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This article explores the intertwinement of politics, international affairs and culture during the Cold War through a case study of Polish-Dutch cultural relations and the heterogeneous factors that shaped them. The study centres around the turbulent events of 1968 in Poland, and their impact on the international cultural policies of the Polish People's Republic and the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It demonstrates that the cultural field suffered the most immediate consequences of the political decisions taken by both parties – consequences which lasted for a considerable time – thus making it a metaphorical litmus test for the Cold War international relationships. This article reconstructs and analyses Polish and Dutch reactions to the 1968 events and their use of culture for the sake of their own policies – both as a form of protest and as an anti-crisis tool meant to influence the authorities and citizens of the target country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1967, the United States, the Soviet Union, and dozens of other countries ratified the Outer Space Treaty [OST], a signal diplomatic agreement that outlawed nuclear weapons from space, forbade military installations and manoeuvres from the Moon and other celestial bodies, and declared the cosmos a special zone free for all to use and explore, 'the province of all mankind'. At the time and since, political commentary on the accord sharply divides between those believing it to have contributed to the preservation of space from Cold War rivalry and those maintaining that it was a primarily rhetorical document serving as superpower propaganda. This analysis positions the OST in deeper historical context – within the budding field of space law, the growing power of the United Nations, and the aspirations of the Global South – to show that the treaty was neither what its supporters nor detractors had claimed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“... eyewitnesses often err... . If an event suggests some tempting interpretation, then this interpretation, more often than not, is allowed to distort what has actually been seen.” Karl Popper The dismissal, in 1914, of the Belgian neutrality treaty as a “scrap of paper” by the German chancellor has become one of the enduring images of the First World War. Widely used by Allied propaganda during the war, the remark contains certain elements of “myth.” Utilising hitherto untapped archival material, this article examines the final interview between the German chancellor and the British ambassador on 4 August 1914 through the prism of contemporary sources and the later ‘“scrap of paper’ controversy” in the mid-1920s. Beyond the reconstruction of actual events, the article contends that the controversy has epistemological significance for diplomatic historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the Groundnut Scheme, a postwar colonial development project in East Africa infamous for its catastrophic failure. It examines the plans made by British state managers and the Scheme's planners at both the United Africa Company and the Overseas Food Corporation to transform African colonial subjects into stabilized wage-labourers. The paper seeks to understand this social transformation in the context of the contradictory nature of capitalist social relations. This is achieved by using Marx's concept of primitive accumulation: the separation of the worker from their means of subsistence. The paper focuses on two aspects of this process. Firstly, the creation of remote villages for the Scheme's workers, physically separating them from traditional support structures. Secondly, the creation of a new gendered division of labour that would have transformed the homelife of the Scheme's workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have demonstrated that deliberation between political actors in states as well as in International Organizations (IOs) matters because it can impact the quality and legitimacy of outcomes. Yet, we do not know much about how deliberation between political actors can be triggered in practice. Drawing on insights from the deliberative turn that has taken place in Comparative Politics as well as insights from International Relations, this paper inquires how different IO institutional features effect the extent of diplomatic deliberation. Unique and novel survey data shows that there is variation between and within IOs. In some IOs, such as the UNFCCC or CoE, diplomats engage in extensive deliberations, while they do so considerably less in others, such as the UNWTO or IWC. Our paper provides novel insights into the inner working of IOs. In general, diplomatic debates are most pronounced in large IOs with high level delegates that often opt for negotiating behind closed doors. In addition, specific institutional design elements matter in the different stages of an IO policy-cycle, such as procedural rules fostering interaction between diplomats in the negotiation stage or a limited policy scope in the voting stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the formulation of the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) between South Korea (ROK) and the United States. It situates the treaty's development in a more international and greater historical context by tracing how certain preceding developments, especially the existing security arrangements, could have impacted the shaping of the ROK-US MDT. The aim is to better understand the origins of this momentous agreement and what it stands for. A thorough examination of how the alliance was first forged suggests that the "bilateral" ROK-US alliance is more international in character than hitherto thought in a sense that developments in the Americas, Europe and the wider Pacific impacted the shaping of the ROK-US MDT. It seems fair to say this was an early indication that the ROK-US alliance could not be isolated from major unfolding of events elsewhere around the world. This has important implications for Seoul, as the future of ROK-US alliance recently came to the fore as the US continues to wrestle with the developments in the Indo-Pacific. In addition to this contemporary significance, this study also has academic significance as it seeks to fill certain gaps in the existing historiography, such as Washington's experience negotiating the North Atlantic alliance and its bearing on the ROK-US MDT, and thereby offer a more balanced understanding of the ROK-US alliance. This article represents the author's own opinion and in no way reflects the views of the Institute for Military History. