Us and them: East–West relations reconsidered

2021 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-331
Author(s):  
Leigh Sarty
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cold War History ◽  
East West

This paper frames the contemporary challenge of the People’s Republic of China in the context of Cold War history. It shows how apparent echoes of the past—Beijing's continued embrace of “socialism;” a partnership with Russia that recalls the Sino–Soviet alliance—help illuminate the sources and nature of present-day East–West conflict, and suggests that Francis Fukuyama's much-pilloried “End of History?” has been misunderstood. Viewing the twenty-first-century standoff with Chinese (and Russian) authoritarianism in historical perspective, the paper concludes, casts prospects for the West more positively than recent conventional wisdom would suggest.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex J. Bellamy
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
East Asia ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Cold War

Until recently, East Asia was a boiling pot of massacre and blood-letting. Yet, almost unnoticed by the wider world, it has achieved relative peace over the past three decades.1 At the height of the Cold War, East Asia accounted for around 80 percent of the world’s mass atrocities. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, it accounted for less than 5 percent....

Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
The West ◽  
City Life ◽  
Good Citizen ◽  
The Past ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Point Of Departure

What does it mean to be a good citizen today? What are practices of citizenship? And what can we learn from the past about these practices to better engage in city life in the twenty-first century? Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West: Care of the Self is a collection of papers that examine these questions. The contributors come from a variety of different disciplines, including architecture, urbanism, philosophy, and history, and their essays make comparative examinations of the practices of citizenship from the ancient world to the present day in both the East and the West. The papers’ comparative approaches, between East and West, and ancient and modern, leads to a greater understanding of the challenges facing citizens in the urbanized twenty-first century, and by looking at past examples, suggests ways of addressing them. While the book’s point of departure is philosophical, its key aim is to examine how philosophy can be applied to everyday life for the betterment of citizens in cities not just in Asia and the West but everywhere.

Geopolitics of a Divided Europe

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 531-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitchell A. Orenstein
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Russian President ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Two Sides

Europe is again a divided continent. When it comes to governance, political economy, or values, two contrasting poles have emerged: one Western, liberal, and democratic, another Eastern, statist, and autocratic. The dividing line between them has become ever sharper, threatening to separate Europe into two distinct worlds. This new divide in Europe arises from a clash between two geopolitical concepts for the continent: One is the Western project of a “Europe whole and free,” an enlarging zone of economic cooperation, political interdependency, and democratic values. The other is the Russian project of a “Eurasian Union” to rival the European Union. This article shows how these two sides of Europe have grown further apart in their conceptions of the European space, their values, governance, and economic models. It explores the reasons for the belated Western responses to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s program to divide Europe. The Russo-Georgian war was a turning point, but the West took a long time to recognize the full implications of Putin’s policy. The current confrontation between Russia and the West is not exactly like the Cold War. Russia’s position is weaker. And the battle will be fought out primarily with economic instruments. However, it is clear that this conflict places Central and Eastern Europe back on the front lines of a divided Europe, raising any number of demons from the past.

Conclusion

After Lavinia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Watkins
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
First Century ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Northern European ◽  
Global Peace ◽  
Legal Rationality

This concluding chapter reflects on marriage in the contemporary West, noting that it has become an affective arrangement. In Britain and the northern European countries that still retain a constitutional form of monarchy, twenty-first-century royalty now prefer their own subjects as marriage partners, even if it means marrying a commoner like Kate Middleton. To the extent that these marriages to indigenous commoners have any bearing on foreign policy, they reaffirm the nationalist sentiments of the post-Westphalian state. The chapter argues that, despite all the legal rationality, global peace remains as elusive now as it was when Europeans tried to settle their quarrels through interdynastic marriage. It suggests that the opposition between the West and its post-Cold War enemies has brought the matter of gender and the place of women once more to the center of international relations.

Moving Forward with an Eye on the Past

2017 ◽  
pp. 112-128
Author(s):  
Jerome C. Bush
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Teacher Research ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
First Century ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
The Past ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
New Models ◽  
Potential Benefits

Teacher research has become a well-known term in professional development circles, yet it is still often misunderstood. This chapter seeks to facilitate those who are interested in teacher research by providing a historical perspective. Understanding the development of teacher research over that past century will allow interested parties to move forward with greater insight of the potential benefits and drawbacks inherent in teacher research. Such an analysis may lead to increased success for teacher research projects as the twenty-first century unfolds. Although teacher research can be a challenging form of professional development, it has incredible transformative potential. It has the potential to enhance the entire profession of teaching as well as the knowledge, skills and abilities of individual teachers. A call is made for teachers and academics to move forward by forming an alliance to explore new models and methods of teacher research.

