The Cold War in South Asia provides the first comprehensive and transnational history of Anglo-American relations with South Asia during a seminal period in the history of the Indian Subcontinent, ...between independence in the late 1940s, and the height of the Cold War in the late 1960s. Drawing upon significant new evidence from British, American, Indian and Eastern bloc archives, the book re-examines how and why the Cold War in South Asia evolved in the way that it did, at a time when the national leaderships, geopolitical outlooks and regional aspirations of India, Pakistan and their superpower suitors were in a state of considerable flux. The book probes the factors which encouraged the governments of Britain and the United States to work so closely together in South Asia during the two decades after independence, and suggests what benefits, if any, Anglo-American intervention in South Asia's affairs delivered, and to whom.
Fidel Castro described Salvador Allende's democratic election as president of Chile in 1970 as the most important revolutionary triumph in Latin America after the Cuban revolution. Yet celebrations ...were short lived. In Washington, the Nixon administration vowed to destroy Allende's left-wing government while Chilean opposition forces mobilized against him. The result was a battle for Chile that ended in 1973 with a right-wing military coup and a brutal dictatorship lasting nearly twenty years.Tanya Harmer argues that this battle was part of a dynamic inter-American Cold War struggle to determine Latin America's future, shaped more by the contest between Cuba, Chile, the United States, and Brazil than by a conflict between Moscow and Washington. Drawing on firsthand interviews and recently declassified documents from archives in North America, Europe, and South America--including Chile's Foreign Ministry Archive--Harmer provides the most comprehensive account to date of Cuban involvement in Latin America in the early 1970s, Chilean foreign relations during Allende's presidency, Brazil's support for counterrevolution in the Southern Cone, and the Nixon administration's Latin American policies. The Cold War in the Americas, Harmer reveals, is best understood as a multidimensional struggle, involving peoples and ideas from across the hemisphere.
The South Korean warship Cheonan was sunk in mysterious circumstances on 26 March 2010. The remarkable events that followed are analysed by Tim Beal and woven into a larger study of the increasingly ...volatile relations between North and South Korea and US concern about the rise of China. South Korea's stance towards the North has hardened significantly since the new conservative government came to power. Beal argues that the South moved quickly to use the sinking of the Cheonan to put international pressure on the North, even before the cause of the sinking had been established. The US followed suit by attempting to pressurise China into condemning North Korea. The media reports at the time presented an open and shut case of unprovoked North Korean aggression, but the evidence points towards the accidental triggering of a South Korean mine as the cause and South Korean fabrication to incriminate the North. With the South bent on forcing the fall of the North's regime with US help and China unlikely to stand idly by, this book offers an essential guide to the key factors behind the crisis and possible solutions.
The struggle between Russia and Great Britain over Central Asia in the nineteenth century was the original “great game”. For the British, control over the region protected their vital possessions in ...the subcontinent. For an expanding Russian Empire, Central Asia represented the next step in their evolution as a great power. In the past quarter century, a new “great game” has emerged. Not only is the region enmeshed in America's global war on terror, it sits between a newly aggressive Russia and resource-hungry China and alongside one of the volatile areas in the world. This book explores the dynamics of the new competition for influence over the region since 9/11. All three great powers have crafted strategies to build their influence the region, which includes Afghanistan and the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. All three are pursuing important goals: basing rights for the U.S., access to natural resources for the Chinese, and increased political influence for the Russians. However, overlooked in all of the talk about this new great game is fact that the Central Asian governments have proven themselves critical agents in their own right, establishing local rules for external power involvement that serve to fend off external pressures and bolster their sovereign authority.
Evan Potter analyses how the federal government has used the instruments of public diplomacy - cultural programs, international education, international broadcasting, trade, and investment promotion ...- to exercise Canada's soft power internationally. He argues that protecting and nurturing a distinct national identity are essential to Canada's sovereignty and prosperity, and suggests ways to achieve this through the strategic exercise of public diplomacy, at home and abroad. In offering the first comprehensive overview of the origins, development, and implementation of the country's public diplomacy, Branding Canada offers policy advice on Canada's approach and advances the thinking on public diplomacy in general.
A rapidly-changing nation and a key player in the Middle East, Turkey has long been centrally important to both the United States and the European Union. A major partner both of the EU and Turkey, ...the US has also been the most ardent and committed supporter of closer ties between them. Yet while Turkey's relations with the US and the EU have been intimately linked, they have not proceeded along two parallel planes. Nathalie Tocci tells the story of this dynamic triangular relationship, exploring how and why the US has shaped the course of relations among its allies. An empirical study with strong policy relevance, this volume draws on in-depth interviews and official documents to provide a succinct overview of the issues and stakeholders. Tocci argues that the Turkish situation can be viewed as a quintessential case study, tackling broader questions about US foreign policy in the region as a whole.
