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11. "Explaining Japanese Antimilitarism: Normative and Realist Constraints on Japan's Security Policy"

Author:
Yasuhiro Izumikawa
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Since the late 1990s, Japan has sent increasing numbers of its military forces overseas. It has also assumed a more active military role in the U.S.-Japan alliance. Neither conventional constructivist nor realist approaches in international relations theory can adequately explain these changes or, more generally, changes in Japan's security policy since the end of World War II. Instead, Japan's postwar security policy has been driven by the country's powerful antimilitarism, which reflects the following normative and realist factors: pacifism, antitraditionalism, and fear of entrapment. An understanding of the influence of these three factors makes it possible to explain both Japan's past reluctance to play a military role overseas and its increasing activism over the last decade. Four case studies-the revision of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in 1960, the anti-Vietnam War period, increases in U.S.-Japan military cooperation during détente, and actions taken during the administration of Junichiro Koizumi to enhance Japan's security profile-illustrate the role of antimilitarism in Japan's security policy. Only through a theoretical approach based on analytical eclecticism-a research strategy that considers factors from different paradigms-can scholars explain specific puzzles in international politics.
Topic:
Security and War
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, and Vietnam

12. The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism

Author:
Geoffrey P. Macdonald
Publication Date:
05-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Woodrow Wilson School Journal of Public and International Affairs
Institution:
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
Abstract:
Andrew Bacevich is angry. He has tirelessly criticized a war that has raged on longer than World War II. As a self-proclaimed conservative and Vietnam veteran, his anti-Iraq War activism is uniquely cogent. On the campus of Boston University, where he teaches International Relations, Bacevich is a folk hero, lending his unimpeachable credentials to the left-leaning inclinations of his students. But his activism has not stopped the war. It didn't stop his son, Army First Lieutenant Andrew Bacevich, Jr., from being deployed to Iraq. And it didn't stop 27-year-old Andrew from being killed-in-action in May of 2007. Andrew Bacevich is angry. As he well should be.
Topic:
International Relations and War
Political Geography:
Iraq, America, and Vietnam

13. Key Points from "Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership"

Author:
Madeleine Albright
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:
America's next president will face an array of problems more daunting than any since the Vietnam era and will be constrained to do so with US assets—military, economic and political—under severe strain. Our new leader must therefore arrive in the Oval Office equipped not only with the right programs, but also the right temperament to handle the world's most challenging job. Qualifications include analytical skill, an understanding of global strategy, a willingness to recognize and correct mistakes, and a gift for persuading others to do—and even more important to want—what we want.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Development, Diplomacy, and War
Political Geography:
America and Vietnam

14. War and Peace in Early Modern East Asia: Hierarchy and Legitimacy in International Systems

Author:
David C. Kang
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
Abstract:
Between 1368 and 1841 – almost five centuries – there were only two wars between China, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. These Sinicized states crafted stable relations with each other, and most of the violence and instability arose between these states and the nomadic peoples to the north and west of China and Korea. Building on the “new sovereignty” research in international relations, I argue that the status quo orientation of China and established boundaries created a loose hierarchy within anarchy that had much to do with the period of peace. Built on a mix of legitimate authority and material power, the China-derived international order provided clear benefits to secondary states, and also contained credible commitments by China not to exploit secondary states that accepted its authority. Korean, Vietnamese, and even Japanese elites consciously copied Chinese institutional and discursive practices to craft stable relations with China, not to challenge it. International systems based on legitimacy and hierarchy are not unique to early modern East Asia, and incorporating these insights into our theories of international society has implications for the contemporary world as well.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, International Relations, Regional Cooperation, Treaties and Agreements, War, and International Security
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Israel, Asia, and Vietnam

15. Winning the Next War

Author:
William Wunderle and Gabriel Lajeunesse
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of International Security Affairs
Institution:
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
Abstract:
The United States has conducted irregular warfare and counterinsurgency campaigns since its inception. In fact, part of America's war of independence was an insurgency against the British. Since its independence, the U.S. has fought counterinsurgency campaigns against the Native Americans, against the South during the Civil War, in the Philippines, and, of course, in Vietnam. The experiences of America's friends and allies are similar. Among others, the British fought counterinsurgencies in Malaya and Northern Ireland, the French in Indochina, Algeria, and Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Israelis conducted counterinsurgency operations during the two major Palestinian uprisings (1987-1993 and 2000-2005) in the West Bank and Gaza. Yet, America's ability to conduct counterinsurgency has been more ad hoc than institutionalized.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, Israel, Vietnam, Gaza, Algeria, and North Ireland

