Changing Minds: American Missionaries, Chinese Intellectuals, and Cultural Internationalism, 1919.1921

2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan N. Dawley

Abstract1919 was a year of change and upheaval the world over. The Great Powers conferred at Versailles on the design of a New World Order, even as they faced instability and discontent at home. The newly formed Soviet Union continued to be wracked by civil war two years after the October Revolution, while its future adversary, the United States, was in the throes of a Red Scare and struggling to reconcile the opposing currents of isolationism and Wilsonian internationalism. Across the Pacific, Korean nationalists launched an uprising against the forces of Japanese imperialism on 1 March. Although this rebellion failed, it reflected the new anti-colonial spirit which seemed to be sweeping across Asia and Africa and which would trigger further uprisings before years end. All across the globe, it seemed, unrest, transformation, and revolution were in the air.

2001 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry R. Nau

In 1987, Paul Kennedy predicted in his best-selling book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, that the Pacific region, especially Japan and China, would rise in power, while the then Soviet Union, the United States and Europe would decline in power. Except for Russia, his predictions have not fared well. Why? His realist model of international politics ignored the role of national identities. National identities involve domestic institutions and policies that motivate citizens to create and use wealth and power. Nations compete through domestic reforms as well as international military and economic rivalries. Domestic changes in the United States and Europe revitalized American and European power, while delays in domestic reforms doomed Soviet/Russian power and dramatically slowed Japanese and Asian growth.


2018 ◽  
pp. 97-130
Author(s):  
Denzenlkham Ulambayar

Since the 1990s, when previously classified and top secret Russian archival documents on the Korean War became open and accessible, it has become clear for post-communist countries that Kim Il Sung, Stalin and Mao Zedong were the primary organizers of the war. It is now equally certain that tensions arising from Soviet and American struggle generated the origins of the Korean War, namely the Soviet Union’s occupation of the northern half of the Korean peninsula and the United States’ occupation of the southern half to the 38th parallel after 1945 as well as the emerging bipolar world order of international relations and Cold War. Newly available Russian archival documents produced much in the way of new energies and opportunities for international study and research into the Korean War.2 However, within this research few documents connected to Mongolia have so far been found, and little specific research has yet been done regarding why and how Mongolia participated in the Korean War. At the same time, it is becoming today more evident that both Soviet guidance and U.S. information reports (evaluated and unevaluated) regarding Mongolia were far different from the situation and developments of that period. New examples of this tendency are documents declassified in the early 2000s and released publicly from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in December 2016 which contain inaccurate information. The original, uncorrupted sources about why, how and to what degree the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) became a participant in the Korean War are in fact in documents held within the Mongolian Central Archives of Foreign Affairs. These archives contain multiple documents in relation to North Korea. Prior to the 1990s Mongolian scholars Dr. B. Lkhamsuren,3 Dr. B. Ligden,4 Dr. Sh. Sandag,5 junior scholar J. Sukhee,6 and A. A. Osipov7 mention briefly in their writings the history of relations between the MPR and the DPRK during the Korean War. Since the 1990s the Korean War has also briefly been touched upon in the writings of B. Lkhamsuren,8 D. Ulambayar (the author of this paper),9 Ts. Batbayar,10 J. Battur,11 K. Demberel,12 Balảzs Szalontai,13 Sergey Radchenko14 and Li Narangoa.15 There have also been significant collections of documents about the two countries and a collection of memoirs published in 200716 and 2008.17 The author intends within this paper to discuss particularly about why, how and to what degree Mongolia participated in the Korean War, the rumors and realities of the war and its consequences for the MPR’s membership in the United Nations. The MPR was the second socialist country following the Soviet Union (the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics) to recognize the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and establish diplomatic ties. That was part of the initial stage of socialist system formation comprising the Soviet Union, nations in Eastern Europe, the MPR, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and the DPRK. Accordingly between the MPR and the DPRK fraternal friendship and a framework of cooperation based on the principles of proletarian and socialist internationalism had been developed.18 In light of and as part of this framework, The Korean War has left its deep traces in the history of the MPR’s external diplomatic environment and state sovereignty


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sōsefo Fietangata Havea

<p>On April 2, 1987, the Treaty on Fisheries Between Governments of Certain Pacific Island States and the Government of the United States of America was signed. The signatories to the Fisheries were the 16 members of the South Pacific Forum and the United States of America. After six difficult years of negotiations, the Treaty permitted American fishing vessels to fish in Pacific Islands’ waters in exchange for a substantial access fee. This thesis identifies key aspects of that treaty and examines what it meant from both a theoretical and practical standpoint. How did a collection of small, comparatively weak Pacific states strike a satisfactory deal with the most powerful state on the planet? What did the agreement mean in terms of its political, legal and environmental consequences? As well as looking at the events and negotiations that led to the treaty, this thesis also attempts to discern the key political lessons that flow from this case that might be relevant for the future development of the Pacific island States in the key area of fisheries regulation. The thesis argues that disputes between Pacific nations and the United States over tuna resources and the presence of the Soviet Union in the Pacific region were the two critical factors that led to the adoption of the Treaty. From the United States’ perspective, the Treaty was seen (at the time) as the only viable option if it were to reconsolidate its long and prosperous position in the Pacific region. The US did not want the Soviet Union to capitalize on American fishing disputes with the Pacific islands, and it could not afford for the Soviet Union to establish a strong association with the Pacific islands. The Treaty therefore served three purposes for Washington: (i) it maintained its long friendship with the Pacific islands, (ii) it maintained its fisheries interests in the region, (iii) and it kept the Pacific communist-free. This fusion of US economic and strategic interests gave Pacific Island States a stronger hand in the negotiations than their size and power would have otherwise offered.</p>


