Die Europäische Union: eine neue Supermacht mit imperialen Ambitionen?

2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (139) ◽  
pp. 247-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Jürgen Bieling
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Europäische Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
Military Conflicts ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
International Role ◽  
Open Question ◽  
The Eu

Recent theoretical conceptions of imperialism may be useful correctives against idealising and harmonising views of international interdependency and co-operation. Analytically, however, they are not necessarily helpful. In terms of the EU, they do not really comprehend its particular international role. Despite improved financial and military capacities, the EU represents not yet an imperial power. Instead, it still pursues a rather hegemonic foreign policy approach due to internal economic restrictions, fragmented political sovereignty and the historical experiences of beneficial economic and political co-operation after World War II. Eventually, however, it remains an open question, whether the multilateralist, law-based and co-operative posture of the EU will prevail even under conditions of economic crisis and further military conflicts in the adjacent neighbourhood.

Canada at Peace and Soldiers at War: Canadian U.N. Soldiers in Korea, Egypt, and Vietnam

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bronwyn Jaques
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Conflicts ◽  
High Regard ◽  
Canadian Military ◽  
The Cold War

In recent years, Canadian peacekeeping and UN involvement has assumed a place of high regard, reverence, and veneration, often at the expense of Canada’s military past. While its glorification is in many ways justified, the mythology surrounding Canada’s peacekeeping role has compelled many Canadians to view Canada solely as a peacekeeping nation. As a result, peacekeeping has become the “touchstone of our identity.” This mythology distorts the reality of Canadian military action to the point where Canadian veterans of NATO conflicts are often forgotten and it ignores the fact that many of the first peacekeepers left Canada “virtually unnoticed,” without the recognition and support of their nation. The mythology of peacekeeping misrepresents Canadian military conflicts and ignores that, in spite of the characterization of peacekeepers as nonviolent and unbiased actors, the majority of them were first and foremost Canadian soldiers, many of whom veterans of World War II. For the soldiers who came of age on the battlefields of Europe, the role of peacekeeping was a frustrating and politically charged experience, whereby they held no power and they felt they made very little positive impact. Despite the virtually universal glorification and celebration of peacekeepers in recent years, investigation of the “Cold War Home Front” demonstrates the difficulties faced by Canadian NATO soldiers, U.N. peacekeepers and their families in a society that wanted to move beyond the years of struggle, pain and sacrifice in war time and had little sympathy for the men and women who ‘chose’ to leave their families to serve in wars their nation was not fighting.

Maintaining Modernity

2018 ◽  
pp. 169-205
Author(s):  
Michitake Aso
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Industrial Agriculture ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
World War ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
Indochina War

Rubber trees helped structure the violent transition from empire to nation-state during nearly thirty years of conflict on the Indochinese peninsula. Chapter 5 focuses on the struggle over plantations that took place in Vietnam and Cambodia between 1945 and 1954. During the First Indochina War, plantation environments served as a key military battleground. In the fighting that took place immediately after the end of World War II, many plantation workers, encouraged by the anticolonial Việt Minh, attacked the rubber trees as symbols of hated colonial-era abuse. Slogans placing the culpability of worker suffering on trees show how plantation workers often treated the trees themselves as enemies. Despite their colonial origins, plantation environments were important material and symbolic landscapes for those seeking to build postcolonial Vietnamese nations. French planters claimed to struggle heroically against nature, Vietnamese workers saw themselves as struggling against both nature and human exploitation, and anticolonial activists articulated struggles against imperial power structures. Industrial agriculture such as rubber was vital to nation-building projects, and by the early 1950s, Vietnamese planners began to envision a time when plantations would form a part of a national economy.

WOODROW WILSON AND THE ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR: A Hundred Years Later and Still Relevant

World Affairs ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 180 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-46
Author(s):  
Eugene P. Trani ◽  
Donald E. Davis
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Security ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Eu

American-Russian relations have been troubled from Lenin to Putin, from Wilson to Trump. Woodrow Wilson insisted that no one power should dominate Europe. This detailed analysis shows that Wilson was the first “Cold War Warrior,” and his “quarantine” policy toward Russia was the precursor of the policy the United States has generally followed toward Russia since the end of World War II. Wilson tried to avoid taking sides in the Bolshevik Revolution but finally was drawn into it from relentless Allied pressure. Yet he kept intervention minimal. Afterward, he quarantined communism until FDR recognized Russia and, later, allied with Stalin against Hitler. Truman and his successors renewed “quarantine,” calling it “containment.” With the USSR’s collapse, the shape and stability of Wilson’s Europe reappeared. The West has preserved that Europe through the EU, NATO, and sanctions against Putin’s restoring a Soviet sphere. America should now be clear, as Wilson once was, in supporting European security.

scholarly journals The EU: Towards a United States of Europe

Federalism-E ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-21
Author(s):  
Eric Servais
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The European Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Structural Framework ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Collective Decisions ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The Eu

The European Union (EU), a contested “European” political construct, is contemporarily positioned at a critical juncture that presents three options that may determine its status as a supranational actor: stagnation, dissolution, or deeper and wider integration. The myriad pressures antagonizing the European Union and its structural foundations parallel those that the project sought to address following World War II. The unprecedented level of devastation caused by advanced military technologies and totalitarian ideologies in the war provided the impetus for increased cooperation amongst independent nation-states. Institutional cooperation encourages the deconstruction of destructive socio-political forces including racism, nationalism, and primordial cultural identities. These essentialist forces emerge in the absence of effective governance and encourage internal and external hostilities. The EU is intended to provide a structural framework for liberal-democratic countries to make collective decisions to increase economic prosperity, freedom, security, and justice [...]

