Pragmatic Equidistance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan A. Laksmana
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Strategic Partnerships ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
Global Profile ◽  
Strategic Autonomy

This chapter describes the rationale and nature of Indonesia’s foreign policy vis-à-vis the United States and China. It places Indonesia’s foreign policy pertaining to these two countries within the broader context of Jakarta’s management of great power relations. The author argues that Indonesia’s approach can be described as “pragmatic equidistance.” This approach captures the idea of fully engaging one great power in various forms of cooperation—from economic to defense—while simultaneously both maintaining strategic autonomy and keeping equal balance with other great powers. Put differently, it is about how a developing country with a rising regional and global profile like Indonesia can fully exploit the benefits of strategic partnerships with different great powers while maintaining autonomy and not being pegged as too close to one great power at the expense of another. The author further argues that Indonesia’s pragmatic equidistance with the United States and China is a function of (1) the historical legacies of bilateral relations, (2) the end of authoritarian rule in 1998 and the ensuing democratization process, and (3) the changing strategic environment in the broader Indo-Pacific. These conditions overlap and help explain the persistent ambiguity in the triangular Indonesia-U.S.-China relations.

scholarly journals The process of making Vietnam’s foreign policy with the United States based on David Easton’s model

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-323
Author(s):  
Nguyen Thu Trang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Strategic Partnership ◽  
Strategic Partnerships ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
Unites States

Since 2001, Vietnam has gradually built and implemented strategic and comprehensive partnerships with some of the World’s great powers. The behaviors of Vietnam have brought skepticism from international community. Besides, the differences in the nature of “Strategic Partnership”, “Comprehensive Partnership” and “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” in Vietnam's foreign policy are paid much attention to by scholars and scientific researchers. Because of the long-term strategic national interests, Vietnam-US relations strongly elevated from the normalization of bilateral relations to the level of comprehensive partners in 2013. Since 2017, the two countries have planned to upgrade their relations from comprehensive partnership level to strategic partnership level. In this context, the paper focuses on the application of systemic approaches in Vietnam's foreign policy making, with the content “The Process of Making Vietnam’s Foreign Policy with the United States based on David Easton’s Model”. The paper will analyze the process of making Vietnam’s foreign policy with Unites States based on David Easton’s Model. In addition, the paper also provide forecasts of the possibility of adjusting Vietnam's foreign policy towards the United States, especially upgrading the relations to strategic partnerships.

Germany's relations with the United States and China from a strategic triangle perspective

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Biba
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
European Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
Puzzle Piece ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Angela Merkel

Abstract As the Sino-American Great Power competition continues to intensify, newly-elected US President Joe Biden's administration now seeks to enlist the support of its allies and partners around the world. As Europe's largest economy and a, if not the, leading voice within the European Union, Germany represents an important puzzle-piece for Biden. But Germany, at least under outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel, has been reluctant to take sides. It is against this backdrop that this article looks into Germany's past and present trilateral relationships with the US and China through the theoretical lens of the so-called strategic triangle approach. Applying this approach, the article seeks to trace and explain German behaviour, as well as to elucidate the opportunities and pitfalls that have come with it. The article demonstrates that Germany's recently gained position as a ‘pivot’ (two positive bilateral relationships) between the US and Chinese ‘wings’ (positive bilateral relations with Germany and negative bilateral relations with each other) is desirable from the perspective of the strategic triangle. At the same time, being pivot is also challenging and hard to maintain. Alternative options, such as entering a US–German ‘marriage’ directed against China, are also problematic. The article therefore concludes that Germany has tough decisions to take going forward.

Watching the Soviet Union Decline

2018 ◽  
pp. 99-118
Author(s):  
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Relative Position ◽  
State Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Union Decline

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.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Charlie Laderman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
World Power ◽  
The Us ◽  
Eastern Question

This introductory chapter outlines why the American response to the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians offers such critical insights into the US rise to world power, its evolving relationship with Britain, and the development of ideas on humanitarian intervention and global order at the turn of the twentieth century. It introduces the Armenian question, setting it within the larger Eastern question, and explains why the Ottoman Empire became a target for outside intervention by the European great powers in the nineteenth century. It explains why the United States, which had traditionally avoided political entanglement in the Near East even while its missionaries established an exceptional role there, began to take a greater interest in the region as its emergence as a great power coincided with the first large-scale Armenian massacres.