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies US-Italian 'stay-behind' cooperation between 1943 and 1976, when it was terminated, within the context of US covert anti-communist activities in Italy. The paper first provides an overview of the operational activities jointly conducted by the US and Italian intelligence between 1943 and 1947, while detailing the US penetrations of the Italian intelligence system and the early stages of development of a US covert network. Subsequently, it delineates the proliferation of US covert anti-communist networks in north-east Italy, the rise of S/B cooperation and its institutionalisation in the Gladio agreement, as well as the CIA pressures for 'offsets' in exchange for its financial support of the Italian S/B programme. In the third part, after analysing the temporary hiatus in US intelligence covert activities, the paper describes the decline and end of US-Italian S/B cooperation and the stepping up of covert operations by both the CIA and the US military intelligence. It demonstrates that Gladio did not occupy a central role in US covert operations against communism until 1976 and that CIA pressures on the Italian military intelligence represented an opportunistic attempt at maximising the 'return' on the financial investment in the Italian S/B programme. The article concludes by summarising the pattern of US intelligence activities in Italy in the period under scrutiny and the role of Gladio, and laying out implications for theory-development in the realm of intelligence cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even a short breakdown in fuel supplies can have profound and dramatic consequences for modern economies. This paper explores a major coal shortage in Central Europe after WWI which shook local societies for two years. The dissolution of the Habsburg Empire in 1918 provides a narrower context to this study, while its immediate focus lies upon the development of diplomatic and economic relationships between Czechoslovakia – a WWI victor and an important coal exporter, and Hungary – a war losing state that was a net coal importer. This paper underlines the scale of the Hungarian reliance on fuels from Czechoslovakia, and suggests that this dependency was one of the chief arguments that motivated Budapest to cede Slovakia to Prague's control and, more generally, to accept the peace terms proposed at the Paris conference. It is safe to conclude that economic considerations played a much greater, if not dominant, role in the adoption of the peace treaty of Trianon of 1920 in Hungary. Overall, the paper demonstrates that cross-border energy interdependence substantially influenced diplomatic relations in Central Europe immediately after WWI, privileging coal-exporting states over coal-importing states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's war reparations began to be paid to Burma and the Philippines in 1956 and ended in 1976. Approximately 65 years have passed since the reparation payment began. The nature of Japan's Official Development Assistance, which has been based on economic infrastructure and prioritises Asia, began with war reparations. Although post-war reparations are relevant to Japan's economic statecraft, previous studies have analysed only the negotiation process for individual countries. No comprehensive historical analysis of war reparations has been conducted so far. This paper fills this gap by analysing the declassified materials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the state-of-the-art Japanese literature based on those materials. It also clarifies the characteristics of war reparations as part of Japan's Official Development Assistance by looking at the projects and goods paid by the reparations in each country. Furthermore, this paper challenges the conventional understanding of previous research on Japan's economic re-entry into Southeast Asia through reparations. The study concludes that reparations were unimportant in increasing Japan's exports to Asian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two competitive approaches are dominant in the debate about the optimal strategy to cope with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Conflict-Management and Conflict-Resolution. This paper suggests looking at them as complementary. It presents four models of peacemaking. The first, the Strong Leader Model, involves drastic unilateral initiatives taken by one of the parties. The second, the Social Reformer Model, encourages domestic reforms within each of the parties. The third, the Political Elite Model, offers various forms of diplomatic interactions and is the dominant experience in Middle East peace processes. The fourth, the Public Assembly Model, proposes the creation of a major Israeli-Palestinian Public Negotiating Congress, based on the multiparty talks used in South Africa and Northern Ireland during the 1990s. This paper concludes that a multifaceted approach, which uses insights from all models in an integrated fashion, has the potential to create a momentum for a revolutionary peacemaking process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been a great number of works on the Suez Crisis, but scarce academic attention has been paid to the process whereby its settlement was achieved. This