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41. Managing Global Disorder: Prospects for U.S.-China Cooperation

Author:
Council on Foreign Relations
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Emerging challenges to international order require cooperation between the United States and China, two countries that share a common interest in preventing the world from becoming more dangerous and disorderly. U.S.-China relations are becoming more strained and antagonistic, however, and the prospects for cooperation appear to be receding. To explore whether there are still grounds for cooperation on issues of common concern between the two countries, in March 2018 the Center for Preventive Action (CPA) at the Council on Foreign Relations convened a group of fifteen experts from the United States and China for the workshop “Managing Global Disorder: Prospects for U.S.-China Cooperation.” CPA partnered with Peking University’s School of International Studies in Beijing for the workshop and also met with experts at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing and the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies in Shanghai. During the workshop, President Donald J. Trump announced plans to impose about $60 billion in new tariffs on Chinese imports. While trade was a major topic of discussion, it was by no means the only area discussed. Workshop participants assessed conflicting views of the sources of global disorder and examined areas of global governance such as international trade, development, the environment, and the future of various multilateral institutions. They also discussed the most pressing security challenges in East and Southwest Asia. Participants highlighted the need for a greater understanding between the United States and China on the evolving international order. No major transnational problems will be solved without some cooperation between the two powers. It is therefore imperative that the two countries avoid a further deterioration of the relationship and instead identify areas of potential cooperation.
Topic:
International Cooperation, International Trade and Finance, Tariffs, and Social Order
Political Geography:
United States, China, Asia, and North America

42. The U.S.-Southeast Asia Relationship: Responding to China’s Rise

Author:
Council on Foreign Relations
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Although the Barack Obama administration rhetorically made Southeast Asia a centerpiece of its “rebalance to Asia” strategy, the administration still largely focused on the Middle East and Europe, and Southeast Asia remained a low U.S. policy priority. The Obama administration did try to boost U.S. economic ties with Southeast Asia in 2016 by forging the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but that trade deal was broadly unpopular in the United States. The following year, the Donald J. Trump administration ended U.S. participation in the TPP, and it also suggested launching punitive economic measures against Southeast Asian states currently running trade surpluses with the United States. Many Southeast Asian leaders now worry that Washington has no clear security or economic strategy for the region, other than applying pressure on Beijing to respect freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. In this perceived void of U.S. leadership and strategy, workshop participants assessed how Southeast Asia might change as China becomes an increasingly dominant regional security and economic actor. They also discussed the future of U.S. strategic and economic relationships with important partners in the region, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Participants further considered how China might use its growing leverage in Southeast Asia, and whether Beijing’s tactics could backfire. Finally, several workshop participants posited that the United States, China, and Southeast Asian states could cooperate on at least some nontraditional security issues, such as combating piracy and terrorism.
Topic:
Diplomacy, International Cooperation, International Trade and Finance, and Economic Cooperation
Political Geography:
United States, China, Asia, and Southeast Asia

43. Managing Global Disorder: Prospects for Transatlantic Cooperation

Author:
Council on Foreign Relations
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Despite recent turbulence in the transatlantic relationship, the United States and the European Union share a common interest in managing emerging sources of global disorder. To explore prospects for and challenges to transatlantic cooperation, the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations convened an international group of twenty-three experts at the Tufts University Center in Talloires, France, on July 12–13, 2018, for the workshop “Managing Global Disorder: Prospects for Transatlantic Cooperation.” The workshop is the third in a series of meetings supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. It is premised on the belief that the United States, China, the European Union, and Russia not only share a common interest in preventing the world from becoming more dangerous and disorderly, but also that the nature and scope of this task necessitates cooperation among them. Workshop participants discussed their perceptions of the growing sources of disorder in the world, examined areas of strategic cooperation, and explored where the United States and the European Union might work together to address a variety of regional concerns emanating from Africa, China, the Middle East, and Russia. While highlighting how the two can work together to address increasing political instability and violent conflict, participants also cited the importance of the transatlantic relationship in preventing or mitigating the demise of the liberal international order.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, International Cooperation, European Union, and Transatlantic Relations
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, North America, and Atlantic Ocean

