THE CONTRIBUTION OF USA IN BALKAN EUROPEANIZATION

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 2149-2153
Author(s):  
Zeqirja Rexhepi

After the communist system fall, the countries in the Balkan region have faced a historical period known as “transition”, a period in which the parliamentary democracy and market economy were established. Having a sustainable historic past, Balkan countries overcome the transition phase with numerous contradictions, by protecting the borders of nation-states. Whereas, in Federative Yugoslavia, a state without a historical past, new political realities were created; a process which went through many wars and as a result, new national countries were established in the Balkans. Actually, in this corner of Europe, seventy years after Yugoslavia’s constitution as a state, the process of "dismantling" the creation of Versailles begins. In the Treaty of Versailles (1919), the United States had attempted to give its contribution to build the 20th century Europe through the process of "self-determination", but at that time American proposals were not taken into account. However, issues of the early 20th century were again put to the table in the late 20th century,The role of America at this period was quite different. In the late twentieth century America was engaged in various world regions as a "guardian" observing the global processes of contemporary civilization. In this context, noticing the “Europeans” inability, USA has got involved to a great extent in the development processes of the Balkans, contributing to the establishment of peace, political stability and the parliamentary democracy system, which in fact constitute the foundations for the "Europeanization” of the peoples and countries of the Balkans.

Author(s):  
Anna Igorevna Filimonova

After the collapse of the USSR, fundamentally new phenomena appeared on the world arena, which became a watershed separating the bipolar order from the monopolar order associated with the establishment of the US global hegemony. Such phenomena were the events that are most often called «revolutions» in connection with the scale of the changes being made — «velvet revolutions» in the former Eastern Bloc, as well as revolutions of a different type, which ended in a change in the current regimes with such serious consequences that we are also talking about revolutionary transformations. These are technologies of «color revolutions» that allow organizing artificial and seemingly spontaneous mass protests leading to the removal of the legitimate government operating in the country and, in fact, to the seizure of power by a pro-American forces that ensure the Westernization of the country and the implementation of "neoliberal modernization", which essentially means the opening of national markets and the provision of natural resources for the undivided use of the Western factor (TNC and TNB). «Color revolutions» are inseparable from the strategic documents of the United States, in which, from the end of the 20th century, even before the collapse of the USSR, two main tendencies were clearly traced: the expansion of the right to unilateral use of force up to a preemptive strike, which is inextricably linked with the ideological justification of «missionary» American foreign policy, and the right to «assess» the internal state of affairs in countries and change it to a «democratic format», that is, «democratization». «Color revolutions», although they are not directly mentioned in strategic documents, but, being a «technical package of actions», straightforwardly follow from the right, assigned to itself by Washington, to unilateral use of force, which is gradually expanding from exclusively military actions to a comprehensive impact on an opponent country, i.e. essentially a hybrid war. Thus, the «color revolutions» clearly fit into the strategic concept of Washington on the use of force across the entire spectrum (conventional and unconventional war) under the pretext of «democratization». The article examines the period of registration and expansion of the US right to use force (which, according to the current international law, is a crime without a statute of limitations) in the time interval from the end of the twentieth century until 2014, filling semantic content about the need for «democratic transformations» of other states, with which the United States approached the key point of the events of the «Arab spring» and «color revolutions» in the post-Soviet space, the last and most ambitious of which was the «Euromaidan» in Ukraine in 2014. The article presents the material for the preparation of lectures and seminars in the framework of the training fields «International Relations» and «Political Science».


Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  

American urban history embraces all historiography related to towns, cities, and metropolitan regions in the United States. American urban history includes the examination of places, processes, and ways of life through a broad and diverse range of themes including immigration, migration, population distribution, economic and spatial development, politics, planning, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Urban history emerged as an identifiable subfield of United States history in the mid-20th century, admittedly well after the establishment of similar areas of inquiry in other professional fields and academic disciplines, particularly sociology. Beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, a small number of academics, led by noted social historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., commenced the first wave of scholarly interest in American urban history with works on colonial seaports and select 19th-century cities. By the 1950s, urban history coalesced as a recognizable subfield around a reformulation of American history, emphasizing the establishment of towns, rather than the pursuit of agriculture, as the spearhead for the formation and growth of the nation. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed a second round of interest in American urban history, set against the backdrop of the tremendous political and social changes that swept the nation and transformed the historical profession. Through innovative models of scholarship that broke with traditional consensus history, notably pioneering quantitative research methods, a self-identified “new urban history” emerged that emphasized spatial development as well as social, economic, and political mobility, conflict, and change. Over time, this new urban history was largely subsumed within social history, given the fields’ intersecting and overlapping interests in social and political issues viewed through the lenses of race, class, and gender. Social history’s broad focus resulted in an explosion of scholarship that all but dominated the American historical profession by the late 20th century. From the mid-1970s through the 1990s, books with urban settings and themes, most of them well within the camp of social history, won an impressive number of Bancroft prizes and other prestigious awards. Urban history itself has survived—even thrived—without a widely agreed upon canon or dominant research methodology. Scholars continue to make significant contributions to urban history, whether or not they embrace the title of urbanist. Note that attendance at the biannual meetings of the Urban History Association has grown significantly over the last two decades. The sources in this article’s twenty subject headings have been arranged to illustrate the depth and breadth of each prominent theme in the field and are by no means an exhaustive list of such scholarship, but rather a sampling of the most influential and innovative examinations of America’s urban canvas.


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 2147-2159 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. P. Maurer ◽  
T. Das ◽  
D. R. Cayan

Abstract. When correcting for biases in general circulation model (GCM) output, for example when statistically downscaling for regional and local impacts studies, a common assumption is that the GCM biases can be characterized by comparing model simulations and observations for a historical period. We demonstrate some complications in this assumption, with GCM biases varying between mean and extreme values and for different sets of historical years. Daily precipitation and maximum and minimum temperature from late 20th century simulations by four GCMs over the United States were compared to gridded observations. Using random years from the historical record we select a "base" set and a 10 yr independent "projected" set. We compare differences in biases between these sets at median and extreme percentiles. On average a base set with as few as 4 randomly-selected years is often adequate to characterize the biases in daily GCM precipitation and temperature, at both median and extreme values; 12 yr provided higher confidence that bias correction would be successful. This suggests that some of the GCM bias is time invariant. When characterizing bias with a set of consecutive years, the set must be long enough to accommodate regional low frequency variability, since the bias also exhibits this variability. Newer climate models included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fifth assessment will allow extending this study for a longer observational period and to finer scales.


Author(s):  
Ronald Williams Jr.

On January 17, 1893, Her Majesty Queen Liliʻuokalani, sovereign of the Hawaiian Kingdom, was overthrown in a coup de main led by a faction of business leaders comprised largely of descendants of the 1820 American Protestant mission to the “Sandwich Islands.” Rev. Charles Hyde, an officer of the ecclesiastic Papa Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian Board) declared, “Hawaii is the first Country in which the American missionaries have labored, whose political relations to the United States have been changed as a result of missionary labors.” The actions of these “Sons of the Mission” were enabled by U.S. naval forces landed from the USS Boston the evening prior. Despite blatant and significant connections between early Christian missionaries to Hawaiʻi and their entrepreneurial progeny, the 1893 usurpation of native rule was not the result of a teleological seventy-year presence in the Hawaiian Kingdom by the American Protestant Church. An 1863 transfer of authority over the Hawaiian mission from the Boston-based American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to the local ʻAhahui ʻEuanelio o Hawaiʻi (AEH) (Hawaiian Evangelical Association) served as a pivotal inflection point that decidedly altered the original mission, driving a political and economic agenda masked only by the professed goals of the ecclesiastic institution. Christianity, conveyed to the Hawaiian Islands initially by representatives of the ABCFM, became a contested tool of religio-political significance amidst competing foreign and native claims on leadership in both church and state. In the immediate aftermath of the January 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom government, this introduced religion became a central tool of the Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) struggle for a return of their queen and the continued independence of their nation. Native Christian patriots organized and conducted a broad array of political actions from within the churches of the AEH using claims on Ke Akua (God) and Christianity as a foundation for their vision of continued native rule. These efforts were instrumental in the defeat of two proposed treaties of annexation of their country—1893 and 1897—before the United States, declaring control of the archipelago a strategic necessity in fighting the Spanish/Filipino–American War, took possession of Hawaiʻi in late 1898. Widespread Americanization efforts in the islands during the early 20th century filtered into Hawaiʻi’s Christian churches, transforming many of these previous focal points of relative radicalism into conservative defenders of the American way. A late-20th-century resurgence of cultural and political activism among Kanaka Maoli, fostered by a “Hawaiian Renaissance” begun in the 1970s, has driven a public and academic reexamination of the past and present role of Christianity in this current-day American outpost in the center of the Pacific.