paper argues that Britain succeeded in securing fairly sufficient Egyptian concessions with support from the US and the UN. The Americans, who had been hostile to the British prior to their agreement to withdraw troops from the Canal Zone, led the effort to make the Egyptians concede during negotiations on the Canal's reopening. Contrary to the prevailing argument that Britain suffered a political defeat because of international pressure, this paper argues that Britain persuaded the US to acquiesce to the de facto arrangement because of the Canal's economic value. The deployment of the UNEF brought a certain level of humiliation to Egyptian sovereignty. As Nasser's influence in Middle Eastern affairs was contained, Britain chose a pragmatic deal with Egypt over the Canal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis challenges the traditional approach to studying the creation of foreign policy within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office [FCO]. Whilst most historical and contemporary research has focused upon the role of the foreign secretary, permanent under-secretary, and senior overseas representatives, this exegesis argues that an overlooked department – the Policy Planning Staff and its contemporary successor, the Policy Unit – has had significant influence over the debate and direction of British foreign policy. Drawing upon documents received under the Freedom of Information Act, archival documents, and interviews conducted with current and previous members of the Staff and the wider FCO, it reveals the rationale for the planning department, its roles, structure, staffing, and influence on foreign policy over time. It concludes that the department has been, and remains, a crucial part of the policy-making process and, therefore, warrants further attention from historians and those interested in contemporary foreign policy analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peace efforts to resolve the Indonesia-Malaysia conflict (1963–1966) became an important agenda in Japan's Southeast Asia policy under Prime Minister (PM) Eisaku Satō. After a cautious start, the Satō government sought to create conditions for the Indonesians and Malaysians to end their armed confrontation (confrontation), which had become a source of destabilisation in Southeast Asia. Japan's peace efforts began under PM Hayato Ikeda (1960–1964), marking the first time after World War II that Tokyo became involved in attempts to mediate a conflict. These endeavours were carried out in a region where mixed feelings lingered towards Japan for its wartime occupation. This paper investigates the factors that shaped the Satō administration's engagement in efforts to resolve the confrontation and sheds light on how Japan's relations with the United States (US) influenced its peace-making role – an aspect on which little has been written in previous studies. The findings indicate that considerations related to Japanese relations with the US were an important driver, although not the only one, of the Satō administration's diplomatic initiatives to resolve the Indonesia-Malaysia armed confrontation. Furthermore, Japan's peace efforts contributed to the US policy in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 1930 was a turning point for Greek-Turkish relations. It was the year that the two neighbouring countries set the foundations for their close diplomatic cooperation that lasted throughout the 1930s. This paper seeks to explain the reasons why Greece decided to pursue such a policy. It is argued that Athens was eager to form a pro-status quo front with Ankara in order to deter the revisionist tendencies of powers in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean (namely Bulgaria and Italy). This was a strategic choice on the part of Greece which explains why it was followed by all the Greek governments (irrespectively of their ideological and/or partisan association) from 1930 until the outbreak of the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the light of the dramatic escalation of the Russian war on Ukraine since February 2022, questions concerning the handling of Russia in the post-Cold War era, and the enlargement of NATO in particular, are timelier than ever. This article scrutinises the views of George F. Kennan, one of the most influential critics of the decision to expand NATO. It is widely accepted that Kennan's opposition to NATO was grounded in realism about international affairs. A careful study of the development of his thinking, based on his private papers and archival sources from many countries, suggests that his perceptions of developments inside Russia and his imagination of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe were more important than any foreign policy doctrine. Kennan's criticism was grounded in his 'geopolitics of sympathy', understood as a fusion of mental maps, sympathies and personal connections towards the region affected by NATO enlargement. However, Kennan's geopolitics must be considered in conjunction with his ideas about international order, in particular with his defence of empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decision to send the British Expeditionary Force to France has been much discussed from the perspective of its long-term military-strategic background. Yet where the eventual decision to despatch the Force in August 1914 is concerned, limited attention has been paid to the role of the British Cabinet, which gave political approval to the step. Some historians have highlighted a Cabinet decision of 1 August against sending the BEF abroad and pointed out that Prime Minister H.H. Asquith and two key ministerial allies – Lord Haldane and Sir Edward Grey – accepted it. No one has provided a full analysis of why this trio of ministers consistently stuck to their position over the following days. Nor does a full explanation exist of the Cabinet's eventual agreement, on 6 August, to approve the despatch