16. Iraq as a Militia War

Author:
Andrew Exum
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
In the context of debate surrounding U.S. military strategy in Iraq, Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz offers this classic directive: it is essential to understand the nature of the war you are fighting. To this end, the U.S. military in Iraq no longer faces a traditional insurgency conflict -- as those the French fought in Algeria or the United States fought in Vietnam -- in which one faction seeks to undermine and supplant the national government. Instead, the strategic landscape of Iraq today bears far more resemblance to the Lebanese civil war of the 1970s and 1980s, in which various sectarian militias battled each other for control of specific parts of the country. The Iraq war has indeed become a militia war.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and War
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Middle East, Vietnam, and Algeria

17. Reflections on Vietnam and the Iraq War

Author:
Daniel Ellsberg
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Foreign Policy In Focus
Abstract:
I'm often asked whether there aren't big differences between the Iraq War and Vietnam. And I'm always quick to say, of course, there are differences. In Iraq, it's a dry heat. And the language that none of our troops or diplomats speak is Arabic rather than Vietnamese.
Topic:
International Relations, Democratization, Human Rights, and War
Political Geography:
Iraq, Vietnam, and Arabia

18. How to End the Occupation of Iraq: Outmaneuver the War Proponents

Author:
Gareth Porter
Publication Date:
04-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Foreign Policy In Focus
Abstract:
For an anti-war activist of the Vietnam era, the current search for a political strategy for ending the U.S. occupation of Iraq brings to mind the very similar problems facing the movement to end the Vietnam War in 1968-69. In fact, a review of the strategy that the anti-war movement pursued at that juncture of the Vietnam War helps clarify the choices before the present movement and their likely consequences. It should serve as a warning against ignoring the possibility of embracing the negotiation of a compromise peace agreement with those resisting the U.S. occupation as an anti-war strategy.
Topic:
International Relations and War
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Middle East, and Vietnam

19. A Way Out of the Mesopotamian Morass? The Case for a Partitioned Iraq

Author:
Ivan Eland
Publication Date:
10-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Independent Institute
Abstract:
The United States has plunged into an Iraqi swamp. The swashbuckling victory in the first Gulf War led to the most egregious sin that can be made in the military affairs—hubris and underestimation of the enemy. The U.S. and Soviet superpowers made the same mistake respectively in Vietnam in the sixties and seventies and Afghanistan in the eighties. But as those quagmires fade from memory, government officials apparently have to relearn the same lessons.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Democratization, and War
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, Soviet Union, and Vietnam

20. Ten Years Since Oslo: The PLO's "People's War" Strategy and Israel's Inadequate Response

Author:
Joel S. Fishman
Publication Date:
09-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
Israel and the PLO have been confronting each other according to completely different paradigms of conflict. Since the late 1960s, the PLO has adopted a "people's war" paradigm that continued to guide its policies even after the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords. According to the "people's war" paradigm, borrowed from Marxist-Leninist traditions in China and Vietnam, conflict is waged on both the political and military levels, but for militarily weaker guerilla groups, political conflict is more important, especially the delegitimization of an adversary and the division of his society. Prior to 1993, Israel largely responded to the PLO militarily as a terrorist threat, but not politically. After 1993, with the PLO "renouncing" terrorism, Israel embraced the PLO leadership and ignored the signs that the PLO was still engaged in political warfare against it (incitement, reluctance to alter PLO Covenant, UN votes, textbooks). Israeli governments later complained about these symptoms of political warfare, without identifying the cause. Established Israeli traditions place undue emphasis on the narrowly-framed military approach to the detriment of the political, which leaves Israel particularly vulnerable to broad-based strategic deception. Israeli policy-makers must reexamine the assumptions upon which they have based political and military policy over the last decade.
Topic:
Security, Religion, and War
Political Geography:
China, Middle East, Israel, Vietnam, Arab Countries, and Oslo