Author(s):  
B. Alex Beasley

American cities have been transnational in nature since the first urban spaces emerged during the colonial period. Yet the specific shape of the relationship between American cities and the rest of the world has changed dramatically in the intervening years. In the mid-20th century, the increasing integration of the global economy within the American economy began to reshape US cities. In the Northeast and Midwest, the once robust manufacturing centers and factories that had sustained their residents—and their tax bases—left, first for the South and West, and then for cities and towns outside the United States, as capital grew more mobile and businesses sought lower wages and tax incentives elsewhere. That same global capital, combined with federal subsidies, created boomtowns in the once-rural South and West. Nationwide, city boosters began to pursue alternatives to heavy industry, once understood to be the undisputed guarantor of a healthy urban economy. Increasingly, US cities organized themselves around the service economy, both in high-end, white-collar sectors like finance, consulting, and education, and in low-end pink-collar and no-collar sectors like food service, hospitality, and health care. A new legal infrastructure related to immigration made US cities more racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse than ever before. At the same time, some US cities were agents of economic globalization themselves. Dubbed “global cities” by celebrants and critics of the new economy alike, these cities achieved power and prestige in the late 20th century not only because they had survived the ruptures of globalization but because they helped to determine its shape. By the end of the 20th century, cities that are not routinely listed among the “global city” elite jockeyed to claim “world-class” status, investing in high-end art, entertainment, technology, education, and health care amenities to attract and retain the high-income white-collar workers understood to be the last hope for cities hollowed out by deindustrialization and global competition. Today, the extreme differences between “global cities” and the rest of US cities, and the extreme socioeconomic stratification seen in cities of all stripes, is a key concern of urbanists.


Author(s):  
Diana Wylie

The Tangier American Legation Museum reflects the evolution of Moroccan–American relations over two centuries. Morocco, the first country to recognize the independence of the United States (1777), became the site of the first overseas American diplomatic mission in 1821 when the sultan gave the US government title to the museum’s current home—8 rue d’Amérique (zankat America)—in the old city of Tangier. The building went on to house the US consulate (1821–1905), legation (1905–1956), a State Department Foreign Service language school (1961–1970), and a Peace Corps training center (1970–1973), before becoming a museum dedicated to displaying art and artifacts about Morocco and Moroccan–American relations (1976). Despite the official story of the origin of the forty-one-room museum, its holdings and activities since the late 20th century derive more from unofficial American relationships with Morocco than from US government policy. The private actions of individual Americans and Moroccans, with some State Department support, led the museum to become in the late 20th century a research and cultural center serving academics and the broad public, including the people in its neighborhood (Beni Ider). In 1981 the US Department of the Interior put the Legation on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1982 it became the only site outside the United States designated as a National Historic Landmark due to its past diplomatic and military significance, as well as to the building’s blend of Moroccan and Spanish architectural styles.