The Far Eastern Commission

1948 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel S. Stratton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Far Eastern

Shortly before he left the State Department in the summer of 1947, Undersecretary Dean Acheson summarized the main objectives of American foreign policy during his term in office. These, he said, had been principally two. One was to “establish the unity and mutual confidence and cooperation of the great powers.” The other, he said, was to “create international organizations necessarily based on the assumption of this unity and cooperation, in which all nations could together guarantee both freedom from aggression and the opportunity for both the devastated and undeveloped countries to gain and expand their productivity under institutions of their own free choice.''x Following out this policy, the United States has helped to create and has participated in an impressive number of international organizations. Some, like the United Nations and its affiliates, are directed mainly to the continuing task of building and maintaining a secure peacetime order among nations. Others, like the Allied control bodies in former enemy countries, have the more temporary job of filling in the gap of leadership until peace treaties have been signed.

scholarly journals From Embargo to Blockade: An Evaluation of the United States Sanctions against Iran in the Context of the Use of Economic Impact Tools in Foreign Poli

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuri Gökhan Toprak
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
Economic Impact ◽  
International Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Qualitative Assessment ◽  
Executive Orders ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
The Us

The concept of influence can be defined as a tool of international actors, a form of power, the ability to overcome obstacles in order to achieve different purposes or the desired result in the process of power relations established between actors in international politics. According to the approach that aims to reach the concept of influence as the desired result, in the process of setting up influence states try to influence each other through different methods and tools in which can be used through states’ own capacities. In addition to political and military tools, economic impact tools related to the field of foreign trade and finance are frequently used today. Economic impact tools, such as external aid, which may be positive or rewarding, may also be negative or punitive in a range from the boycott to the blockade. The study aims to provide a qualitative assessment of the United States' (US) economic sanctions against Iran in the context of the use of economic impact tools in international politics. In order to achieve this aim, 12 executive orders issued by the US on the grounds that Iran poses a threat to its national security, foreign policy and economy will be examined. In the conclusion of the study, the assumption that the US sanctions against Iran almost for 40 years has become a multilateral structure such as commercial and financial blockade from a structure related to bilateral relations such as boycott and embargo will be tested.

Legitimacy Claims and Pre-Crisis Transatlantic Alignment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abraham L. Newman ◽  
Elliot Posner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
European Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Soft Law ◽  
The European Union ◽  
International Regulation ◽  
Endogenous Change ◽  
Regulatory Powers

Chapter 4 focuses on soft law’s second-order consequences for rising regulatory powers. One of the key puzzles in the international regulation of finance is the persistence of cooperation even as the number of economic great powers increases. The emergence of the European Union as a financial rule-maker in the late 1990s and early 2000s, roughly on par with the United States, resulted in a transatlantic alignment of regulatory approaches, not conflict over the fundamentals. This chapter demonstrates how soft law was used by reform-minded factions in Europe to legitimize their claims and tip in their favor political contests over the modernization of internal regulation. International soft law served as a mechanism of endogenous change, helping to foster a great power preference alignment along market-friendly paths and setting the stage for the financial crisis.

Cuba and the United States in the Configuration of a Foreign Policy for Spain

2020 ◽  
pp. 145-178
Author(s):  
Daniel Rodríguez Suárez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
International Context ◽  
Fidel Castro ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Military

After the election of the socialist party in 1982, relations between Spain and Cuba entered a channel of greater understanding, as the two nation's traditional commercial and economic relationship found a complementary association in the greater political affinity between Felipe González and Fidel Castro. In the international context, the Cuban leaders had their own vision of the role that Spain might play on the international stage and sensed the possibilities that the young Spanish democracy could open up for the Third World. For Spain there was a need to maintain a neutral international orientation and remain detached from the military pacts with the great powers. This chapter explores Cuba and the United States in the configuration of a foreign policy for Spain.

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