of the Force. This analysis addresses these questions, arguing that far from being some reluctant step forced on the interventionists by their anti-war colleagues, Asquith, Haldane, and Grey pre-emptively decided to delay the despatch of the BEF. They did this as a way of preventing the disintegration of the government, while leaving open the possibility that Britain would go to war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Woodrow Wilson’s acceptance of Lloyd George’s demand for the inclusion of military pensions among the reparations payable to the Allies under the Treaty of Versailles was stigmatized by J.M. Keynes inThe Economic Consequences of the Peaceas the most notorious of the President’s alleged breaches of faith with Germany. Keynes’s damning verdict remains virtually unquestioned. This paper reconsiders the case for pensions, suggests that the question was less clear-cut than Keynes insisted, and queries his influential account of Wilson’s supposed gullibility and culpability. The paper then considers Lloyd George’s intentions in the Pre-armistice agreement, from which the Allied right to reparations and pensions were derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since its first meeting in 1954, the Bilderberg Group, a secretive annual conclave of Atlantic elites, has attracted conspiracy theories. Some observers have perceived it as a CIA plot to take the teeth out of the European left, others as a socialist conspiracy to undermine American capitalism. Recently it has been accused of being the seat of a hidden global government, the 'New World Order'. The article draws on newly available archival sources to reconstruct the early history of the Group and test these conspiracy theories, concluding that Bilderberg was neither an entirely American nor European invention, but rather the product of a complex process of Atlanticist interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only David Lloyd George of the Big Four survived to play a major role in early post-war diplomacy, remaining as British premier until October 1922. This analysis assesses the development of his ideas and policies with particular reference to his war aims speech of 5 January 1918, his Peace Conference Fontainebleau Memorandum of 25 March 1919, and the paper handed to the French premier, Aristide Briand, at Cannes on 4 January 1922. John Maynard Keynes accused Lloyd George of being "rooted in nothing," but Edward House's grudging acknowledgement that "With all his faults, he is by birth, instinct and upbringing, a liberal" seems a fairer assessment. He attempted to put his ideas, based on self-determination, trade, disarmament, and a broad sense of what was just, into practice in his ambitious attempt to re-engage Germany and the Soviet Union into the mainstream of international politics at the 1922 Genoa Conference. By then his credibility with his French counterparts and Tories at home was much depleted. Furthermore, he neglected laying the tedious but necessary foundations on which to build his vision and the constraints of international and domestic politics thwarted his proposed panacea to post-war problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1946-1948) or Tokyo IMT is overlooked for its contributions to modern international criminal justice. Convened to hold Japanese leaders accountable for conspiring to commit aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes during the Second World War, the IMTFE was both a groundbreaking judicial undertaking and a pioneering multilateral institution. This distinction makes it a unique vehicle for exploring the fundamental challenges of both international justice and organisation. Institutions like the IMTFE are usually viewed through broad geopolitical, legal, and ideological lenses. Although important, these approaches miss a singularly important dimension of multilateralism: the human contingencies that impact international bodies. Using unique participant sources, this article presents an intimate 'trial's-eye-view' of how working at the IMTFE affected the emotions, psychology, and temperament of its personnel. Participant responses on these very personal levels had profound consequences on the tribunal's proceedings, findings, and legacy. Other factors shaped justice in Tokyo, but the responses identified here were common, and their impact significant. Ultimately, this paper argues that people and their experiences-as much as anything-produced the outcome of justice in Tokyo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines in detail the early years of British planning for a post-war security policy. The first years of the war saw British statesmen and officials consumed by concerns over the military conflict and hesitant to commit the government to specific war aims. This tendency changed by 1940 and 1941, due largely to fears that a failure to counter German propaganda about a 'new order' for Europe would lead European populations to accept Nazi designs for future economic and political order on the continent. Though there was an active, if amorphous, debate taking place within Britain about the future international order and Britain's place within, there remained a lack of concrete policy development. The Atlantic Charter, while a profound moment in hindsight, was not exactly viewed as such by British officials at that time. The true strategic re-direction came in the summer of 1942, when the Foreign Office produced its 'Four Power Plan'. Though the subject of heated debate in the autumn of 1942, the policy recommendation was eventually accepted in principle by the British Cabinet and would go on to define Britain's grand strategy for the remainder of the war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Duncan Sandys' tenure at the Ministry of Defence has usually been seen as one of the major turning points in post-war British defence policy. The consensus is that Sandys was a prime mover in bringing about a contraction