Sociology in Place of Socialism: On West German Cultural Radio

2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-42
Author(s):  
Monika Boll
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
Free Space ◽  
The West ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Sociological Discourse ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
East West

This article delves into the relationship between cultural radio and the Cold War. After 1945, culural radio took on a central role in the intellectual self-understanding of the early Federal Republic. From the very beginning, there was much less censorship than with political editorial departments. Thus, it was possible for cultrual radio to offer an intellectual forum in which socialism was not simply dismissed due to the official anticommunist political doctrine. This article shows the ways in which the East-West conflict was present in the cultrual departments of radio broadcasters. It argues that socialism appeared less as an ideological restraint or taboo, but rather as a productive challenge, which in the end was part of the modernization of West Germany's intellectual self-understanding. Two prominent examples buttress this argument: the free space that cultrual radio conquered in a kind of leftist integration with the West, and the rapid advancement of sociological discourse.

scholarly journals Visible and invisible walls: World trade patterns and the end of the Cold War

2015 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A.G. van Bergeijk
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
The West ◽  
Trade Patterns ◽  
Resistance Factors ◽  
Empirical Trade ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

This paper revisits the empirical trade literature on East-West trade in the early 1990s and provides a replication of the traditional gravity findings of that period with the Baier-Bergstrand version of the model, providing thereby better estimates of the trade hindering impact of the Cold War by including multilateral and world resistance factors and simultaneously considering country fixed effects. Breaking down the Cold War Walls increased world trade by 2.7% of world GDP. The replication with the Baier-Bergstrand model also reveals that Cold War trade distortions also significantly impacted China’s trade with the West.

Recovering from Nuclear Codependence

Horizons ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-17
Author(s):  
Patrick T. McCormick
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Systemic Understanding ◽  
Modern Warfare ◽  
Radical Transformation ◽  
Past Half ◽  
East West

AbstractWith the revolutions in Eastern Europe precipitating a radical transformation of the Cold War which has dominated East-West relations for the past half century, there is a need and an opportunity to examine anew the processes and structures of modern warfare. By constructing a model of the Cold War as an addictive system in which the Americans and the Soviets have cooperated as “nuclear” codependents in the addictive process of the arms race it may be possible to gain a more realistic (dynamic and systemic) understanding of the forces driving global militarism as well as some insights into the dangers which lie ahead as the United States attempts to withdraw and recover from this reality.

Britain and the new UN agenda: towards global riot control?

1991 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-105
Author(s):  
Giorgios Kostakos ◽  
A. J. R. Groom ◽  
Sally Morphet ◽  
Paul Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Security ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Significant Extent ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Riot Control ◽  
Peace And War ◽  
East West

The fading away of the Cold War has allegedly shifted the attention of the Western members of the United Nations, as demonstrated by General Assembly speeches, towards issues like the environment, drugs and terrorism. The new issues moving towards the top of the international security agenda are more elusive than the traditional Peace- and War-related ones; nobody has control of a ‘button’ regarding these issues. An overall assessment of the situation shows that there is a great variety of actors involved, both governmental and non-governmental. It is also increasingly recognized that the East has similar interests to the West. As a result, the East–West divide is being bridged to a significant extent, while the North–South divide is being defined in new ways.

The Ecological Century

1982 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Barton Worthington
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Scientific Basis ◽  
Environmental Conservation ◽  
First Century ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Tropics

The historical perspective is becoming ever more important in scientific research and development—especially in regions of rapid political and social change, such as former colonial empires, where the past is readily forgotten. Therefore this essay attempts to reconstruct the evolution of Ecology as the scientific basis for environmental conservation and human progress, as seen through the eyes of a biologist who has exercised that science during a number of tasks in various parts of the world over most of the twentieth century.From its beginnings in evolutionary thinking during the nineteenth century, ecology emerged from natural history at the beginning of the twentieth. At first the running was made by botanists; but this was soon followed by zoologists, who dealt with more mobile communities. The first quarter-century was mainly exploratory; the second was mainly descriptive (although biological exploration was still dominant in the tropics). The third quarter saw ecology developing into an experimental science, and, as the environmental revolution got into its stride, ecology became organized both nationally and internationally.Although the term is now often misused and sometimes misunderstood by laymen, the last quarter-century is seeing the wide application of ecology in environmental and human affairs, and this gives some assurance that the twenty-first century will not become one of chaos. The Author expresses the hope that experienced practising ecologists will in future give higher priority to applying what they already know than to learning more and more about less and less.

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