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11. Twilight: The Erosion of US Control and the Multipolar Future

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
At the conclusion of World War II, with the European powers severely weakened, the United States – the most powerful of Europe’s settler colonies – took over the neo-colonial management of the planet. Now, almost eighty years later, the primacy of the United States has entered twilight. This dossier explores the emergence of a new cold war imposed by the United States on China and the forms of hybrid war that have been utilised against countries that it deems to be a threat.
Topic:
Imperialism, Hegemony, Conflict, and Hybrid Warfare
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

12. Fighting Against Imperialism: The Latin American Approach to International Sanctions

Author:
Jose Ignacio Hernandez
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), Columbia University
Abstract:
The Latin American experience with international sanctions has been mostly as sanctioned states rather than targeting states. This is not merely because Latin American countries have lacked the interest in using sanctions tools but also because of more complex factors, including the historical evolution of Latin American nationhood, a set of cultural values rooted in the defense of national sovereignty, and opposition to any foreign intervention. Although those values were embraced as a result of defending the independence of Latin American nations against European dominance, the values were also applied in intraregional relations in Latin America. As a result, there is not a strong culture of international sanctions imposed by Latin American countries. With few exceptions—such as Cuba—Latin American countries tend to rely on diplomatic negotiations conducted under the nonintervention principle. The unparalleled crisis in Venezuela has produced a change in perspective. While the main actions adopted regarding this crisis were undertaken to facilitate diplomatic negotiations with the Venezuelan government, Latin America—particularly within the framework of the Organization of American States (OAS)—has started to implement international sanctions as a tool to promote a transition in Venezuelan governance. This shift has not been without controversy in Latin America. Consequently, the principle of nonintervention as relates to the use of sanctions is under stress in Latin America and merits re-examination. This paper, part of the International Security Initiative at the Center on Global Energy Policy, reviews the history of international sanctions in Latin America in the context of broader diplomatic developments.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Imperialism, Sanctions, and Negotiation
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and North America

13. Negotiating Security in Latin America, How Russia Regained a Foothold in the Western Hemisphere

Author:
Taylor Valley
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on International Policy (CIP)
Abstract:
What is Russia’s geopolitical game in Latin America? Since the early-2000s, we have witnessed bilateral trade spike by 44 percent, around 40 diplomatic visits by high-ranking Russian officials, and budding military cooperation through joint-naval exercises in Latin American ports. Some explain this growth as Russian efforts to create multipolarity in the western hemisphere and undermine U.S. influence in the region. This narrative of bilateral relations disregards a key element that may be driving Russia’s engagement— the role of Latin American leadership.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and Imperialism
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Latin America, North America, and United States of America

14. China in Latin America: Major Impacts and Avenues for Constructive Engagement

Author:
Margaret Myers and Rebecca Ray
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Carter Center
Abstract:
Over the past two years, U.S. officials have sought to highlight China’s negative effects on the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region’s development and stability, whether to U.S. or Latin American audiences. As U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a trip to Mexico City in October 2018, "China has invested in ways that have left other countries worse off." Pompeo and other U.S. officials have also taken this message elsewhere in the region, cautioning against the effects of Chinese engagement on LAC governance, security, regulatory capacity, and financial stability, and in a rage of other areas. For Latin Americans, though, relations with China aren’t so black and white. China may be an imperfect partner for LAC, as many in the region will attest, but it is an increasingly important one. After nearly two decades of enhanced Chinese economic engagement with the region, LAC governments and economic sectors rely heavily on China’s economic partnership and inputs. China is LAC’s second most important trading partner, second most important source of mergers and acquisitions foreign direct investment, and top source of development finance. For South America, China’s importance is even more pronounced: It became the top export destination for South American goods in 2010. China’s effects on regional development are also mixed, as we demonstrate below. China’s contributions to the region’s economic growth are well-documented, but Chinese demand for raw materials has also accentuated regional dependence on these commodities, in a process of “re- primarization” in South American economies, with troubling implications for the region’s long-term development prospects. Chinese investments have transformed the energy sectors in some countries, but the environmental effects of hydroelectric and other projects will be long-lasting in certain cases. To achieve a wide range of development objectives—economic, environmental, and social—LAC must depend on increasingly well-planned and coordinated engagement from all of its major economic partners and donor nations, including China. This is especially true in times of growing uncertainty, as the region grapples with humanitarian and migration crises, growing populist tendencies, relentless corruption, and climate change, among other factors.
Topic:
Security, Corruption, Imperialism, International Cooperation, Governance, and Regulation
Political Geography:
United States, China, Asia, Latin America, and North America

15. Defying the System: The Origins of Anti-Westernism in the Non-Western World and the Case of Iran

Author:
Oguzhan Goksel
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Turkish Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
Institution:
Sakarya University (SAU)
Abstract:
Anti-Western sentiment is a common feature of politics in many non-Western societies such as China, Cuba, Venezuela, Turkey, Iran and various Arab countries. Challenging the scholarly literature that depicts anti-Westernism as an “irrational, extremist and fundamentalist reaction to the cultural hegemony of the West,” this article conceptualizes anti-Westernism as a rational reaction to –and an unsurprising consequence of– the problematic political/economic interactions between non- Western societies (e.g. Iran) and Western powers (e.g. Britain, France and the US). Iran is a particularly noteworthy case because anti-Westernism played a key role in the formation of the modern state in the country. The foreign policy behavior of Iran in our time and the historical trajectory that produced the Islamic Republic after the 1979 Revolution cannot be understood without acknowledging anti-Westernism. The origins of anti-Westernism in Iran are explored in this article through interpreting the path dependent historical experience of the country, with a particular emphasis on the relations between Iran and Western countries. In contrast to works that attribute Iran’s anti-Western foreign policy to the Islamist ideology of the post-1979 era, it will be argued that hostility to the Western-dominated international political system should actually be traced to the transformation in which the Iranian national identity evolved in the early 20th century.
Topic:
Imperialism, Islamism, Revolution, and Anti-Westernism
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Iran, Middle East, and North America