of Britain's military capabilities in an era when economic constraints, coupled with the need for Britain to play a full part in maintaining the Western deterrent against Soviet expansion in Europe, dictated that Britain's ability to project military power beyond Europe had to shrink. Sandys' task was “radically pruning Britain's military capacity and adopting a defence posture more in keeping with a medium-size power.” This shift in policy was brought about by the April 1957 Defence White Paper. It amounted to “the biggest change in military policy ever made in normal times.” But emphasising that the Sandys White Paper was part of the wider process of decolonisation and nuclearisation overlooks the fact that in the seven years after it was published the British used conventional forces to mount no fewer than three expeditionary operations outside Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This analysis follows upon an article that previously was published in Diplomacy and Statecraft (2010) on Norman Angell's relationship with French thinking and political life. These two papers suggest international historians should look much more widely for our sources of understanding the policy options of the Powers in the early twentieth century than the habitual diplomatic documents and the like. They also aim to explore how ideas become policies, seen through the eyes of particular key actors. This analysis looks at the relations between the French philosopher, Henri Bergson, and a contemporary major American intellectual, Nicholas Murray Butler, between 1913 and 1932 using their letters as a basis. Bergson's fraught relationship with Butler sheds some light on Franco–American relations during the turbulent decades they knew each other. The article also looks at the thinking of James T. Shotwell, a long-time collaborator with Butler and, more generally, at the approaches to the contemporary international relations of their day that underpin and mark out American and French differences about how to construct a global order after the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Administration of Franklin Pierce has frequently been the object of study for historians of antebellum domestic politics, but few have examined the contribution of the Administration's foreign policy initiatives and objectives. This paper demonstrates that Pierce's foreign policy drew from the same partisan well as his domestic politics: a strict interpretation of power under the Constitution and a strong sense of racial paternalism that had come to define the ideological core of Democratic Party by the 1850s. In the arena of foreign affairs, these two ideological principles worked at cross-purposes, as the adherence to small government hampered efforts to exercise paternalism abroad. Whilst Pierce and his lieutenants thus claimed few actual foreign policy achievements, they nonetheless provided a blueprint for an American empire founded upon racial paternalism that would emerge with a much larger and stronger American government at the close of the nineteenth-century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American policy toward Germany in the years before Pearl Harbor can be approached from any number of angles. A rich literature already exists that emphasizes the geopolitical dimension of the German-U.S. relationship, as well as its economic and ideological complexities. I shall here explore an interpretative line that has been less fully developed in the historiography, namely, the viewpoint of U.S. diplomats posted in Berlin. Their experience in the 1930s throws into vivid relief the dilemmas posed by the Third Reich to FDR's America and its equivocal response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'unification' of the United States Army and Navy under the 1947 National Security Act, combined with efforts to cut expenditures after the Second World War, spawned vicious inter-service competition that undermined civilian control of the military. The nastiest feuds were between the Air Force and Navy, and then the Navy and civilian leaders of the fledgling Department of Defence. What appears as an esoteric dispute over the utility of bombers versus aircraft carriers was merely the tip of a larger struggle over the future of American military strategy. Civilian efforts to end this destructive inter-service rivalry and force the military to live within its budgetary constraints provoked open defiance during the so-called 'Revolt of the Admirals' in 1949. National Security Council Paper 68 offered a way out of this predicament by outlining a quasi-Keynesian fiscal policy based on rearmament that would stimulate the economy enough to offset the additional defence spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary challenges the major conclusion of a 1997 article which appeared in this journal. There, Philip Zelikow argued that previous treatments of the Council of Foreign Ministers 1947 meeting in Moscow erred in their characterization of the role of US Secretary of State Marshall. Earlier studies, in Zelikow’s view, failed to understand that Marshall, refusing to be constrained by the recently announced containment policy, made a serious effort to meet Soviet demands for reparations from current German output. It is contended here that a review of the evidence, especially materials from the John Foster Dulles papers and from British archives, does not support Zelikow’s conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional geo-political analysis has a poor record. In particular it has problems in capturing the complex inter-relationships between key factors, and the positive and negative feedback loops which make prediction difficult if not impossible. This paper argues that new techniques, derived from complexity and network theory, offer powerful new tools for both analysis and strategic decision making. The paper focuses on fuzzy cogntive mapping. An illustrative example examines the