NAM (Non-alignment Movement). Most of these countries was belong to Asia and Africa and also newly independent. The US (United States) and European countries criticized NAM and revoked it as a group of opportunist countries. The NAM emerged as an international platform as a third alternative of two power blocs. The NAM was the international phenomenon of developing and third world countries. Non-alignment grew out of the cold war bitter relationship between US and USSR. Some developing and third world newly independent countries refused to post Second World War world politics through the eyes of their erstwhile colonial rulers. Indian Prime Minister Nehru was one of the paramount leaders of NAM since its inception. After the demise of British rule in India, India also refused to join any bloc in Cold War time. Nehru did not want to enter in two bloc politics due to India’s national interests. He thought that Indian independence could diminish if India going toward any blocs and adopted Non-alignment as an instrument of foreign policy. He also made effort to discuss other world leader to formulate NAM as platform of collective voice of newly independence countries. The paper also aims to explain India’s contribution to the Non-alignment Movement. The first formal conference of NAM was in Bandung in 1961. Nehru and others NAM leaders uttered against new imperialism in Asia and Africa in Bandung Summit by the western countries. Some countries raise questions about the importance and relevance of NAM and produce it as a callous movement after the end of the Cold War. However the broader membership of NAM proved its relevance and importance. Most of the world countries adopted NAM membership due to its popularity and momentous agenda. While the Cold War strategic environment underestimates Non-alignment movement and the two power blocs tried to demoralize Non-alignment movement, however the Non-alignment movement was accomplishing their work with a greater momentum. Non-alignment, both as a foreign policy perspective of most newly independence states of Asia, Africa and Latin America and as well as an international movement was a critical factor of contemporary international relations. The Non-alignment movement was the collective voice of developing and third world countries since the first official meeting of its leaders in Belgrade in 1961. The policy of the Non-alignment has been being the issue of debate in international politics since its origin. In 1970’s, its importance and relevance had questioned, with the emergence of détente in international relations. The US and European countries did not consider the NAM movement at that time. Both power blocs were also questioned the role of NAM in cold war era. The western countries always tagged NAM as a collaboration of opportunist countries. It was such a big thing that NAM survived in fracas of cold war. The study tried to remove skepticism on Non-alignment and NAM in post-Cold War arena. It is also suggesting a new way for making the movement effective and relevant in present context.


Author(s):  
Matthias Middell

The essay argues that the story of 1989 can be told either as a narrow or a wide story. The narrow story focuses on the end of communism, the unification of Germany, and the subsequent integration of former communist states into the European Union. It works especially well for Central and Eastern Europe, although it also has implications for regimes in Africa that relied on Soviet support. However, it also requires considerable qualification, given the survival of communist regimes in China, Vietnam, Cuba, and elsewhere. In the second, wide version of the story, 1989 brings to visibility processes that had been at work for several decades, undermining the power blocs of the Cold War era and the territorially defined polities on which the system of international relations rested. In this story 1989 is of as much relevance to the West as to the former Eastern Bloc. The essay looks at both stories in relation to Gorbachev and perestroika, the US role in the end of the Cold War, German unification, the singing revolution in the Baltic, and 1989 in China and Cuba.


2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takashi Inoguchi

Stimulated by Ole Waever's (1998) examination of American and European developments in International Relations, this article examines the growth of the discipline of international relations in Japan, focusing on the major currents of the social science tradition since 1868 and the intellectual agenda of international relations since 1945. Postwar scholarship has reflected the main themes and questions of Japanese history — the causes of war, the struggle for peace, Japan's place in the world and Asia, and Japan's role in the Cold War. To an extent, the organization and substance of IR teaching and scholarship in Japan can be explained by reference to certain sociological and historical variables. Discussions about methodology have not mirrored the “great debates” of the United States, but the younger scholars are moving closer to the American pattern. Recent exposure to and interaction with American scholarship has become increasingly visible, allowing Japanese scholars to make important contributions to debates in the US.


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