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Discusses the failure of negotiations between the United States and Vietnam after the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975. Normalization of relations; Issue of reconstruction assistance from the US and the return of missing bodies from Vietnam; Political pressure on the Ford administration to deny Vietnam the right to enter the international arena.

In this paper, I argue that the “Middle East” is an ideational construct maintained by geographical, intellectual, and ideological representations. I assert that the geographical boundaries of the area called the Middle East have shifted over the past century to reflect the strategic interests of the major hegemonic power in the region, initially Britain and later the United States. Drawing on published and archival sources, I trace the etymology of the “Middle East” and its accompanying geographical representations and their relationship to key American and British foreign policy decisions and declarations. I also discuss how the Arabic translation of the “Middle East,” or al-Sharq al–Awsaṭ, has been adopted and contested by scholars and journalists in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Americans have generally seen the principles and objectives proclaimed by President Woodrow Wilson during the First World War as having continued relevance for United States foreign policy. However, they have often differed over their application to specific situations, particularly because there is likely to be a tension between a drive to establish democratic values across the globe and commitment to a universal system of collective security. Rather than seeking a pure, abstract definition of ‘Wilsonianism’, it is more illuminating to examine its origins and evolution in relation to the development of American foreign policy over the years. Tracing this historical process reveals that Wilson committed himself to a postwar league of nations during the period of American neutrality, but it was only as the United States became a belligerent that the spread of democratic government became a policy objective, and then only in a partial and qualified way. A similar pattern has been discernible in subsequent decades. It has been during conflicts, or the run-up to them, that the more ideological and revisionist aspects of Wilsonian principles have come to the fore, whereas it has been in the aftermath of conflicts that there has been the greatest interest in the potentialities of a universal collective security organization. There has also been a broad shift of emphasis over time. As confidence in America's power position has grown, the core of Wilson's legacy has more often come to be seen as the promotion of democracy rather than the strengthening of international institutions. The persistence of both themes may be seen as reflecting basic and enduring elements of the policy-making context—on the one hand, the interests of the United States as a status quo power, and on the other, the demands of domestic American opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the socio political history of Mexico during the 19th century. It is well known that Polk's war message provoked a fierce, albeit brief, debate in Congress and in the press. John M. Clayton (Whig-DE) spoke for many in the Senate when he said, "The whole conduct of the Executive has been utterly unjustifiable. If the acts of the Executive do not amount to acts of war, they are acts which necessarily tended to provoke war, and to bring on war, and that without consulting Congress."

Recently declassified archival materials permit the revelation of a previously unknown element of the early Cold War. Specifically, U.S. officials worried about an electro-magnetic attack by the Soviet Union, using hundreds of radio transmitters, on worldwide communications in advance of or in conjunction with the outbreak of general war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an analysis of revelations from the archives of Israel about United States foreign policy and the US, Israel foreign relations during the Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower presidencies. Impact and effectiveness of US diplomacy in Israel; How the US influenced Israeli policy; Israeli's ability to shape US policy; Information on US and Israeli foreign relations.

The article examines the constraints and influences on the U.S. response to the Armenian question, which refers to the protection and freedoms of Armenians from the neighboring communities, during the Ottoman Empire in 1918-1920. It explores the legitimate basis for U.S. intervention in global affairs, including Armenia after the 1915 massacres, and considers both American and British responses to explain why the potential mandates are essential to their conceptions of international governance. It illustrates how the mandate antagonized relations between the two nations insted of uniting them in a common endeavor of international governance.