prospects for disintegration in China. Although highly simplified, this example shows how this technique is able to derive conclusions difficult or impossible to achieve through traditional analysis, and its potential for strategic decision makers, whether in the private or public sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the career of a British diplomat, William Garnett, whose unusual life has until know been neglected by historians. Garnett's papers, held at Lancashire Record Office, are a particularly rich source for historians of British diplomacy, the British Foreign Office, and overseas travel in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Garnett was often outspoken and indiscreet in his private correspondence and his archive, on which this article draws, provides valuable insights into British representation and British policy in the countries to which he was posted in the period 1902-1919. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over his 35-year career in intelligence, Michael Herman served in Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), worked as secretary to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), and, later, headed several GCHQ divisions until his retirement in 1987. Reflecting on post-Cold War issues in a 1997 paper reproduced here, Herman observes that UK intelligence "has a unique "upper second class" status in world terms", underpinned by our transatlantic ties. While the detail of the book does not extend to modern-day intelligence, many of Herman's observations are timeless: today, intelligence does what is has always done, offered information to improve decisions. [Extracted from the article]

The period known as the “Emergency” in India—June 1975 to March 1977—is widely recognised as one of the darkest episodes in the nation’s 70-year history. Fundamental rights were suspended, whilst the courts had little or no authority. The security services received emergency powers to make arrests without explanation. Although the political, social, and economic history of the Emergency remains well known, there is nothing on the international history of this period. This analysis provides the first contribution to its diplomatic history. Examining the role played by the United States and Britain, in particular, finds basis largely on declassified papers available in the Indian, American, and British national archives as well as a survey of over 300 newspaper articles on and around the Indian Emergency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis charts the emergence of a distinct British nuclear culture during the early post-war years and investigates the various forms of influence that the United States exercised on its development. Beginning with a disastrous breakdown of transatlantic nuclear co-operation in 1946, it establishes the true degree of sovereignty enjoyed by Britain's nuclear engineers as they navigated a new relationship with a senior partner that acted simultaneously as a vital knowledge donor and commercial competitor. The analysis next highlights how competition with Washington's vast atomic project only magnified the pre-existing appreciation of thrift engrained in British physicists, in turn causing them to develop an institutional self-image that prized nuclear capabilities more for their technical integrity than their political convenience. In this way, Britain's atomic specialists identified a role for themselves as the spiritual guardians of a technology that was just beginning to embark upon a global journey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its first 2 decades the Canadian Institute of International Affairs (CIIA), Canada's premier foreign policy think tank, never functioned merely as a neutral and apolitical research organization. Under the leadership of Edgar Tarr, president of the Monarch Life Assurance Company, and in its capacity as the Canadian Council of the transnational Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), in the 1930s and 1940s the CIIA became an instrument that championed Canadian national autonomy and sought to expand Canada's international role, while challenging British imperialism, racism, and Anglo–Saxon dominance. Prominent Canadian diplomats and other officials were complicit in this enterprise, which reached its apogee at the IPR conference held at Mont Tremblant, Quebec, in December 1942. The CIIA's activities during this period revealed the porosity and imprecision of the boundaries in Canada between the state and non-state realms. Throughout World War II, DEA and other Canadian government representatives attended CIIA and IPR conferences as “official non-officials,” effectively cooperating with private individuals in a network of purportedly non-governmental organizations that enabled Canada to exert leverage on the British government, reject British leadership, align itself with the United States, and secure a greater world role. CIIA leaders and Canadian officials also consciously encouraged nationalist forces in India, China, and Southeast Asia that sought to reject colonial rule and Western dominance. CIIA activities thus became part of a web of diplomatic interactions across a transnational network of think tanks within and outside the British Empire that had their own impact upon international affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article uses the largely neglected papers of Sir Henry Bulwer, British minister at Madrid between 1843 and 1848, as a prism through which to view the fourth Earl of Aberdeen's handling of Anglo-French relations, in general, and in Spain over the marriages of Queen Isabella and her younger sister the Infanta Luisa Fernanda, in particular, during a critical period. It highlights the fact that developments in the historiograhical context and the recent availability of important private papers have created an opportunity for a detailed and much-needed re-examination of Aberdeen's foreign policy, Conservative