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191. China... from the Sea: The Importance of Chinese Naval History

Author:
Benjamin Armstrong
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Center for Contemporary Conflict
Abstract:
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, China has become a source of increased focus for military strategists and policy-makers throughout the West and most especially in the United States. With the largest army in the world and obvious aspirations to, at the very least, regional power they mark one of the most significant potential threats to American military supremacy. Studies of China's martial past have been included in the professional reading of many officers in the United States Armed forces. However, there is still one common misperception with regard to China's military history. China, despite what many have written, has an important naval heritage. This heritage may not have been central to the study of Chinese history in the past; however it is important for study in the future. The Chinese government itself has included examples from this history as inspiration for their modern policy and strategy. With this fact in mind it is of vital importance that historians and strategists understand China's naval past.
Political Geography:
United States, China, America, and Soviet Union

192. China and Russia: Common Interests, Contrasting Perceptions

Author:
Bobo Lo
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
President Vladimir Putin's visit to China in March 2006 was in many respects a spectacular success. The Russian delegation was the largest and most diverse in post-Soviet times. The number of agreements, 29, represented a record in the history of the relationship. And the atmosphere was the most positive of any of Putin's overseas trips. Surveying the landscape of the relationship, there seems nothing not to like. The 4,300 km common border has finally been demarcated in its entirety; Moscow and Beijing agree on practically every regional and international issue of consequence – Chechnya, Taiwan, Iraq, Iran. Official trade has multiplied nearly six-fold during Putin's presidency; and the first ever Sino-Russian joint military exercises took place in August 2005.
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, Taiwan, Beijing, Soviet Union, Chechnya, and Moscow

193. Was Liberty Really Bad for Russia? Part I

Author:
Leon Aron
Publication Date:
08-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
It is very much in the Russian and, even more so, Soviet political tradition for rulers to deprecate their predecessors. As they climb up the power ladder, the would-be Kremlin occupants must profess complete loyalty to the current leader in order to succeed. Once in power, the country's new masters bolster their authority by dissociating themselves from previous leaders. Along with the weakness of the country's political institutions, which undermines the legitimacy of the transitions, such repudiations almost inevitably result in the personalization of power, as the new occupants mold the political, social, and economic systems to their liking. Hence, Russian and—again and especially—Soviet history have often looked like a succession of very distinct personal political regimes—indeed, sometimes different states under the same name.
Topic:
Civil Society, Cold War, Democratization, and Politics
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union

194. Was Liberty Really Bad for Russia?

Author:
Leon Aron
Publication Date:
09-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Part I of this Russian Outlook dealt with what might be called the errors of commission, or false attribution, in the "chaos-of-the-1990s" stereotype, which became a major theme of the Putin Kremlin's propaganda. The economic crisis of that era, mostly inherited from the decaying Soviet economy, was laid at the revolutionary regime's door. Yet the "chaos" legend also contains errors of omission, for, on closer inspection, there was a great deal in the 1990s besides the alleged "chaos."
Topic:
Civil Society, Democratization, Government, Politics, and Privatization
Political Geography:
Russia, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union

195. Why Did the Communist Party Reform in China, But Not in the Soviet Union? The Political Economy of Agricultural Transition

Author:
Johan Swinnen and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The dramatic transition from Communism to market economies across Asia and Europe started in the Chinese countryside in the 1970s. Since then more than a billion of people, many of them very poor, have been affected by radical reforms in agriculture. However, there are enormous differences in the reform strategies that countries have chosen. This paper presents a set of arguments to explain why countries have chosen different reform policies.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Government, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union

196. Small is Feasible: Pondering the Future of EU-Russian Relations

Author:
Fabrizio Tassinari and Marius Vahl
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The International Spectator
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
The European Union and Russia are preparing to negotiate a new comprehensive agreement at a time when their bilateral relations have become increasingly prickly. On the one hand, Vladimir Putin's Russia is perceived as having gone undesirably far in reverting to a semi-authoritarian state and in exerting economic and political pressures on some pro-Western, former Soviet states. On the other hand, the EU's Russia policy remains ambivalent because of the continuing deference towards Moscow of a number of large European countries and the confrontational posture of some new EU member states. Other factors add to this deteriorating state of affairs. For one, there are a number of legal complications coming from the shape and scope of the new agreement. Perhaps more importantly, there are several political uncertainties, first and foremost the definition of those "common values" upon which the new treaty should be based. To get out of this quandary, the two sides will have to scale down their ambitions on the new agreement. A mutually acceptable formula might imply the negotiation of a concise "framework" treaty, accompanied in due time by sector-specific agreements.
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Soviet Union