This article reinterprets the Jay treaty by taking seriously the Republican criticism of the treaty’s western provisions, which created a porous border between the United States and British-Canada. It argues that Laurentine merchants—entrepreneurs interested in the trade of the extended St. Lawrence River valley—used the Jay treaty as a charter, protecting their commercial and political rights as British subjects residing and trading in the United States. By exploring the conflicts between Laurentine merchants and federal officials over the terms of the Jay charter, this article opens a window on the complex process of state formation in the Anglo-American borderland between 1796 and 1819. It argues that state formation involved a wide array of activities and innovations at both the center and the periphery. More specifically, the article points to the important role that diplomacy, Republican commercial policy, and legal definitions of citizenship played in the creation of an American national state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores Hanoi's diplomatic strategy during the early stage of the so-called Vietnam War. It draws from Vietnamese, Western, and other materials to elucidate the meanings and usages Hanoi attached to diplomacy in those years, to describe the related maneuverings of North Vietnamese leaders, and to identify the forces shaping those maneuvers. Following the onset of war Hanoi rejected negotiations with Washington, but that did not mean that the so-called 'diplomatic struggle' was non-existent, or unimportant. State and party organs used diplomacy to manipulate and mobilize world opinion, to mitigate the effects of the Sino-Soviet dispute, and to secure necessary material assistance from socialist allies to sustain the war until 'final victory' over the United States. Diplomacy thus served as a veritable instrument of war for Hanoi. Admittedly, diplomatic priorities changed over time, but diplomatic struggle itself remained at the heart of its 'Anti-American Resistance.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the encounter between the Ottoman state and an influential community of U.S. Congregationalist and Presbyterian missionaries who worked in Syria from 1820 until 1919. U.S. missionaries in Syria complied with Ottoman political structures and provided services which furthered the Islamic Empire's goals while Ottoman officials provided them with both political protection and material support. The U.S. civil war shaped the missionaries' relationship with the Ottoman state by securing the missionaries' access to the capital. The empire's ambitious educational program made missionaries active participants in the Ottoman state's political projects as well as passive subjects of its religious system. The Sublime Porte treated the missionaries as friends and collaborators.

This article examines South Vietnam's global diplomacy after constitutional government was restored in 1967. Far from an American puppet, the Saigon government showed considerable initiative spanning the globe for prospective allies. But its bid for international legitimacy ended in failure, with increased global exposure only underscoring its collapsing domestic support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the private origins of the progressive labor program for Latin America that was launched by the administration of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1962. Topics include Kennedy's partnership with transnational labor activists, his efforts to provide aid to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of International Organizations (AFL-CIO), and the importance of nongovernmental organizations in international affairs. Also discussed are the AFL-CIO's Latin American activism, transnational labor activism, and the changes in the American labor movement.

The article explores on the military-financial agreement between the U.S. and Ecuador which allow the U.S. military to use the air and naval bases at Salinas and the Galápagos islands for the defense of the Panama Canal. It highlights the struggle of the U.S. Navy to abandon its bombing range that lead to the closure of the military facilities in the island. It also history of global campaigns against foreign military bases wherein the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents were engaged in counterintelligence surveillance in Ecuador.

The article discusses the implications of the Soviet Union political leader Nikita Khrushchev attack on the United Nations (UN) and on the West. Topics include the UN decisive stand against colonialism that angered several Western countries, the Belgian military intervention following the former Belgian Congo's declaration of indepedence in late June 1960, and the U.S. reaction on Congo leader Patrice Lumumba's decision to request assistance from the USSR following UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld's preoccupation during the Congo Civil War.

The article discusses the history of the European Youth Campaign (EYC), an international anti-communist youth organization aimed to promote European unification, to illustrate the intersection of anti-communism during the Cold War in 1950-1959 with the concerns of the Catholic hierarchy over the vulnerability of youth in Ireland. It looks at the U.S. influence of Ireland. It examines the various ways in which Ireland's foreign policy has been circumscribed by the war. It also discusses the opportunities presented by the war to Ireland.

Between 1959 and 1962, children played a highly visible role in the dramatic realignment of revolutionary Cuba’s diplomatic relations. This article demonstrates that Fidel Castro’s government consistently deployed discourses and images of childhood as well as actual children within a broader campaign to liberate themselves from U.S. domination even as it sought to strengthen ties between Cuba, the U.S.S.R. and the socialist world. At the same time, the Castro regime also made use child-centered images, texts and speeches in order to negotiate the contradictions between the Revolution’s claims to have fulfilled the islands’ long-frustrated aspirations towards national sovereignty even as it sought to justify its reinvention as “la niña adorada del mundo socialista,” dependent for its survival on the protection and largesse of the Soviet Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's stance on its Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence is diametrically opposed to its evolving attitude within the Security Council in a number of dossiers where it has lent its support either tacitly or affirmatively to resolutions adopted that endorsed, facilitated, reversed and prevented regime change since the end of the Cold War. Rather than measuring such developments from a conflictual perspective, China's increasing contribution in the international legal and political order, with a view to promoting a so-called harmonious world,may be seen in light of the international law of co-progressiveness and theory of relationality and relational governance respectively espoused by two Chinese international law and relations scholars Sienho Yee and Yaqing Qin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which discusses the relationship between U.S. evangelical groups and the Guatemalan dictator Brigadier General José Efraín Ríos Montt during the 1982 and 1983, including support for Ríos Montt from American evangelical neo-Pentecostal missions in Guatemala. An overview of U.S. military assistance, under U.S. President Ronald Reagan, to Guatemala is provided.