scholarly journals A határon átnyúló agglomerációk turizmusának típusai

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 126-131
Author(s):  
Andrea Székely
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Spatial Structures ◽  
World War ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Near Future ◽  
New Situation ◽  
Cross Border Cooperation ◽  
The Eu

The new borders of Hungary in 1920 cut cities and agglomerations inducing their fallback, but the new situation favoured the creation of new functional centers. The closed boundaries after World War II resulted the development of spatial structures inside the national borders. At the same time, in Western Europe border urban areas organic development started, and they shaped cross-border agglomerations. The soundest example is the French-Belgian Lille cross-border metropolis. After the political changes, the cross-border cooperation based on real common socio-economic interest has become possible in Hungary. This processus is encouraged by the EU through its regional (Interreg, Espon) and urban (Urban, Urbact) programs. The analysis of cross-border agglomerations may be one of the axes of the Hungarian regional researches in the near future.

scholarly journals Die militärpolitische Emanzipation Deutschlands – Afrika als Exerzierplatz?

2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (162) ◽  
pp. 69-82
Author(s):  
Werner Ruf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Active Engagement ◽  
World War ◽  
Predominant Role ◽  
Military Engagement ◽  
The Eu

After World War II (West-)Germany was supposed to never again become a military Power. When it joined NATO all its troops had to be under the command of the alliance – but its contributions to NATO grew steadily. In the 2 + 4 treaty the united Germany pledged to never undertake any military aggression. With the Treaty of Masstricht the EU started to establish its own security policy. Germany’s active engagement in both alliances became its instrument for military emancipation. With growing military engagement of the EU (and Germany) -- especially in Africa -- as well as the predominant role of Germany in the EU and its engagement in the UN and NATO, the country is back on its way to becoming one of the big powers.

scholarly journals Neo-Realist Paradigm and the Fragile State of Regional Cooperation in South Asia: Prospects and Challenges

sjesr ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-166
Author(s):  
Mr. Saqib Ullah Khan ◽  
Ms. Sabira Iqbal ◽  
Mr. Atta Ullah Jan
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Regional Cooperation ◽  
Western World ◽  
World War ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Vested Interests ◽  
The Eu

Regionalism is a process of regional cooperation amongst the countries sharing a common border, common values, homogeneity of culture, and common vested interests. While the western world adopted this paradigm early after World War II in the form of the EU, South Asian Region is still deprived of such models. The establishment of SAARC in 1985 by the efforts of the late Bangladeshi President Zia-ur-Rahman although raised certain hopes of regional connectivity in South Asia still the fate of this region lingers in the sky. While using secondary sources of data collection, this paper tries to attempt the underlying challenges and the palpable prospects responsible for the better integration of this region. It further analyses the failed regional cooperation and the role of India under the assumption of the Neo-Realist Paradigm of Kenneth Waltz that emerged in late 1970.

Thailand at the Margins

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Glassman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
The State ◽  
World War ◽  
Industrial Transformation ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Economic Boom ◽  
The Cold War

Jim Glassman addresses the role of the state in the industrial transformation of what was, before the economic crisis of 1997-98, one of Southeast Asia's fastest growing economies. Analyzing the Cold War period, the period of the economic boom, as well as the economic crisis and its political aftershock, Thailand at the Margins recasts the story of the Thai state's post-World War II development performance by focusing on uneven industrialization and the interaction between internationalization and the transformation of Thai labor.

Denmark as the Big Satan: Projections of Scandinavia in the Arab World and the Future of Multiculturalism

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Per Anders Rudling
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Arab World ◽  
World War ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Radical Islam ◽  
The World ◽  
Western Values ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Eu

During the winter and spring of 2006, Denmark and Scandinavia faced its most serious crisis since World War II. The conflict started as a Danish newspaper published a number of cartoons, some of which portrayed the prophet Muhammad. After the Danish government rejected their requests to censor the media, Danish Islamists distributed these pictures to some senior political and religious figures in the Middle East and requested their support against Denmark. To these pictures, they added a number of more offensive images, never published in any Danish newspaper in order to infuriate Muslims around the world. Muslim clerics, assisted by the governments of Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran caused the region to explode in protest and violent riots, in which 44 people were killed. Danish products were boycotted across the Muslim world; Scandinavian embassies were attacked and set ablaze in Syria, Iran, Lebanon and Indonesia. Islamists promised substantial rewards for anyone who would murder Danish and Norwegian peacekeepers, and Scandinavian UN forces were attacked in Palestine and Afghanistan. The Scandinavian countries and the EU are struggling to find a way to address the issue of radical Islam within their societies, and how to defend liberal democratic values from attacks from its enemies. This process may lead to a redefinition of values, a shift from multiculturalism to an embrace of the democratic western values upon which the European states are based.   Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v2i3.174

The Great Depression

2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Alan Brinkley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Instability ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Great Depression

The Great Depression of the 1930s was the most catastrophic economic crisis of modern times. Although it began in the United States, it swept quickly through most of the industrial world and created untold misery to millions of people. It also created political and social instability and contributed significantly to the coming of World War II. Although the Depression has received enormous attention from historians, economists, and many others, there is still no consensus on the two major questions that the crisis raises.

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