scholarly journals Western Belarus in Soviet-Polish relations: from the Treaty of Riga to reunification with the BSSR

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-26
Author(s):  
Mikalai M. Miazga
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
Policy Goals

The article aims to show the role of Western Belarus in the Soviet-Polish relations in 1939–1941. It is revealed that for both the USSR and Poland the Belarusian question had no independent value, and was part of the policy of each of these states, aimed at achieving broader foreign policy goals. For the Soviet leadership, it was a struggle to revise the order of things that was established in Eastern Europe within the framework of the Versailles-Riga system of international relations. This policy assumed the inclusion of Western Belarus in the Soviet state. For Poland, the possession of Western Belarus was one of the most important conditions for achieving great power status, without which it was difficult to resist the Russian-German «geopolitical grip». The outcome of the struggle between the USSR and Poland for the territory of Western Belarus was inextricably connected with the collapse of the Versailles system, which made it possible to reunite Western Belarus with the BSSR.

scholarly journals Russia and Eurasia. Russian identity and prejudices of the West

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-199
Author(s):  
A. Giannotti
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Great Power ◽  
The West ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Vladimir Putin ◽  
Eurasian Region ◽  
Russian Identity

Over the last years, relations between Russia and the West have undergone a continuous deterioration in all major international scenarios, with Moscow playing a leading role from Eastern Europe to the Middle East. Western prejudices and lack of confindence toward Russia are not new and sink their roots well before the Revolution of 1917. They have been a constant of international relations for at least six centuries and still prevent true cooperation and understanding of the deepest motivations of Kremlin policies. In particular, western observers and policy makers seem to be unable to understand the peculiarities of the Russian identity and its eurasian dimension. This article proposes a brief analysis of the system of Russian-Western relations in the light of the so-called rusofobija, the Russian position in the Eurasian region with the geopolitical consequences of the USSR’s disintegration and the return to the role of great power under Vladimir Putin.

Chinese Political Nostalgia and Xi Jinping's Dream of Great Rejuvenation

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Adele Carrai
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Identity ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The Future ◽  
China Dream

China's emergence as a great power has been accompanied by the official rhetoric of the China Dream of Great Rejuvenation (weida fuxing 伟大复兴). Although there are conflicting views among academics and political elites about the exact content of the China Dream, one of its features is the nostalgia for China's past and its five-thousand-year-old civilization. Xi Jinping's current rhetoric of a China Dream of Great Rejuvenation uses a reinvented history as an asset for the future, linking China's natural progress as a global power with a selective re-reading of its millennial history. While much existing literature already discusses China's Great Rejuvenation, this article looks more specifically at the role of historical memory and deconstructs the key interconnected components that support Xi's rhetoric, namely, the chosen trauma, glory, and amnesia. The conclusion offers some general remarks about the effect of this rhetoric on China's domestic and foreign policy and some of the risks that accompany it. This article contributes to the debates on the influence of memory in International Relations (IR), showing how constructed memories of history can significantly impact both national identity and foreign policy.

scholarly journals The Arctic as a “Strategic” and “Important” Chinese Foreign Policy Interest: Exploring the Role of Labels and Hierarchies in China’s Arctic Discourses

2021 ◽  
pp. 186810262110186
Author(s):  
Patrik Andersson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Chinese Foreign Policy ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Precise Understanding ◽  
New Frontier ◽  
Political Priority

Research confirms that China is becoming more engaged in the Arctic. However, international relations scholarship often extrapolates from relatively few instances of activity to wide-ranging claims about Chinese priorities. Fortunately, Chinese political discourse is organised by labels that allow us to study how the Arctic is classified and ranked along China’s other foreign policy priorities. This article analyses two such classifications – “important maritime interest” and “strategic new frontier,” exploring how they have come about, what they mean, and how they add political priority to the Arctic. It argues that hierarchies are constructed in two ways: by adding gradients and by including/excluding categories of priority. It views categories as performative: they not only convey information about character and relative importance of interests but are also used for achieving different objectives. By focusing on foreign policy classifications, the article contributes to a more nuanced and precise understanding of China’s Arctic interests.

scholarly journals Information Policy and Information Security of PRC: Development, Approaches and Implementation

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 382-394
Author(s):  
Tatyana Ivanovna Ponka ◽  
Mirzet Safetovich Ramich ◽  
Yuyao Wu
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Information Security ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Information Policy ◽  
Security System ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Republic Of China

The subject of the study is the new course of the PRC information policy, which was launched by the Fifth generation of the PRC leaders after the 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012. As a result, after the 18th Congress of the CPC was started the implementation of the Strong cyberpower strategy, which implies not only ensuring cyber security in the country, but also the usage of network resources to develop the national economy. Chinas new information policy was caused by the sharply increased role of information and communication technologies in international processes and the shift in the focus of international relations to the Asia-Pacific region. The PRCs information policy is based on the most advanced technologies in the IT sphere and the cooperation with private companies on regulating external and internal information security. The relevance of the research topic is due to the increasing role of ICT in international processes. In this context, the most important are the positions of the leading countries of the world to regulate this area, as well as the mechanisms and tools used by them. The Peoples Republic of China is one of the leaders in the field of scientific and technical developments and actively uses its achievements to accomplish tasks in the field of domestic and foreign policy. In this regard, the purpose of the study is to analyze and compare the development strategies of the PRC information policy and the resources that are necessary for their implementation. The unique network landscape, which was formed under the influence of government policy on control over published content and the sharing of digital services market among the three largest information corporations (Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba), has become an essential part of the countrys information security system and requires detailed study. The purpose of the article is to identify the evolution of Chinas information policy development strategy and resources for its implementation. This article also discusses the threats to the information security of the Peoples Republic of China and analyzes the approaches to ensuring it. The results of the study are the conclusions that show the role and place of information policy in the PRC foreign policy, the structure of the information security system and strategic approaches to the regulation of international relations in cyberspace.