Before Nixon’s trip to China in 1972, China was bound by historical, nationalistic, ideological, and treaty considerations to support North Korea against South Korea and the United States militarily and politically. The U.S.–China rapprochement in the 1970s had far-reaching effects on international relations in and around the Korean peninsula. But up to now, there is no article-length study on how China adjusted its policy toward North Korea and managed to maintain a close relationship with Pyongyang during this process. Making use of documents from the Chinese, U.S., and East European archives, this article traces China’s policy toward North Korea from 1970 to 1975. It examines China’s views and positions on the Korean issue during the U.S.–China rapprochement negotiations, and China’s policy and tactics toward the Korean issue at the subsequent United Nations deliberations. It attempts to address the questions of how and why China could maintain an alliance relationship with Pyongyang while seeking détente with the United States—North Korea’s enemy No. 1. The article argues that it was in North Korea’s interest to maintain good relations with Beijing in order to achieve Korea’s unification on Pyongyang’s term. For China’s revolutionary credential, it was important to retain North Korea on its side. To achieve this purpose, China provided large economic and military aid to Pyongyang and was North Korea’s most important donor during this time. But China’s primary foreign policy goal during this period was to maintain détente with Washington in order to counter the Soviet Union, and prevent the resumption of war on the Korean peninsula. Thus, China’s policy toward North Korea was made mainly due to national security and geopolitical concerns, rather than ideological affinities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Homoploid hybrid speciation (HHS) involves the recombination of two differentiated genomes into a novel, functional one without a change in chromosome number. Theoretically, there are numerous ways for two parental genomes to recombine. Hence, chance may play a large role in the formation of a hybrid species. If these genome combinations can evolve rapidly following hybridization and sympatric situations are numerous, recurrent homoploid hybrid speciation is a possibility. We argue that three different, but not mutually exclusive, types of contingencies could influence this process. First, many of these "hopeful monsters" of recombinant parent genotypes would likely have low fitness. Only specific combinations of parental genomic contributions may produce viable, intra-fertile hybrid species able to accommodate potential constraints arising from intragenomic conflict. Second, ecological conditions (competition, geography of the contact zones or the initial frequency of both parent species) might favor different outcomes ranging from sympatric coexistence to the formation of hybrid swarms and ultimately hybrid speciation. Finally, history may also play an important role in promoting or constraining recurrent HHS if multiple hybridization events occur sequentially and parental divergence or isolation differs along this continuum. We discuss under which conditions HHS may occur multiple times in parallel and to what extent recombination and selection may fuse the parent genomes in the same or different ways. We conclude by examining different approaches that might help to solve this intriguing evolutionary puzzle [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Nixon and Ford administrations celebrated the 1973 Chilean coup and did everything they could to help the dictatorship that followed. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in particular, supported General Augusto Pinochet’s regime and turned a blind eye to its human rights abuses. But how did the Chilean dictatorship view the United States and how did the relationship play out in practice? Drawing on Chilean and U.S. documents, this article argues that in spite of Kissinger’s efforts, bilateral relations were actually rather tense. Not only did the Chilean dictatorship continually request more than the Ford administration could offer but Santiago’s military leaders also had different conceptions of the Cold War and how to fight it. This, in turn, sheds light on the problems U.S. policy makers faced when dealing with anti-communist Third World allies. It also points to the fragmentation of the global Cold War struggle in the mid-1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents an account of the Thirty Years War. The Thirty Years War starts with the revolt of the Protestant Bohemians against Catholic Habsburg rule in 1618. It continues with a conflict that spread outward in concentric circles in Central Europe. It discusses that Catholic and Protestant powers identified with the contending groups in Bohemia that intervention was necessary to prevent trouble spreading to their own lands. It also presents the series of chronological phases of the war.

The article discusses United States foreign relations with South Africa over the issue of nuclear nonproliferation from 1965 to 1967. The author states that America's advocacy of nonproliferation in the Cold War era was often difficult to negotiate with other countries amidst the threat of nuclear war. The author begins his history with the 1957 treaty the U.S. signed with South Africa concerning the sale of uranium. While concerns over South Africa's uranium sales existed, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was of ultimately of more importance to have ratified.

The article reports on the personal reflections of a member to the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). The author, the first woman member of the society of historians of diplomatic history discusses the beginning of the organization and its developments. Their advocacy is presented.

This article presents the social history of race relations in Galveston, Texas during the antebellum period. Galveston, a thriving port, had unique and less restrictive racial codes than other parts of the South. The work necessitated far more race mixing between slaves and white laborers, which many found threatening. Cities generally were not conducive to maintaining the plantation-style slavery. In addition, maritime industries were generally marked by more integration than was permitted elsewhere.

