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41. The persistence of the US-led alliances in the Asia-Pacific: an order insurance explanation

Author:
Jae Jeok Park
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
Alliance persistence in the face of the disappearance of mutual threat or the deterioration of mutual threat perceptions between allies comprises the major concern of this article. This article argues that an alliance (whose primary threat-centric rationale has significantly diminished, if not disappeared) persists if two conditions are met: (i) the alliance serves as an essential arrangement for pursuing an 'order insurance strategy' (which is termed in this article as 'alliance for order insurance') and (ii) the allies invest for such benefits with arrangements to ensure alliance preservation against challenges that arise as a result of alliance mismanagement (which is termed in this article as 'insurance for alliance'). To test this argument, this article evaluates the persistence of the United States-Australia alliance in the post-Cold War period. Also, to achieve some basis for falsification, it explores the discontinuation of the United States-New Zealand leg of ANZUS since the mid-1980s and the United States-Philippines alliance during most of the 1990s.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand

42. The Killing Zone

Author:
John McNeil
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
Stephen Rabe is an academic historian with an ax to grind, and he grinds it well. He begins this book by explaining that he is under no illusions about the character of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He visited former KGB prisons in Latvia, befriended Czechs persecuted for showing insufficient enthusiasm for the Red Army invasion of Prague in 1968, and educated himself about the many nefarious aspects of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe. But his point here is to draw attention to the nasty Cold War conduct of the United States in its own backyard, Latin America. Rabe finds American Cold War triumphalism objectionable in general and specifically because it overlooks the election-rigging, coups d'état, and massacres to which the U.S. government contributed in Latin America. He does not claim that these deeds were equally as evil as those perpetrated by the Kremlin. But he vigorously argues that they were unnecessary in every sense and did nothing to advance the American cause in the Cold War. He maintains that U.S. Cold War policy in Latin America “helped perpetuate and spread violence, poverty, and despair within the region.” The many U.S. interventions – to use a gentle term – in Cold War Latin America were first presented [within the bureaucratic and political organs of the U.S. government] as helpful or even necessary measures to secure the American hemisphere from communist or Soviet power. When they were not kept secret, the interventions were then marketed to the American public with the same Cold War raison d'état. Rabe argues that these efforts at justification were at best based on ignorance and at worst on calculated dishonesty. U.S. officials consistently overestimated, and sometimes deliberately exaggerated, Soviet activities in Latin America, which were modest indeed compared to Soviet engagements in other world regions. Moreover, the ill-advised U.S. interventions alienated Latin American populations and contributed to anti-American popular and political sentiment throughout the region. To borrow a phrase from Talleyrand, the interventions were worse than crimes, they were blunders
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States and Latin America

43. Diversion of Weapons within Peace Operations: Understanding the Phenomenon

Author:
Eric G. Berman and Mihaela Racovita
Publication Date:
08-2013
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
Driven by the new security challenges of the post-Cold War period, peacekeeping has increased in tempo, scope and complexity. Missions have taken on broader mandates, with greater responsibilities, such as the protection of civilians, disarmament, demobilisation, and the reintegration of former combatants, and security sector reform. In this context, peacekeeping operations must overcome political, financial and operational challenges before they are even deployed. Once on the ground, peacekeepers become increasingly the targets of violence and crime. A former U.S. Senior Adviser on Darfur commented in October 2013: "It's kind of open season on UNAMID." This situation is not limited to Darfur. Rather, 'protecting the protectors' and their assets across missions and contexts has turned into a challenge in its own right.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Cold War, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
United States

44. Two Concepts of Liberty: U.S. Cold War Grand Strategies and the Liberal Tradition

Author:
Brendan Rittenhouse Green
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Realist, liberal, constructivist, and hybrid theories of international relations agree that the United States made historic commitments to the defense of Europe shortly after World War II. These commitments, however, were neither as intense nor as sweeping as many claim. Initially, Washington sought withdrawal from Europe through a strategy of buck-passing.Only after a decade and a half did it adopt the familiar balancing grand strategy providing for a permanent presence in Europe. This shift suggests the need for a new theory to explain U.S. grand strategy, both past and present.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Washington

45. ASEAN's Future and Asian Integration

Author:
Joshua Kurlantzick
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
In a region largely bereft of regional organizations and long divided by the Cold War, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been the most significant multilateral group for the past forty-five years. Since the end of the Cold War, ASEAN has grown increasingly influential. While much of the West and most emerging markets continue to suffer because of the 2008 global recession, the leading ASEAN economies have recovered and are thriving. Perhaps most important, ASEAN has helped prevent interstate conflicts in Southeast Asia, despite several brewing territorial disputes in the region.
Topic:
Cold War, Development, Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and Asia

46. "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

47. No Hedging in Canberra: The Australia-US Alliance in the "Asian Century"

Author:
Nick Bisley
Publication Date:
04-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell has just completed a lightning visit to Australia for formal discussions with newly installed Foreign Minister Bob Carr. In spite of the political turmoil that brought Carr to office, the Australia-US alliance is in the best shape of its 60-year history. Having begun as a Cold War convenience, about which the United States was not enthusiastic, it has become a key part of Washington's regional role and a cornerstone not only of Australia's defense and security policy, but of its broader engagement with the world. The arrival in early April of the US Marine Corps to begin six-month training rotations in Darwin is emblematic of the alliance's standing and its evolution.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Cold War, Diplomacy, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
United States, Washington, Asia, and Australia/Pacific

48. The Emerging Strategic Dynamic in Southeast Asia

Author:
Marvin C. Ott
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Southeast Asia, long quiescent in a turbulent international environment, has suddenly become the focal point of what promises to be the signature strategic contest of the 21st century—between the United States and China. But the evolving dynamic is far more complex than a simple binary face-off between an established superpower and an emerging rival. The overarching backdrop is the profound and ongoing economic transformation of Asia. Three centuries of global economic, political and military domination by the industrialized West has given way to a fundamentally new configuration. Economic modernization that began with Japan has spread to the Sinicized populations of the region and beyond, including Southeast Asia. The global center of economic gravity has shifted westward across the Pacific—and economics is the foundation of power. The world has entered the oft-touted “Asia-Pacific Century.”
Topic:
Cold War, Communism, and Power Politics
Political Geography:
United States, China, America, and Southeast Asia

49. 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

50. 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