foreign policy, and British policy towards Spain in the 1840s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three Canadian High Commissioners—C.J. Burchell, Victor Odlum and T.C. Davis—served in Australia from 1939 to 1945. Political appointees all, the three men shared generally disparaging and patronising views of Australia and Australians. These views were the product, in part, of a less than close and sometimes acrimonious relationship between these two distant Dominions and Canadian condescension. But American diplomats and even many Australian elites also tended to view the Australians as friendly if uncomplicated people with few organisational or political skills. Unsurprisingly, such views did little to aid the development of close ties between Australia and Canada during the Second World War. They also engendered equally sharp comments about Canada and Canadians from Australian officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada's 2005 International Policy Statement announced that the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces were committed to “whole of government” interventions in failed and fragile states. This led both the Canadian government and outside observers to declare that Canada was successfully harmonising the aims and practices of its internationally focused departments and crafting a synergised approach to interventions in failed and fragile states. Drawing on Halperin and Clapp's organisational theory of bureaucratic politics, this paper argues instead that the foreign affairs and defence departments embraced the idea of failed and fragile states to reinforce their organisational essences and recycle their existing missions, roles, and capabilities. In addition, the departments used a “whole of government” approach to secure their autonomy, fence their respective functions, and enlarge their unique capabilities, under the guise of greater efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It came as no surprise that interest in the temporal dimension of international politics was on the rise at the turn of the millennium. Of no less importance is the prospect for a "historical turn" in international relations theory. This paper attempts to clarify the relationship between historical demarcation and international understanding of epochal change, and the transformation of world order. Two momentous historical demarcations are examined: the Peace of Westphalia, and the New World Order. The paper offers two propositions. First, that the year 1648 remains the most appropriate historical moment to demarcate the beginning of the Westphalian order, and that the attempt to push the historical demarcation to either the late Renaissance, or the nineteenth century, is theoretically and historically counterproductive. Secondly, that the New World Order of 1989-1992 is only the beginning of a transitory period in history with no conclusive shape or substance, and that the term post-Westphalian order is premature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of the Inter-American Democratic Charter by the Organization of American States in 2001 proclaiming the right to democracy in the western hemisphere was hailed by many as a landmark development. Since then, however, constitutionally dubious transitions of democratically elected governments were attempted or took place in Venezuela, Haiti, and Ecuador. This paper examines whether the Charter can and should serve as the institutional guarantor of democratic legitimacy in the Americas. Its conclusions are skeptical. As an external instrument, the Charter is bound to have limited impact when government control or authority is subjected to significant domestic disruptions. The Charter's limitations do not lie with the document itself; rather they are inherent in the structure of the international states system. But the Charter's normative basis would be problematic even if these structural limitations did not exist. Taking its cue from the classical liberal approach to international relations, the paper argues that democracy must ultimately be the choice and responsibility of those who live within its bounds, and not of outside governments or institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores links in the grand strategic outlook of Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, with particular reference to the influence upon both men of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan. It focuses upon an episode during Franklin Roosevelt's tenure as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, when he was in direct correspondence with both Theodore and Mahan on matters of grand strategy and naval policy. The paper argues that Theodore Roosevelt proved a crucial conduit in the formulation of Franklin Roosevelt's grand strategic outlook, both through his promulgation of Mahanian thought and his support of Franklin's correspondence with the Admiral. This in turn would be important later during Franklin Roosevelt's leadership of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experience of the First World War was central to the emergence of a trans-Atlantic elite committed to close collaboration and an international alliance, either formal or de facto, between Great Britain and the United States. The reactions to the conflict of Henry P. Davison, dominant partner in J. P. Morgan and Company, illustrate the manner in which the First World War was catalytic in the creation of an Atlanticist elite. Davison, moreover, experienced something like a personal epiphany during the war, metamorphosing from a hard-driving businessman into an international philanthropist who developed ambitious schemes to remake the world. For seven years, Davison energetically sought to affect the course, outcome, and consequences of the First World War. Fundamental to Davison's worldview were the desirability and necessity of Anglo-American collaboration, on which all his other plans were predicated. When