16. Reaching Georgia's Occupied Territories through Exchanges

Author:
Julius Tsal
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Ambassadors Review
Institution:
Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:
In 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi initiated people-to-people (P2P) exchanges to the United States for agricultural scientists and university leaders from the Russian-occupied Georgian territory of Abkhazia. An initial study tour in the spring of 2018 focused on mitigating the devastating agricultural damage from the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB), and a second tour in the fall of 2018 focused on higher education leadership. Despite political sensitivities and logistical hurdles, such people-to-people programs increase participants’ understanding of the United States and give them an unbiased, first-hand experience of American civil society, its culture of innovation and democratic values. For otherwise isolated Abkhaz thought leaders, these experiences directly counter Russian anti-Western propaganda and demonstrate the benefits of Georgia’s pro-Western choice.
Topic:
Agriculture, Civil Society, Imperialism, and Propaganda
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, Eastern Europe, Georgia, and North America

17. Venezuela: First episode of the new Cold War?

Author:
Slobodan Pajovic
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and International Relations (IRMO)
Abstract:
Since the beginning of 2019, Venezuela has been in the focus of international politics because of its political and institutional crisis, together with its economic and social collapse generated in 2013, transformed into a regional and international crisis. The exit of some estimated three to four million emigrants mostly to neighboring countries of human rights and democratic values, the authoritarian regime of socialist orientation, the current American strategy of strengthening its political and strategic influence in Latin America, the presence of significant non- regional emerging global factors, as well as the cyclical changes of political parties in power in this part of the world. Accordingly, this crisis tests the hemispheric and global leadership of has additionally deepened the contexts of theUS, the influences of emerging global powers the regional crisis including also the security aspect. In short, the crisis can be described as oscillating between the issues of defense like China, Russia, India or Turkey, recently, and the potential of Latin American regionalism and political consensus.
Topic:
Imperialism, Migration, Regional Cooperation, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States, Latin America, Venezuela, and North America

18. The Art of the Revolution will be Internationalist

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
04-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
This dossier traces the history of graphic production in post-Revolutionary Cuba, particularly through OSPAAAL. Cuba, once a darling of U.S. imperialism, would carve its own path towards socialism. Among the Revolution’s inheritances was a well-developed means of mass communication and a U.S.-trained labour force. Overnight these advertising experts and art school kids would turn into the graphic artists of the Cuban Revolution. Like the artists of the Cuban Revolution, it is the imperative of cultural workers of today to seize what we know in order to dream and to construct a world that is not only possible, but necessary.
Topic:
Communism, Imperialism, Arts, Culture, and Revolution
Political Geography:
Cuba and North America

19. Projecting stability in practice? NATO’s new training mission in Iraq

Author:
Kevin Koehler
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
Since the 2016 Warsaw Summit, the notion of projecting stability has made a return to NATO’s policy discourse. A central tenet of this agenda is the idea of securing the Alliance by stabilizing its periphery: “If our neighbours are more stable, we are more secure”, says the Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. At the core of this approach is therefore an attempt at shaping the security environment in NATO’s neighbourhood, relying to a significant extent on partnership with individual countries and other international organizations. But how does projecting stability work in practice? Can NATO develop a type of small-footprint, large-effect interaction with partners in its periphery? How can potential interest asymmetries between NATO and partners be addressed in this context? The new NATO
Topic:
NATO, Imperialism, Regional Cooperation, and Political stability
Political Geography:
Iraq, Europe, North Atlantic, Middle East, and North America

20. Seven Chinas A Policy Framework

Author:
David Kelly
Publication Date:
02-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
The debate about China’s changing role in global affairs is often framed as a dichotomous choice between a peacefully rising China that seeks to be a constructive stakeholder and an increasingly dangerous China that is challenging the status quo, both in terms of its norms and the place of the United States. The reality is more complicated. There are not only signs of both elements, but the foundations shaping Chinese behavior is multifold. Most international relations scholars examine China through one or another version of realism or liberalism. David Kelly, head of research at China Policy, offers an alternative approach that examines the nature of Chinese identity, or rather, Chinese identities, plural, and how they exhibit themselves in Chinese foreign policy. Using his renowned skills in reading Chinese-language official documents and the broader commentary, Kelly teases out seven narratives that Chinese tell themselves and the world, and he provides a codebook for explicating shifting Chinese behavior in different arenas. Kelly concludes that some of these narratives facilitate cooperation, but most point toward deep-seated tensions between China and the West in the years ahead.

Topic:
Foreign Policy, Globalization, Imperialism, and Conflict
Political Geography:
United States, China, Asia, North America, and Asia-Pacific