2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 577-582
Author(s):  
Dawn Chatty

Academic interest in the study of forced migration as a specific field developed only in the late 20th century. But its conceptual tools had a much earlier incarnation in the United States. In the early 20th century historical linguistic and ethnographic research was being conducted with Native American peoples who had been subjected to massive ethnic cleansings in the preceding two centuries. Much of that early work was with tribes who had been displaced, dispossessed, and involuntarily marched into resource-poor reservations. The scientists working with them thought they were engaging in a kind of salvage operation to record ways of life before they disappeared. These researchers largely ignored or failed to recognize the impacts of displacement—destroyed settlements, land occupation, nonviable reservations, inadequate welfare, and hostile administrations and lack of legal rights—and focused instead on trying to reconstruct memory culture of “what life was like in the old days.” Nevertheless, these studies gave us many of our basic concepts to describe and analyze the experience of uprootedness and dispossession. These fundamental concepts have become important in the discipline of forced migration studies. They include understandings of: role and identity, hierarchy, social networks, conflict mechanisms, reciprocity and trust, boundary creation, rites of passage, liminality, and the role of myths.


2020 ◽  
pp. 39-42
Author(s):  
Sergey Asaturov ◽  
Andrei Martynov

The choice between modern nation-building and integration into supranational European and Euro-Atlantic structures remains a strategic challenge for the Balkan countries. Success in solving this problem of predominantly mono-ethnic Croatia and Slovenia has not yet become a model to follow. Serbian and Albanian national issues cannot be resolved. Serbia's defeat in the Balkan wars of 1991–1999 over the creation of a "Greater Serbia" led to the country's territorial fragmentation. Two Albanian national states emerged in the Balkans. Attempts to create a union of Kosovo and Albania could turn the region into a whirlpool of ultra-nationalist contradictions. The European Union has started accession negotiations with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Northern Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. The success of these negotiations depends on the readiness of the EU and the ability of these Balkan states to adopt European norms and rules. The accession of all Balkan nation-states to the European Union must finally close the "Balkan window" of the vulnerability of the united Europe. Nation-building in the Balkans on the basis of ethnic nationalism sharply contradicts the purpose and current values of the European integration process. For more than three decades, the EU has been pursuing a policy of human rights, the rule of law, democracy and economic development in the Balkans. The region remains vulnerable to the influences of non-European geopolitical powers: the United States, Russia, Turkey, and China. The further scenario of the great Balkan geopolitical game mainly depends on the pro-European national consolidation of the Balkan peoples and the effectiveness of the European Union's strategy in the Balkans.


Communication ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Busch

Conflict mediation refers to the dialogue-based process by which a third person supports two or more parties, constructively managing their conflict. In North America and Europe, the term “conflict mediation” is usually associated with procedural principles that originate from the US-based “alternative dispute resolution” (ADR) movement. Originally, conflict mediation in the United States had been introduced as an alternative to court-based conflict resolution. Mediation was meant to produce results that were more sustainable and more satisfying for all concerned parties. From the 1980s onward, conflict mediation has increasingly been considered to be particularly suitable for the management of conflicts in intercultural settings; its inherent high procedural flexibility may help in adapting the concept to other cultural contexts, as well as taking cultural aspects of the parties concerned into consideration. The dialogue orientation of the tool was expected to give equal voices to all participants, balancing hidden power inequalities resulting from different cultural affiliations. This general and basic assumption has laid a very fruitful groundwork for the emergence of a highly diverse landscape of approaches to the idea of intercultural conflict mediation since the late 20th century. Researchers on intercultural communication (see also the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Communication article “Intercultural Communication”) and intercultural competence took mediation as a long-expected hands-on tool to finally manage problems resulting from interculturality. This transfer from an alternative to courts to a tool promoting intercultural understanding, however, will leave some gaps open for research, since the tool does not match perfectly: research on intercultural communication and intercultural competence has so far seen its main challenges in rather subtle irritations and everyday interactions instead of focusing on escalated disputes. Parallel to this, although numerous different notions of culture have existed in research for ages, academia concerning interculturality has started to include a wider variety of paradigms since the late 20th century, resulting in widely different notions of culture and its effects. Depending on what paradigm authors adhere to, they will produce widely different understandings on what intercultural conflict mediation is supposed to be. This article will illuminate the range of these understandings. It will also focus on concepts of mediation, taking single individuals into consideration and leaving aside the mediation of large ethnic groups as a different scenario to be located in international politics.


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