44. Contextualizing the "Trump Doctrine": Realism, Transactionalism and the Civilizational Agenda

Author:
Ville Sinkkonen
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
This FIIA analysis situates President Donald J. Trump’s foreign policy in the discursive field of post-Cold War American foreign-policy debates, and assesses the possible perils it poses for US global engagement. The “Trump doctrine” has been built in contradistinction to liberal internationalism, contains civilizational tropes drawn from neoconservatism, and is underpinned by a zero-sum materialist worldview borrowed from realism. Trump’s approach to the international is also transactional, which means he intermittently draws upon (neo)isolationist themes. This Trumpian amalgamation of four American foreign policy traditions can be termed transactionalist realism with civilizational undertones. By embracing this approach to the international arena, Trump and his administration risk eschewing the importance of social relations that legitimize US international conduct, turning inter-cultural struggles into self-fulfilling prophecies, and undermining prudent long-term use of American power. If methodically carried out, the emerging “Trump doctrine” will prove detrimental for the future of US global leadership in a complex 21st-century world.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, International Cooperation, Leadership, and Social Roles
Political Geography:
United States and North America

45. The Sino-Russian and US-Russian relationships: Current developments and future trends

Author:
Marcin Kaczmarski, Mark Katz, and Teija Tiilikainen
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
The great-power system has been in constant change since the end of the Cold War. The US became the hegemonic power, and under its shelter, the European Union was able to transform into a European-wide political body. Soon, a group of leading regional powers started to question the universalist aspirations of the Western-led international order. Two members of this club in particular were not satisfied with the role of a regional hegemon and had more global ambitions. China has already become the largest trading nation globally, and Chinese foreign policy has assumed an assertive tone. China has both the potential to challenge US hegemony, as well as the political will to use it. Russia’s project to achieve a global great-power status, on the other hand, is inspired by its historical identity and its alleged humiliation by the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia longs for recognition of its great-power status in particular from the US. This report focuses on relations between China and Russia on the one hand and the US and Russia on the other. It analyses the current developments and future trends in these relationships, as well as their implications for the EU.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, International Cooperation, International Trade and Finance, and Hegemony
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, Europe, Asia, and North America

46. The “Right to Remain Here” as an Evolving Component of Global Refugee Protection: Current Initiatives and Critical Questions