The article elaborates the historical importance of Congress of Panama, the Monroe's Doctrine and the fundamental principles of the US policy. The formation of Democratic party as president John Quincy was against attending the Panama congress by Latin American countries and subsequent developments are discussed. President George Washington's fare well address, and Monroe's doctrine have great significance in the formation of American foreign policy in international politics and many social changes.

The article analyzes the international policies of the US as proposed by the present President George Bush and others. In the context of gulf war or terrorist attack, the presidents tried to put forward intellectual propositions under the cover of religion and God to support their intentions and policy which did not yield expected results. The conflicting differences between the sacred and the secular can be addressed by proper understanding religion and its importance in political events.

European integration has fascinated students of international relations and of history since the 1950s. Over the past 15 years or so it has begun to attract attention from political philosophers too. As a result, the nature of the theorizing has altered. Accordingly, this article presents some remarks on the transition from explanatory theory to normative political theory in relation to the EU, and on the context and nature of recent theoretical work. A topic of wide concern is whether and how the EU might be justified, and this is discussed in the light of an approach to public justification associated with the philosopher John Rawls. Some difficulties in applying this approach to international institutions are noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the linkage between modern children's consumer culture and the globalization of the design and manufacture of playthings. While toy production and innovation were centered in Germany from the 17th through 19th centuries, it shifted to the U.S. and Japan, recently to China in the 20th century. The authors chronicle why the U.S. and Japan drifted from production to product design and marketing and how China became the locus of manufacturing in the last 20 years. Playthings have long roots in local folk cultures and crafts, and regional and national traditions of toy and doll making have long reinforced ethnic and local identities in children. But the construction of modern childhood over the past century especially has paralleled the decline of these craft traditions and the emergence of a global children's commercial culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the role of the United States in the transition of Mexico to a more democratic political regime. Overview of the economic and political system in Mexico; Contradictions between tradition and modernity; Colonial heritage.

Discusses the relationship between psychology and the history of U.S. foreign relations. Skepticism of psychologists regarding the use of psychology for understanding foreign relations; Field of psychology that historians are least likely to apply; Influence of personality on the policies of leaders.

Focuses on the significance of state and politics in the history of the U.S. Sentiment of historians regarding political history; Concept of political history and its relevance; Role played by the state in the development of the U.S.

Focuses on the United States and its foreign relations, with reference to historians renewing their interest in the revolutionary and early national eras. Indepth look at the argument of the formation of the early public; Information on European entry into the Western Hemisphere; Reference to questions raised relating to the history of the United States' foreign relations.

Focuses on imposition of a geld on the English to pay for Viking ships. State of knowledge about Viking ships; Ship-muster systems; Warship design and fleet organization; Crew reductions; Rate of pay.

In 1949, Alexander Langmuir became the first chief epidemiologist at the Communicable Disease Center (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. Among his many contributions to the agency and to public health, 2 of the most important—the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) and his particular brand of epidemic-assistance investigation (the Epi-Aid)—are highlighted in this supplement to the American Journal of Epidemiology. What makes these and many other of Langmuir’s innovations so remarkable is their continued relevance to the health challenges we face in this new century. CDC (now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is recognized globally for its quality science, not only in epidemiology and laboratory practice but also in the behavioral and social sciences, statistics, and economics. Support to state and local health departments has been instrumental to CDC’s success during its first 60 years, and the articles describing Epi-Aids in this supplement capture this partnership elegantly. They also reflect the evolution of CDC from an agency focused almost entirely on communicable diseases to one engaged in a broad array of global public health challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Epidemic-assistance investigations (Epi-Aids) in response to outbreaks of foodborne and other enteric pathogens have identified novel pathogens, clinical syndromes, and sequelae; described new reservoirs and vehicles of transmission; evaluated existing prevention strategies; and identified deficiencies in the food safety systems on local, national, and international levels. Since the first Epi-Aid was issued in 1946, approximately 23% (1,023 of 4,484 for which investigations were initiated) of all Epi-Aids have been related to foodborne or other enteric diseases. Epi-Aid results have yielded valuable insights into the epidemiology of these pathogens and have molded prevention strategies for detecting, responding to, and preventing future outbreaks. New challenges, brought about in part by centralization and globalization of the food supply, will continue to emerge. The need for Epi-Aids of such outbreaks undoubtedly will persist as an integral part of future public health response efforts, prevention strategies, and training programs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]