197. Asia: Towards Security Cooperation

Author:
Michael Vatikiotis
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Asia has enjoyed a remarkable climate of peace and security in the post-Cold War era. However, there is much that could have gone wrong. Tensions on the Korean peninsula, in the Taiwan Straits, between China and India, India and Pakistan – the hot spots and fault lines of tension are well known and warily watched. Rarely has serious conflict erupted, though. The last major 'conventional' conflict in Asia was the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, though smaller wars have been fought between states in Kashmir and along the Chinese border with Vietnam. The region is also wracked by protracted internal disputes that generate sustained fears for internal security and destabilized inter-state relations. All the same, for a region that lacks the kind of sophisticated collective security arrangements that have kept the northern hemisphere at peace for the past sixty years, Asia's security environment is remarkably benign.
Topic:
Security, Development, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, India, Taiwan, Asia, Soviet Union, Vietnam, Kashmir, Korea, and Korean Peninsula

198. Central Asia and the Caucasus: A Vulnerable Crescent

Author:
Anna Matveeva and Thomas de Waal
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
The Caucasus and Central Asia – eight countries of the former Soviet Union stretching to the south of Russia and to the west of China – form a chain of weak states, vulnerable to conflict, extremism, and spillover from potential instability in the Middle East, Iran and Afghanistan. Once on the path of the Silk Road, these countries are still transit routes in the world economy rather than major economic players. The overarching problem for the Caucasus countries situated on the eastern fringe of Europe – Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, as well as the Russian North Caucasus – is unresolved conflicts that hamper development and poison politics. The Caucasus has become a field for latter-day Great Power battles of influence, in which competing policy agendas, sometimes even from within the same state, make for a fragmented international response that hampers regional integration and development. The autocratic states of Central Asia by contrast risk isolating themselves from the wider world, becoming a source of danger because of their deliberate remoteness. Here the globalized threats of drug trafficking and militant Islam are the biggest potential source of instability. Multilateral organizations such as the UN are still struggling to articulate a coherent response to the two regions as a whole, tending to make more narrow interventions that have limited impact.
Topic:
Security and Development
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Russia, China, Europe, Iran, Central Asia, Asia, Soviet Union, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia

199. China's Foreign Policy toward North Korea—A US Perspective

Author:
Robert Sutter
Publication Date:
09-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of East-West and Sino-Soviet competition for influence in the Korean peninsula after the cold war, Beijing adjusted Chinese relations to take advantage of economic and other opportunities with South Korea, while sustaining a leading international position in relations with North Korea. In contrast with steady Chinese efforts to use post cold war conditions in order to advance China's relations with South Korea, Chinese foreign policy toward North Korea has been characterized by reactive moves in response to abrupt and often provocative behavior of North Korea, and, to a lesser degree, the United States.
Political Geography:
United States, China, Beijing, North Korea, and Soviet Union

200. Transformation Under Fire: A Historical Case Study with Modern Parallels

Author:
Raymond A. Kimball
Publication Date:
10-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
Rarely have an army's fortunes shifted so much in such a short period. At the end of 1917, the Imperial Russian Army, bled dry and exhausted from the twin blows of tsarist incompetence and prolonged modern warfare, essentially ceased to exist. The military situation in 1920 could scarcely have been more different. The Red Army's military supremacy over the territory of the soon-to-be Soviet Union was unchallenged and acknowledged by the world's major powers. All of this made what happened next even more shocking. Later that same year, the Soviets would find themselves utterly defeated and thrown back by the Polish Army, an organization nearly one-tenth the size of the Red Army fielded by a state that had been obliterated from existence for 120 years and reconstituted only 2 years prior. This paper illustrates the hazards inherent in transforming a military under fire, and provides some cautionary lessons for the current U.S. efforts at military transformation.
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Soviet Union