The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War has long been understood in a global context, but Jeremy Friedman'sShadow Cold Wardelves deeper into the era to examine ...the competition between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China for the leadership of the world revolution. When a world of newly independent states emerged from decolonization desperately poor and politically disorganized, Moscow and Beijing turned their focus to attracting these new entities, setting the stage for Sino-Soviet competition.Based on archival research from ten countries, including new materials from Russia and China, many no longer accessible to researchers, this book examines how China sought to mobilize Asia, Africa, and Latin America to seize the revolutionary mantle from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union adapted to win it back, transforming the nature of socialist revolution in the process. This groundbreaking book is the first to explore the significance of this second Cold War that China and the Soviet Union fought in the shadow of the capitalist-communist clash.
China's engagement in Africa is generally portrayed simply as African countries being exploited for their mineral wealth by a wealthy political and economic superpower. Is this always the case?
...Certain African countries have been able to use China's involvement in the region to grow their economies and solicit renewed interest from previously disengaged foreign powers by using their relationship with China to bolster their political capital. In this thought provoking and original work Lucy Corkin demonstrates how Angola has been amongst the most successful of African nations in this role. The concept of 'African agency' covers a wide range of different countries with very different capabilities and experiences of engaging with China. In each individual county there are a myriad of actors all with increasingly discernible agencies. Uncovering African Agency; Angola's Management of China's Credit Lines casts a fascinating new light on China's involvement with her largest African trading partner and through this shows how different African states and the governmental actors within them are able to exploit the relationship to their best advantage.
Africa's Silk Road Broadman, Harry G; Isik, Gozde
2006, 11-02-2006, 2007
eBook, Book
Odprti dostop
China and India's new-found interest in trade and investment with Africa - home to 300 million of the globe's poorest people and the world's most formidable development challenge - presents a ...significant opportunity for growth and integration of the Sub-Saharan continent into the global economy. Africa's Silk Road finds that China and India's South-South commerce with Africa is about far more than natural resources, opening the way for Africa to become a processor of commodities and a competitive supplier of goods and services to these countries - a major departure from its long established relations with the North. A growing number of Chinese and Indian businesses active in Africa operate on a global scale, work with world-class technologies, produce products and services according to the most demanding standards, and foster the integration of African businesses into advanced markets. There are significant imbalances, however, in these emerging commercial relationships. These can be addressed through a series of reforms in all countries:"At-the-border" reforms, such as elimination of China and India's escalating tariffs on Africa's leading exports, and elimination of Africa's tariffs on certain inputs that make exports uncompetitive "Behind-the-border" reforms in Africa, to unleash competitive market forces and strengthen its basic market institutions "Between-the-border" improvements in trade facilitation mechanisms to decrease transactions costs Reforms that leverage linkages between investment and trade, to allow African businesses to participate in global production networks that investments by Chinese and Indian firms can generate.
Europe and the Islamic world Tolan, John; Veinstein, Gilles; Laurens, Henry
2012., 20121125, 2012, 2013., 2013-01-01
eBook
Europe and the Islamic Worldsheds much-needed light on the shared roots of Islamic and Western cultures and on the richness of their inextricably intertwined histories, refuting once and for all the ...misguided notion of a "clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and Europe. In this landmark book, three eminent historians bring to life the complex and tumultuous relations between Genoans and Tunisians, Alexandrians and the people of Constantinople, Catalans and Maghrebis--the myriad groups and individuals whose stories reflect the common cultural, intellectual, and religious heritage of Europe and Islam.
Since the seventh century, when the armies of Constantinople and Medina fought for control of Syria and Palestine, there has been ongoing contact between the Muslim world and the West. This sweeping history vividly recounts the wars and the crusades, the alliances and diplomacy, commerce and the slave trade, technology transfers, and the intellectual and artistic exchanges. Here readers are given an unparalleled introduction to key periods and events, including the Muslim conquests, the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, the commercial revolution of the medieval Mediterranean, the intellectual and cultural achievements of Muslim Spain, the crusades and Spanish reconquest, the rise of the Ottomans and their conquest of a third of Europe, European colonization and decolonization, and the challenges and promise of this entwined legacy today.
As provocative as it is groundbreaking, this book describes this shared history in all its richness and diversity, revealing how ongoing encounters between Europe and Islam have profoundly shaped both.