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181. The Last Living Fossil of the Cold War The two Koreas, the Dragon and the Eagle: towards a new regional security complex in East Asia?

Author:
Erik Beukel
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The divided Korean peninsula is a flashpoint in the regional security complex in East Asia. The central issue is the threat posed by North Korea and how to meet it. After a review of North Korea as an international actor and of two important incidents in 2010 (the sinking of the South Korean naval ship Cheonan and North Korea's shelling of the South Korean coastal island of Yeonpyeong), the rationality underlying the country's military efforts is considered. South Korea's Nordpolitik is reviewed and the rise and decline of its sunshine policy and the role of its alliance with the United States is described. Two non-Korean great powers, China and the United States, are important actors in the region, and their relations with North Korea, goals and priorities, and implementation strategies are outlined. The report concludes with reflections on the potential for changing the present security complex, which is marked by a fear of war, into a restrained security regime, based on agreed and observed rules of conduct.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Foreign Policy, Cold War, Communism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
United States, China, Israel, East Asia, Korea, and Island

182. Nonalignment Redux: The Perils of Old Wine in New Skins

Author:
Ashley J. Tellis
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Since the Cold War ended, India has been persistently criticized for lacking a grand strategy. Like many other complaints about India, this one, too, is curious because the country has been nothing if not the exemplar of excessive planning for much of its modern history. In fact, ever since India was incarnated as an independent state in 1947, it has always had a clear and arguably defensible grand strategy—even if it lacked a summary document that articulated its national aims.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Cold War, Development, and Post Colonialism
Political Geography:
South Asia

183. North Korean Succession and the Risks of Instability

Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Transitions often present risks to authoritarian regimes, but the succession in North Korea has apparently passed with few problems. With no opposition from the military and China's clear support, there are no signs to suggest that Kim Jŏng-ŭn, the young leader who replaced his father, Kim Jong-il, following his death in December 2011, is anything but in charge in his own right. Far from creating a regency of older family members or generals, the North Korean system has maintained its focus on a single leader and projected an image of stability and unity as it celebrates the centenary of the birth of its founder, Kim Il-sung. While that image appears to be accurate, there is nothing to suggest that the new leader is or will become inclined to take measures that would either improve the lot of the country's citizens or reduce the regional frictions that Pyongyang is at the centre of.
Topic:
Security, Cold War, Nuclear Weapons, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
China, Israel, and North Korea

184. Containment and territorial transnational actors: Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas

Author:
Amnon Aran
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Containment is the term generally used to characterize American policy towards the USSR after the Second World War, when it consisted of a series of attempts to deal with the power and position won by the USSR in order to reshape postwar international order. Containment, as originally articulated by its chief architect, George F. Kennan, was always contested, for example because it did not clarify whether Soviet behaviour had strictly national or ideological roots, and would result in the USSR's having the initiative about where and when to act. Nonetheless, throughout the Cold War it remained US policy, partly because of the failure in 1953-4 of the alternative, 'liberation' and 'rollback'. Although containment changed and sometimes seemed to have broken down, for example in the Vietnam War, the imprint of Kennan's ideas—perhaps more than anyone else's—endured. After 1989 it seemed that containment had no place in the peaceful multilateral environment which seemed to be emerging; however, it proved adaptable to a range of post-Cold War situations, including some which appear to have little in common with the context and goals of containment's original formulation: among these are the challenges posed to US national security by the so-called rogue states.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, Israel, and Soviet Union

185. 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

186. 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

187. 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

188. The problem of 'the international' in Russian identity formation

Author:
Richard Sakwa
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
A new era in international politics is gradually taking shape in which the legacy of the Cold War is gradually fading, but in which new lines of division are emerging. The major institutions of the Cold War period are undergoing a long decay although the political processes associated with them are becoming increasingly dysfunctional. New forms of multi-polarity are taking shape accompanied by the struggle between defenders of the status quo and those ready to adapt to the structural revisionism inherent in the new pattern of international politics. In all of this, Russia acts as the bellwether, developing as a distinct and separate pole in the international system rather than joining the Western constellation, as was anticipated after the end of the Cold War. Russia's great power identity in the international system is accompanied by domestic systemic specificities, which reinforce differentiation at the structural level. Russia's neo-revisionism does not repudiate the present balance in international order, but seeks to create what it considers to be a more comprehensive and equal system. This can be seen in its various forms of interaction and modes of engagement with 'the international'. In methodological terms, the attempt to analyse these changes through a Cold War lens is a categorical error that perpetuates anachronistic paradigms. By disaggregating Russia's engagement with the international into a number of distinct processes, we can delineate more clearly the interaction of structural and systemic factors that sustain Russia's neo-revisionism.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Russia

189. Correspondence: Debating the Sources and Prospects of European Integration

Author:
Ulrich Krotz, Jean-Yves Haine, Norrin M. Ripsman, Sebastian Rosato, Richard Maher, David M. McCourt, Andrew Glencross, and Mark S. Sheetz
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
In "Europe's Troubles," Sebastian Rosato argues that the high water mark of European integration has passed and that the fate of the European Union (EU) is increasingly uncertain. The European project, he claims, had a geostrategic imperative during the Cold War: unable to match Soviet power individually, the small and medium powers of Western Europe sought to balance the Soviet Union through economic integration. The Soviet collapse and the end of the Cold War removed the strategic rationale for preserving the community that European governments had built over many decades. At best, according to Rosato, Europe will continue to muddle along. At worst, the entire European project will collapse.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Europe

190. Malaysia's China Policy in the Post-Mahathir Era: A Neoclassical Realist Explanation

Author:
KUIK Cheng-Chwee
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Malaysia's China policy in the post-Cold War era – as an instance of a smaller state's strategy toward a proximate and rising great power – has been characterized by three patterns. First, there was a shift from hostility and guarded rapprochement during the Cold War to cordiality and maturing partnership in the post-Cold War era. Second, despite the overall positive development, Malaysia's China policy has remained, in essence, a hedging approach that is driven by both a pragmatic desire to maximize benefits from a closer relationship with the neighboring giant and a contingent calculation to guard against any long-term strategic risks in the uncertain regional environment. Third, such a two-pronged approach, which took shape since the 1990s under Mahathir Mohamad, has endured beyond the Mahathir era. Indeed, under his successors Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Najib Tun Razak, Malaysia has continued to pursue a policy of dualism vis-à-vis China. What explains the enduring continuity of the hedging approach in Malaysia's China policy? This paper adopts a neoclassical realist perspective, arguing that the continuity is attributed to both structural and domestic factors. Domestically, the changing bases of political legitimation in the multi-ethnic country, which highlight the increasing salience of economic performance and political inclusiveness as key sources of moral authority to the UMNO-led coalition government, have necessitated the succeeding leaders to continue pursuing a pragmatic policy aimed at ensuring a stable and productive relationship with China, not least to gain from the steadily growing bilateral trade and the giant's growing outward investment. Structurally, Malaysia's position as a smaller state has compelled it to be constantly vigilant about the uncertainty of state intentions and inter-great power relations, which in turn demands it adopts contingent measures to hedge against longer-term risks. It is such structural and domestic determinants that have fundamentally shaped the country's policy towards China in general and the South China Sea issue in particular, which characteristically bears the mark of a delicate dualism, i.e. an explicit preference for engaging China through bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, but one that is backed by a low-key practice of maintaining and strengthening its traditional military links with its Western security partners.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Cold War, Diplomacy, International Trade and Finance, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
China, Malaysia, and Israel