Despite all that has been written on it, the Iraq war - its causes, agency and execution - has been shrouded in an ideological mist. Now, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad dispels the myths surrounding the war, ...taking a sociological approach to establish the war's causes, identify its agents and describe how it was sold. Ahmad presents a social history of the war's leading agents - the neoconservatives - and shows how this ideologically coherent group of determined political agents used the contingency of 9/11 to overwhelm a sceptical foreign policy establishment, military brass and intelligence apparatus, propelling the US into a war that a significant portion of the public opposed. The book includes an historical exploration of American militarism and of the increased post-WWII US role in the Middle East, as well as a reconsideration of the debates that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt sparked after the publication of The Israel lobby and US Foreign Policy.
Using the data of China's service trade and diplomatic events with 45 countries, this paper examines the effects of diplomatic relations on service trade based on the gravity model. Through an ...empirical analysis, the results proved that good diplomatic relations can significantly promote the export of China's service trade and that the effects of diplomatic relations on trade have a clear distinction regarding different political positions. Our results support the view that diplomatic relation does an important role in international trade.
The Ends of Modernization
studies the relations between Nicaragua and the United
States in the crucial years during and after the Cold War.
David Johnson Lee charts the transformation of the ideals ...of
modernization, national autonomy, and planned development as they
gave way to human rights protection, neoliberalism, and
sustainability. Using archival material, newspapers, literature,
and interviews with historical actors in countries across Latin
America, the United States, and Europe, Lee demonstrates how
conflict between the United States and Nicaragua shaped larger
international development policy and transformed the Cold War.
In Nicaragua, the backlash to modernization took the form of the
Sandinista Revolution which ousted President Anastasio Somoza
Debayle in July 1979. In the wake of the earlier reconstruction of
Managua after the devastating 1972 earthquake and instigated by the
revolutionary shift of power in the city, the Sandinista Revolution
incited radical changes that challenged the frankly ideological and
economic motivations of modernization. In response to threats to
its ideological dominance regionally and globally, the United
States began to promote new paradigms of development built around
human rights, entrepreneurial internationalism, indigenous rights,
and sustainable development.
Lee traces the ways Nicaraguans made their country central to
the contest over development ideals beginning in the 1960s,
transforming how political and economic development were imagined
worldwide. By illustrating how ideas about ecology and sustainable
development became linked to geopolitical conflict during and after
the Cold War, The Ends of Modernization provides a history
of the late Cold War that connects the contest between the two
then-prevailing superpowers to trends that shape our present,
globalized, multipolar world.
In the mid-1950s, the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs made an effort to break free of the isolation brought about by the military defeat and communist takeover after WWII. One of the main ...priorities of Hungarian foreign policy was the developing world, including Africa. Although the revolution and subsequent reprisals of 1956 temporarily halted the opening up, at the end of the decade Hungary launched a new diplomatic offensive. Ethiopia, which symbolized African independence and power, was among the main targets. In spite of the setbacks and challenges, and thanks to the determination of Hungarian diplomats, Hungarian-Ethiopian relations were normalized in 1959–60. This paper examines this process by analyzing documents from the Hungarian National Archive and explains why establishing diplomatic connections proved valuable to both parties.
Everyday War Uehling, Greta Lynn
2023, 2023-02-15, 2023-01-15
eBook
Everyday War provides an accessible lens through which to understand what noncombatant civilians go through in a country at war. What goes through the mind of a mother who must send her child to ...school across a minefield or the men who belong to groups of volunteer body collectors? In Ukraine, such questions have been part of the daily calculus of life. Greta Uehling engages with the lives of ordinary people living in and around the armed conflict over Donbas that began in 2014 and shows how conventional understandings of war are incomplete. In Ukraine, landscapes filled with death and destruction prompted attentiveness to human vulnerabilities and the cultivation of everyday, interpersonal peace. Uehling explores a constellation of social practices where ethics of care were in operation. People were also drawn into the conflict in an everyday form of war that included provisioning fighters with military equipment they purchased themselves, smuggling insulin, and cutting ties to former friends. Each chapter considers a different site where care can produce interpersonal peace or its antipode, everyday war. Bridging the fields of political geography, international relations, peace and conflict studies, and anthropology, Everyday War considers where peace can be cultivated at an everyday level.
Collapse takes stock of a volatile and threatening international environment by looking at some of the underlying causes and flashpoints-the principal one being the failure of institutions and elites ...to respond to their constituencies and address the problems of our age. This is a problem spanning the increased polarization that bred nationalist and populist movements, the continued failure of Western leaders to come up with effective strategies for combating authoritarian rivals like Russia and China, and the ongoing Islamist threat. Schoen makes clear that the indispensable ingredient for any constructive path forward is effective, engaged, and committed American leadership. This is discussed through the lens of the failed models of President Trump's two recent predecessors, which reflected, respectively, an uncritical embrace of American power-lacking strategic insight and proportion-and an uncritical abandonment of American leadership that suggested an abject view of the U.S. moral example in the world. Instead, Schoen posits assertive democratic idealism-an embrace of U.S. moral leadership around the world but in ways that remain leavened by realism and a guiding understanding of our national interest. Whether President Trump can deliver on such a vision remains to be seen.
From the expansionist fervour of the late nineteenth century
through both world wars and the Cold War, a varied and
ever-changing group of dreamers campaigned for Canada's union with
the British ...Caribbean colonies. They hoped to diversify Canada's
climate and agricultural capabilities, spur economic development,
boost the nation's autonomy and stature in the Empire-Commonwealth
and the world, temper American power, and secure a tourist
paradise. Dominion over Palm and Pine traces the
transnational ebb and flow of these union campaigns, situating them
in the global history of colonialism and white supremacy, Black
activism, and decolonization. Paula Hastings centres the British
Caribbean in historical narratives that rarely take account of the
region, challenging us to rethink the history of Canadian
expansionism and its entangled relationship with nation building,
the struggle for sovereignty at home and abroad, and Canada's
evolving role and reputation on the world stage. Widely conceived,
the brokers of Canada's international histories included a
multiplicity of actors who shaped the evolving contours and
outcomes of the debate: Canadian legislators, civil servants,
businessmen, and social justice activists; Caribbean migrants,
intellectuals, and anti-colonial nationalists; and British colonial
officials, absentee planters, and politicians. Canada's lack of an
overseas empire is often vaunted as a national characteristic that
sets Canada apart from the United States and the old European
powers. In excavating the dogged resilience of Canadian designs on
the Caribbean, Dominion over Palm and Pine unsettles
notions of Canadian goodness that rest on this self-righteous
observation.