Author:
Daniel Kanstroom
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
This article considers the relationship between two human rights discourses (and two specific legal regimes): refugee and asylum protection and the evolving body of international law that regulates expulsions and deportations. Legal protections for refugees and asylum seekers are, of course, venerable, well-known, and in many respects still cherished, if challenged and perhaps a bit frail. Anti-deportation discourse is much newer, multifaceted, and evolving. It is in many respects a young work in progress. It has arisen in response to a rising tide of deportations, and the worrisome development of massive, harsh deportation machinery in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Mexico, Australia, and South Africa, among others. This article’s main goal is to consider how these two discourses do and might relate to each other. More specifically, it suggests that the development of procedural and substantive rights against removal — as well as rights during and after removal — aids our understanding of the current state and possible future of the refugee protection regime. The article’s basic thesis is this: The global refugee regime, though challenged both theoretically and in practice, must be maintained and strengthened. Its historical focus on developing criteria for admission into safe states, on protections against expulsion (i.e., non-refoulement), and on regimes of temporary protection all remain critically important. However, a focus on other protections for all noncitizens facing deportation is equally important. Deportation has become a major international system that transcends the power of any single nation-state. Its methods have migrated from one regime to another; its size and scope are substantial and expanding; its costs are enormous; and its effects frequently constitute major human rights violations against millions who do not qualify as refugees. In recent years there has been increasing reliance by states on generally applicable deportation systems, led in large measure by the United States’ radical 25 year-plus experiment with large-scale deportation. Europe has also witnessed a rising tide of deportation, some of which has developed in reaction to European asylum practices. Deportation has been facilitated globally (e.g., in Australia) by well-funded, efficient (but relatively little known) intergovernmental idea sharing, training, and cooperation. This global expansion, standardization, and increasing intergovernmental cooperation on deportation has been met by powerful — if in some respects still nascent — human rights responses by activists, courts, some political actors, and scholars. It might seem counterintuitive to think that emerging ideas about deportation protections could help refugees and asylum seekers, as those people by definition often have greater rights protections both in admission and expulsion. However, the emerging anti-deportation discourses should be systematically studied by those interested in the global refugee regime for three basic reasons. First, what Matthew Gibney has described as “the deportation turn” has historically been deeply connected to anxiety about asylum seekers. Although we lack exact figures of the number of asylum seekers who have been subsequently expelled worldwide, there seems little doubt that it has been a significant phenomenon and will be an increasingly important challenge in the future. The two phenomena of refugee/asylum protections and deportation, in short, are now and have long been linked. What has sometimes been gained through the front door, so to speak, may be lost through the back door. Second, current deportation human rights discourses embody creative framing models that might aid constructive critique and reform of the existing refugee protection regime. They tend to be more functionally oriented, less definitional in terms of who warrants protection, and more fluid and transnational. Third, these discourses offer important specific rights protections that could strengthen the refugee and asylum regime, even as we continue to see weakening state support for the basic 1951/1967 protection regime. This is especially true in regard to the extraterritorial scope of the (deporting) state’s obligations post-deportation. This article particularly examines two initiatives in this emerging field: The International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on the Expulsion of Aliens and the draft Declaration on the Rights of Expelled and Deported Persons developed through the Boston College Post-Deportation Human Rights Project (of which the author is a co-director). It compares their provisions to the existing corpus of substantive and procedural protections for refugees relating to expulsion and removal. It concludes with consideration of how these discourses may strengthen protections for refugees while also helping to develop more capacious and protective systems in the future.
Topic:
Human Rights, International Cooperation, Border Control, Refugees, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Europe, France, South Africa, Germany, Australia, Mexico, and Global Focus

47. Matching Systems for Refugees

Author:
Will Jones and Alexander Teytelboym
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
Design of matching systems between refugees and states or local areas is emerging as one of the most promising solutions to problems in refugee resettlement. We describe the basics of two-sided matching theory used in a number of allocation problems, such as school choice, where both sides need to agree to the match. We then explain how these insights can be applied to international refugee matching in the context of the European Union and examine how refugee matching might work within the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Refugees, and Resettlement
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, and North America

48. The Power of Rapid-Response Public Diplomacy: The IVLP On Demand

Author:
Monica Damberg-Ott
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Ambassador's Review
Institution:
Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:
The U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program, or IVLP, is often referred to as the “gold standard” of exchange programs within the public diplomacy community. The program celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2015, and more than 200,000 International Visitors have engaged with Americans through the IVLP, including more than 505 current or former Chiefs of State or Heads of Government,[1] since its inception in 1940. Margaret Thatcher, Hamid Karzai, and Indira Gandhi, to name just a few, are alumni. But with recent budget constraints and the need to demonstrate immediate, results-driven programming, the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) is placing greater emphasis on its most flexible rapid-response exchanges. Among those programs is the highly adaptable and policy-responsive option: the IVLP On Demand. So how does it differ from the original model, how does it compare, and how might it help show results more quickly? Each year, nearly 5,000 exchange participants come to the United States on the IVLP,[2] a foreign policy tool that helps strengthen U.S. engagement with countries around the world and cultivates lasting relationships. The program connects current and emerging foreign policy leaders with their American counterparts through short-term visits to the United States. Ambassadors often chair the rigorous, annual selection committees that embassies overseas use to nominate key contacts viewed as leaders in their respective fields to participate in the program. Each embassy fills its “IVLP slate” with nominees whose participation in the program helps to advance the mission’s key bilateral or multilateral goals. The majority of IVLP exchanges include visits to four U.S. communities over three weeks, although projects vary based on themes, embassy requests and other factors. From D.C. to St. Louis, from Kalamazoo to Seattle, and everywhere in between, participants meet with professional counterparts, visit U.S. public- and private-sector organizations related to the project theme and participate in cultural and social activities. (Baseball games are usually a big hit!) The program benefits the U.S. economy as well—a large portion of the funding goes back to the states in the form of visitors’ hotels, restaurants, transporta­tion and tourism. The success of the program is in its diversity—regional, political, religious and thematic. As the Exchanges Coordinator for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, I had the opportunity to meet and brief nearly 2,000 International Visitors from 2014-2016. Government officials, teachers, judges, law enforcement officers, human rights activists and other leaders from all over Asia participated in programs exploring topics ranging from judicial reform to cyber-security, from disability rights to maritime security, from food safety to trade regulation. For most participants, the program is transformational. I saw it firsthand in their excitement and gratitude in being selected. I witnessed it in the questions they asked and the discussions that ensued. I read it in the emails I received months later from participants who said the program changed their lives and inspired them to start a project, set up a conference or draft legislation.
Topic:
Diplomacy, International Cooperation, and Economy
Political Geography:
United States and North America