Middle East Dilemma: Pakistan’s Role as Mediator for Conflict Resolution

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-18
Author(s):  
Zikriya ◽  
Naushad Khan ◽  
Asif Salim
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Middle East ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
East Region ◽  
Analysis Technique ◽  
Middle East Region

The development of International relations together with forces like globalization and technology has brought the world closer to each other. Friendly ties and relations with states create massive challenges during times of conflict. The focus of the paper is on the crisis evolving in the Middle East region and the role of Pakistan in solving those crisis considering relations with its closest allies, political and financial circumstances, and its foreign policy principles. A qualitative research approach with desk analysis technique has been applied to analyse the role of Pakistan as a mediator for the conflict resolution among Middle Eastern countries. The research highlights how the disputes created great problems for Pakistan but it is still striving to resolve conflicts among Middle Eastern countries because maintaining peace and prosperity in the Muslim world has always been a top priority of Pakistan’s foreign policy.

Energy as an Instrument in Global Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 291-319
Author(s):  
Lior Herman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Energy Sources ◽  
Sovereign Wealth Funds ◽  
The World ◽  
Oil And Natural Gas

Oil and natural gas have frequently been used as instruments of foreign policy. While scholars have given substantial attention to the economics of exports and imports, much less has been paid to theorizing how energy can be its own type of carrot or stick, influencing international relations around the world. Future scholarship should focus on developing foreign policy theories specific to energy, including renewable energy sources and drawing on constructivist theories. In addition, the role of transit states, energy firms, sovereign wealth funds, and civil society should be more carefully theorized. Future theoretical and empirical research should also focus on the use of electricity and renewable energies as foreign policy instruments and their effects on global politics.

Leaders and Foreign Policy: Surveying the Evidence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Benedict Dyson ◽  
Thomas Briggs
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Political Action ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Leadership Influence ◽  
Causal Variable

Political Science accounts of international politics downplay the role of political leaders, and a survey of major journals reveals that fewer than 3% of all articles focus on leaders. This is in stark contrast to public discourse about politics, where leadership influence over events is regarded as a given. This article suggests that, at a minimum, leaders occupy a space in fully specified chains of causality as the aggregators of material and ideational forces, and the transmitters of those forces into authoritative political action. Further, on occasion a more important role is played by the leader: as a crucial causal variable aggregating material and ideational energies in an idiosyncratic fashion and thereby shaping decisions and outcomes. The majority of the article is devoted to surveying the comparatively small literature on political leaders within International Relations scholarship. The article concludes by inviting our colleagues to be receptive to the idiosyncrasies, as well as the regularities, of statespersonship.

Defending International Norms: The Role of Obligation, Material Interest, and Perception in Decision Making

2001 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 621-654 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard K. Herrmann ◽  
Vaughn P. Shannon
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Normative Reasoning ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Material Interest ◽  
Individual Perceptions ◽  
Material Interests ◽  
Feature Norms

States defend norms in some cases but not in others. Understanding this variation sheds light on both U.S. foreign policy and the role of normative reasoning. We report the results of four experiments embedded in a survey of U.S. elites. The experiments identified the effects of felt normative obligation (that is, the logic of what is appropriate) and concern for U.S. economic and security interests (that is, the logic of utilitarian consequence) as well as the role played by individual perceptions. We find that perceptions of another actor's motivation, of conflicts as civil or cross-border wars, and of the democratic nature of victims affect decisions to defend a prescriptive norm. This finding means that theories of international relations that feature norms as structural concepts need to consider actor-level cognition when examining the operation of norms. Moreover, we find that when U.S. economic and security interests are at stake there is a much greater inclination to defend norms than when simply normative obligation is present. Most U.S. elites appear to treat the presence or absence of U.S. material interests as a legitimate criterion for deciding whether or not to defend an international prescriptive norm.

Norms reconstituting interests: global racial equality and U.S. sanctions against South Africa

1995 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audie Klotz
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Racial Equality ◽  
Great Power ◽  
State Behavior ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Material Interest ◽  
Global Norms ◽  
Economic Considerations

The extraordinary success of transnational anti-apartheid activists in generating great power sanctions against South Africa offers ample evidence that norms, independent of strategic and economic considerations, are an important factor in determining states' policies. The crucial role of a strengthened global norm of racial equality in motivating U.S. anti-apartheid sanctions illustrates the limitations of conventional international relations theories, which rely primarily on structural and material interest explanations, and supports theoretically derived constructivist claims. In particular, this case suggests that analysts should examine the role of global norms in defining states' interests, rather than viewing norms solely as external constraints on state behavior.

scholarly journals Status, Maintenance of Security, and Militarized Foreign Policy

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Filip Viskupic
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
National Security ◽  
Solomon Islands ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Regional Order

How does status affect foreign policy outcomes? Scholars have long argued that status is a salient foreign policy driver and that states even fight for status, but there is no consensus on how to think about this relationship. I propose that unpacking the link between status and role in international relations can help scholars analyze how status shapes national security outcomes. I illustrate the usefulness of this framework on the processes leading to Australia’s intervention in the Solomon Islands. An analysis of speeches by Australia’s leaders reveals that concern for maintaining Australia’s status as the leader of the Pacific and the role of maintainer of regional order and security affected the decision to dispatch an intervention.

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