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121. NATO and India: The politics of strategic convergence

Author:
David Scott
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
In this article, I argue that after having experienced a distinctly cool relationship throughout most of the post-war period and for the 10 years following the end of the Cold War, India and North Atlantic Organization (NATO) are now gradually moving towards each other. Indeed, during the past decade, NATO's 'out-of-area' operations have taken it eastwards from the Mediterranean, while India's 'extended neighbourhood' framework has brought it westwards from the Indian subcontinent. This has created a geopolitical overlap between these two actors, most notably in Afghanistan but also elsewhere in the Indian Ocean. Common advocacy of liberal democracy and overt concerns over jihadist destabilization have brought these two actors together. In NATO's post-Cold War search for relevance and India's post-Soviet search for partners, they have found each other. Unstated potential concerns over China are also a feature in this strategic convergence. However, while NATO has adopted a flexible range of 'Partnership' frameworks, India's sensitivity on retaining 'strategic autonomy' will limit their cooperation to informal ad hoc arrangements.
Topic:
NATO and Cold War
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, China, India, and Soviet Union

122. The end of the cold war and soviet collapse – the limits of realism and liberalism: A reply to Wohlforth, Deudney and Ikenberry

Author:
Campbell Craig
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
William Wohlforth and Daniel Deudney and John Ikenberry provide strong Realist and Liberal analyses, respectively, of the End of the Cold War. Both interpretations, however, beg larger conceptual and historical questions, which cannot be answered without making the nuclear revolution central to explaining Soviet collapse.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Soviet Union

123. Russia in the new international order: Theories, arguments and debates

Author:
Roger E Kanet
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Throughout the Cold War, studies of Soviet foreign policy were generally 'atheoretical'. In so far as they were based on theoretical models from international relations, those models tended to be some version of 'realism' or 'neorealism'. Over the past two decades, since the end of the Cold War, other approaches – especially those based on 'constructivism' – have challenged the domination of the 'realist' framework in studies of Russian foreign policy. The articles in this special issue of International Politics examine the strengths and weaknesses of the various theoretical frameworks employed to explain Russian policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Cold War
Political Geography:
Russia and Soviet Union

124. Conceptualizing sovereignty in Russian foreign policy: Realist and constructivist perspectives

Author:
Charles E Ziegler
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Russia's approach to sovereignty reflects a close linkage between the recentralizing project domestically, and reassertion of Russia's position as a great power on the international scene. This article assesses the relative utility of constructivist and realist approaches in Russian readings of sovereignty. A constructivist approach is found to be more useful in treating sovereignty - it directs our attention toward the problem of developing a new post-Soviet identity, the role of culture and historical interpretation in foreign policy, Russian concepts of the hostile Other and domestic ideas linked to Russian concepts of federalism - all critical factors in understanding Russian foreign policy behavior. The major ideological construct of the post-communist period - sovereign democracy - insists that both sovereignty and democracy are socially and culturally determined, and therefore clash with Western interpretations of these concepts. The emergence of a new, post-modern and Western-dominated set of global norms limiting sovereignty is closely linked to continued tensions between Russia and the West.
Political Geography:
Russia and Soviet Union

125. Russia's foreign policy towards Poland: Seeking reconciliation? A social constructivist analysis

Author:
Valentina Feklyunina
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Russia's relations with Poland in the post-Soviet period have been greatly affected by their divergent historical narratives that have shaped their dominant identities and have been further promoted by the political elites to maintain these identities. However, Moscow's attempts to project a more positive image in Poland in recent years have involved re-articulating some elements of the official narrative. Drawing on social constructivism, this article presents a theoretical framework that can be applied to an analysis of Russia's foreign policy, and illustrates its benefits by examining Russia's policy towards Poland.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Russia, Poland, Soviet Union, and Moscow

126. Iran's Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era

Author:
Luciano Zaccara
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
With this book, Shireen Hunter offers an exhaustive manual of the Islamic Republic's foreign policy. However, the excessive engagement in explaining each and every aspect of Iran's Foreign Policy from the Islamic Revolution until today – and not focusing only on the post-Soviet era, as the title indicates – undermines the profound analysis of the topic and period.
Political Geography:
Iran and Soviet Union

127. Bringing Religion Back In? Debating Religion in International Politics

Author:
Eyüp Ersoy
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Observing the shattering of the European society's axiological foundations and traditional systems of meaning, which had been constituted and sustained by and through Christianity, under the rampant secularism of his time, Nietzsche has a madman declare the death of God in The Gay Science: "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him". His observation was also valid for the international politics of the time, in which secular ideologies had long replaced religion as the ideational aspect of international politics. The competition among these new ideologies, after contributing in varying degrees to several upheavals in international politics, arguably ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union with socialism as its avowed ideology, leaving liberalism as the lone secular ideology with the United States as its avowed political custodian.
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Soviet Union

128. Echoes of a Forgotten Past: Mid-Century Realism and the Legacy of International Law

Author:
Oliver Jütersonke
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Those studying the work of Hans J. Morgenthau, widely considered the “founding father” of the Realist School of International Relations, have long been baffled by his views on world government and the attainment of a world state—views that, it would appear, are strikingly incompatible with the author's realism. In a 1965 article in World Politics, James P. Speer II decided that it could only be “theoretical confusion” that explained why Morgenthau could on the one hand advocate a world state as ultimately necessary in his highly successful textbook, Politics Among Nations, while writing elsewhere that world government could not resolve the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States by peaceful means. According to Spee Morgenthau posits at the international level a super-Hobbesian predicament, in which the actors on the world scene are motivated by the lust for power, yet he proposes a gradualist Lockean solution whereby the international system will move, through a resurrected diplomacy, out of a precarious equilibrium of balance-of-power anarchy by a “revaluation of all values” into the “moral and political” bonds of world community, a process whose capstone will be the formal-legal institutions of world government.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States and Soviet Union

129. Deconstructing Japan's Image of South Korea Identity in Foreign Policy

Author:
Linus Hagström
Publication Date:
09-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
How to understand Japan's identity is one of the most enduring themes in research on the country's international relations. In the past few years, there has been an increase in the number of theoretically innovative analyses, which go beyond, and problematize, the alleged 'peace' identity stipulated by Peter J. Katzenstein (1996) and Thomas U. Berger (1998) in the 1990s. Xavier Guillaume (2011) published a monograph last year, while Alexander Bukh (2010) and Taku Tamaki made one valuable contribution each in 2010. The aim of this article is primarily to review Tamaki's book, but to some extent this is done in light of those other works. Just like Bukh and Guillaume, Tamaki adopts a relational understanding of identity, where the self is defined in opposition to other(s). However, where Bukh analyses the Soviet Union/Russia as Japan's 'other', and Guillaume directs his investigation towards multiculturalism and 'the West', Tamaki's focus is squarely on Japan's relationship with South Korea.
Political Geography:
Russia, Japan, South Korea, and Soviet Union

130. "Confronting Soviet Power: U.S. Policy during the Early Cold War"

Author:
Paul Avey
Publication Date:
04-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
U.S. policy during the early Cold War is better explained by balance of power logic than ideology. Not only did the United States initially seek to cooperate with the Soviet Union, shifting toward a confrontational approach only when the balance of power tilted in the Soviet Union's favor, but it later sought to engage communist groups that promised to undermine Soviet power. Given the vast differences between U.S. and Soviet ideology, the United States' willingness to put ideology aside in these instances suggests that relative power concerns are more important in generating and shaping confrontational foreign policies than is ideology.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States and Soviet Union