Book Review: The Politics of East-West Migration, Migration and the New Europe, Citizens without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670–1789, Authority and Democracy: A General Theory of Government and Management, Explaining Northern Ireland, War and Peace in Ireland: Britain and the IRA in the New World Order, Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and US Foreign Policy in the Gulf War, Policy and Public Opinion in the Gulf War, behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics, The Idea of a Liberal Theory: A Critique and Reconstruction, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, Reinventing the Left, North Carolina Government and Politics, Alaska Politics and Government, Kentucky Politics and Government: Do We Stand United?, Argentina since Independence, The Politics of Human Rights in Argentina: Protest, Change, and Democratization, Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine Working Class, 1946–1976, Selected Political Writings, between Friends: Discourses of Power and Desire in the Machiavelli-Vettori Letters of 1513–1515, Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture in Cuba, Back from the Future: Cuba under Castro, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution, The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941–1991, New French Thought: Political Philosophy, The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, An Intellectual History of Liberalism

1996 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 358-374
Author(s):  
Martin Baldwin-Edwards ◽  
Patrick Riley ◽  
Keith Graham ◽  
Chris Gilligan ◽  
Theo Farrell ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Paul J. Heer

This book chronicles and assesses the little-known involvement of US diplomat George F. Kennan—renowned as an expert on the Soviet Union—in US policy toward East Asia, primarily in the early Cold War years. Kennan, with vital assistance from his deputy John Paton Davies, played pivotal roles in effecting the US withdrawal from the Chinese civil war and the redirection of American occupation policy in Japan, and in developing the “defensive perimeter” concept in the western Pacific. His influence, however, faded soon thereafter: he was less successful in warning against US security commitments in Korea and Indochina, and the impact of the Korean War ultimately eclipsed his strategic vision for US policy in East Asia. This was due in large part to Kennan’s inability to reconcile his judgment that the mainland of East Asia was strategically expendable to the United States with his belief that US prestige should not be compromised there. The book examines the subsequent evolution of Kennan’s thinking about East Asian issues—including his role as a prominent critic of US involvement in the Vietnam War—and the legacies of his engagement with the region.


Author(s):  
William O. Walker

This chapter explores Richard Nixon’s and Henry Kissinger’s disdain for hegemony and search for primacy as they sought to refurbish America’s tarnished reputation. Through their pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union and China, their resort to the Nixon Doctrine (to exit as gracefully as possible from Indochina), and the meeting at the Smithsonian Institution in December 1971 to restore America’s global economic stature, they attempted to achieve U.S. primacy in world affairs. Their efforts to implement the novel grand strategy of strategic globalism fell short, as seen in the difficulty of extricating the United States from Vietnam, Nixon’s Watergate imbroglio, and the presence of competing visions of world order among allies, most notably in West Germany’s pursuit of Ostpolitik.


Author(s):  
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson

Chapters 2 and 3 helped confirm that rising states support declining great powers when decliners can help rising states against other great power threats. In contrast, Chapters 4 and 5 assess the logic of rising state predation by examining the United States’ response to the Soviet Union’s decline in the 1980s and early 1990s. Chapter 4 first provides an overview of the Soviet Union’s waning relative position and discusses U.S. efforts to monitor the trend. Next, it reviews existing research on the course of U.S. strategy and relates this work to alternative accounts of rising state policy. The bulk of the chapter then uses extensive archival research to evaluate the factors central to predation theory and predict U.S. strategy given the argument. These predictions are analyzed in Chapter 5.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Alexander Cooley ◽  
Daniel Nexon

Analysts have pronounced the end of American leadership since at least the 1970s. In the 1980s, some confidently proclaimed that the United States was in decline and Japan was on the rise. But in 1989, Moscow allowed its satellite regimes in Eastern Europe to collapse; in 1991 the Soviet Union fell apart under the pressure of nationalist movements. The resulting American “unipolar moment” was marked by three critical factors: the lack of any great powers both willing and able to challenge US hegemony; the existence of a “patronage monopoly” centered around the United States and its liberal democratic allies; and the development of a transnational civil society composed of liberal nongovernment organizations, international institutions, and activist networks. However, great powers and regional players now challenge US power; Washington has lost its patronage monopoly; and illiberal transnational movements are on the offensive against a retreating liberal international civil society.


Author(s):  
Peter Rutland ◽  
Gregory Dubinsky

This chapter examines U.S. foreign policy in Russia. The end of the Cold War lifted the threat of nuclear annihilation and transformed the international security landscape. The United States interpreted the collapse of the Soviet Union as evidence that it had ‘won’ the Cold War, and that its values and interests would prevail in the future world order. The chapter first provides an overview of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 before discussing U.S.–Russian relations under Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin, respectively. It then turns to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its enlargement, the Kosovo crisis, and the ‘Great Game’ in Eurasia. It also analyses the rise of Vladimir Putin as president of Russia and the deterioration of U.S.–Russian relations and concludes with an assessment of the cautious partnership between the two countries.


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