the war ended, Davison proposed almost visionary schemes, on the one hand to provide massive American governmental and private economic assistance to finance European postwar relief and reconstruction efforts and, on the other, to establish an international Red Cross organization that would mount a massive campaign to eradicate global public health problems. Although abortive in the short term, in the longer run his plans proved prophetic, anticipating the post-Second World War Marshall Plan and World Health Organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians have long been aware of how a misleading error made in the compilation of the British Blue Book on the war crisis of 1914 left the Foreign Office open to German charges of doctoring its diplomatic record. But two volumes of previously uncited manuscript documents, still in the custody of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, reveal that the reluctance of British officials to rectify their initial mistake also contributed to the falsification of the analogous French Yellow Book. This paper suggests that the resulting Anglo-French collaboration both constrained and retarded the British government's more active engagement in the debate on the origins of the Great War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the history of NATO, lack of Atlantic communality is a recurring theme. Atlantic cohesion was constantly challenged. However, the discord among NATO members rarely threatened the very existence of the Alliance. The late 1950s and early 1960s witnessed such a rare occurrence. In Europe the question of nuclear sharing triggered the development of blue-prints for a step-by-step replacement of the Atlantic security co-operation by a European Security Community. These blueprints were discussed among the EEC member-states and within the forum of the WEU. This study analyses not only those concepts, but also the role of the SACEUR, General Norstad, in defending NATO from external threats and internal decay. By studying the leeway of the SACEUR, this study tries to establish whether the subsystem of the international system, formed by the nations of the North Atlantic area after the Second World War, should be characterised as a system of hegemonic stability or as a pluralistic security community. The article is based on recently declassified archival material from both sides of the Atlantic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how policy-makers during the Second World War attempted to “learn the lessons” of history from the reparations settlement imposed after the First World War. It shows how these lessons were developed and articulated in the formulation of, in particular, American foreign policy, and also their consequences for foreign policy during and after the Second World War. The paper demonstrates the important role of European advisors in shaping American policy, thereby illustrating that not all American lessons of history were born in the USA. It also draws out how many of these lessons have found an echo in the historiography of German reparations that has emerged over the past fifty years. In both periods the issues of enforcement and compliance, the issues that concern us generally in this volume, dominated the debate between advisors and policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of diplomacy has traditionally focused on relationships and interactions between the governments of nation-states, empires, principalities, and similar politicies. This state-centric view has been challenged in recent times by scholars who have sought to take into account the proliferation of different types of actors in the international arena. This paper address diplomacy between governments and non-state economic entities, a broad category of bodies extending from multilateral economic institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and GATT/World Trade Organization to consultative and knowledge-generating bodies such as the World Economic Forum and International Chamber of Commerce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis explores the efforts of the Lyndon Johnson Administration, for both moral and pragmatic reasons, to distance itself from apartheid South Africa during the 1960s. By 1964, the bilateral relationship with Pretoria was becoming a diplomatic liability for the White House. The international community, especially newly independent Afro-Asian states, was increasingly vocal in condemning South Africa, and domestically, the United States was seeking to remove the legacy of racial discrimination from its own society. Washington's close economic and strategic ties to Pretoria, however, made taking a tough line with South Africa and broader disengagement from the apartheid state a difficult balancing act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The horrific famine China experienced during the early 1960s hot only highlighted the failures of Communist Party policies, but also sparked a debate within the administration of John F. Kennedy over possible US reactions. Several of Kennedy's closest advisors argued for sending American surplus food, while others were adamant that no change should be made in US policy. The final decision to ignore pleas for assistance from the United Nations and other sources was influenced by many issues, including China's relationship to the UN, its aggression toward India and offshore islands, and its role in Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Appraises the complex relationship between Lord Curzon and Lloyd George in the years between the former's appointment as British Foreign Secretary and the latter's fall from office as British Prime Minister in 1922. Theories that explain the fraught relationship between Curzon and George; Association of post-war diplomacy with the perpetuation of pre-war political values; Decision of France to sign the Franklin-Bouillon agreement in 1921 without reference to Great Britain.