49. Joaquim Nabuco, A Brazilian Light in Washington

Author:
Bruno Rosi
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
AUSTRAL: Brazilian Journal of Strategy International Relations
Institution:
Postgraduate Program in International Strategic Studies, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Abstract:
Throughout the 19th century, Brazil and the United States had little intense bilateral relations. This picture changed when the Baron of Rio Branco decided that his country should privilege relations with the United States. As part of his plan the Baron named Joaquim Nabuco as Brazil's first ambassador to Washington. However, Nabuco had an Americanism distinct from that of the Baron. He believed in the possibility of transforming the American continent into a zone of peace. This Americanism was linked to Nabuco's liberal world view, already evident in his struggle against slavery and in his pre-diplomatic intellectual trajectory.
Topic:
Diplomacy, International Cooperation, Bilateral Relations, and Peace
Political Geography:
United States, Brazil, South America, and North America

50. 100 Days of Trump: What Should Asia Do?

Author:
Brendan Taylor, Greg Fealy, David envall, Bates Gill, Feng Zhang, Benjamin Zala, Michael Wesley, Shiro Armstrong, Anthony Bergin, David Brewster, Robin Davies, Jane Golley, Stephen Howes, Llewelyn Hughes, Frank Jotzo, Warwick McKibbin, Rory Medcalf, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Steven Rood, and Matthew Sussex
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract:
Once again, Trump has broken the mould. The 100-day mark is traditionally used to assess a new administration’s progress in advancing its policy agenda. With Trump, that’s impossible. In foreign policy at least, it’s more appropriate to ask whether at the 100-day mark the Trump administration is any closer to actually having a policy agenda. In no region is this question more pressing than in the Asia Pacific. The Asia Pacific is home to two-thirds of the world’s population, two-thirds of the global economy, and provides two-thirds of all global economic growth. It is the arena for the most serious challenge to America’s international role since it emerged as a global power a century ago. It is also the region that hosts six of the world’s nine nuclear states, and four of those have the fastest growing stockpiles and the most unpredictable nuclear doctrines. Few would dispute that for over 70 years, the United States has both stabilised the Asia Pacific’s fractious strategic affairs and underpinned its rapid economic development. And so the possibility of a radically different American role in the region instituted by the least conventional President in living memory is of vital interest not only to the residents of the region, but to the world as a whole. We asked experts from across the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific to watch and assess the impact of Trump on the Asia Pacific during the first hundred days of his Presidency – and how the region, and Australia should respond. It’s the sort of exercise that the largest and most comprehensive collection of expertise on the Asia Pacific on the planet can do with relish – and with a customary policy eye. The result is a fascinating and varied portrait of how the new administration has affected the world’s most dynamic region, and how the region is likely to react. When viewed together, these essays allow us to reflect on three questions that will be crucial for this region and the world over the next four years and perhaps beyond. What have we learned about Trump and his administration? What do the region’s reactions to Trump tell us about the regional role of the United States in the future? And what do these responses tell us about the Asia Pacific, and its likely trajectory in the near- and mid-term future?
Topic:
International Cooperation, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, Indonesia, Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and Australia