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The Wisconsin school revisionist describes the life of Walter LaFeber who was a commanding presence in the field of history of American foreign relations for more than four decades. Walt LaFeber followed the Wisconsin injunction that scholarship and publication exist not simply to achieve an upward trajectory in the world of academic fame and fortune, but to serve a public interest as well.

Presents an incisive overview of the historical writing concerning the Spanish-American War by U.S. historians. Summarizes and comments on some of the seminal works by Walter LaFeber, Paul Kennedy, and Louis A. Perez. Their works consider the conflict from the perspectives of international relations, domestic politics, and various ideologies. (MJP)

Several decades ago, the field of Cold War history banished political economy from its discussions. Political economy had been the main theoretical medium through which the first generation of Cold War historians had made its critique of power. But while subsequent historians banished political economy as an explicit theoretical tool of historical analysis, political economy remained very much present, only it took crude, unreflective neoclassical and even neoliberal forms that echoed the concerns of state and corporate power over efficiency, rather than more analytical concerns of social transformation. This was achieved through the thorough decoupling, indeed the binary reconstitution, of the 'political' and the 'economic'. So, while historically informed political economic analysis thrived elsewhere, from the 1990s, so-called postrevisionist Cold War historians were free to celebrate a heroic United States, and an assumed capitalist dynamism triumphing over sclerotic socialism. Most surprisingly, these historical terms themselves (capitalism and socialism, usually juxtaposed with a 'vs.'), so central to the analytical core of Cold War narratives, were left unexamined. Three decades hence, as capitalism continues to generate one crisis after another, this motivated ignorance so favourable to the exercise of state and corporate power has reached its limit. Any analysis of capitalism and socialism and the Cold War those social forms generated will need to once again ground itself in some conception of political economy. This article presents some ideas for that task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shares insights from participatory research conducted with former political prisoners, all of whom survived torture during El Salvador's armed conflict (1980–92). An analysis of declassified documents reveals that while US officials generally resisted efforts to examine abuses against guerrilla supporters, they advocated behind the scenes for international oversight of prisons, and, in doing so, helped save lives. However, former prisoners' analyses of the documents shows that US advocacy perpetuated grave misrepresentations about the nature of state repression, further empowering the apparatus of institutional violence even as it spared selected actors. Participatory research projects like this one can offer victims of human rights abuses abetted by US foreign policy an opportunity to reckon with the records of empire. Not only does this process generate new knowledge, but it contributes to survivor-led processes of healing. This is important to counter the imperialist epistemologies that often characterize scholarship on US foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Start with manganese (Mn). There is plenty of bioavailable manganese in the U.S. west, but in part because Malone mostly lost his bid to support extensive domestic manganese mining, it is less associated with the region's mines than it is with smelting and milling sites like those of the Sharon Steel Company's Salt Lake City, Utah facility - a Superfund site contaminated with, among other things, high levels of manganese almost certainly mined abroad.[89] The geography of manganese helps to underscore Walker's, LeCain's, and Murphy's contentions about the historical nature of toxic exposures, and it is worth thinking more broadly about the overlaps between historical thinking and epidemiology alongside the story of George Malone and the President's Materials Policy Commission in the early Cold War. Increasingly pugnacious over his short Senatorial career (a champion boxer, Malone would nearly come to blows with a British diplomat at an official state dinner in 1956), Malone also harbored a special, almost visceral loathing of U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson.[70] What makes Malone particularly interesting, however, is the extent to which he rooted his opposition to internationalist foreign policy in a providential, isolationist resource ideology. Manganese is not only good for making steel; manganese and strategic minerals like it are also good for making sense out of the past, and about the material and ideological relationships between the past and the present.[2] This paper uses these two conflicting viewpoints on strategic minerals like manganese - Paley's and Malone's - to investigate the relationships among resource management, political ideology, foreign policy, and conceptions of nature during the early Cold War. [Extracted from the article]

This article assesses President Gerald Ford's two major tours of Asia that saw him visit Japan, South Korea, China, the Philippines and Indonesia in 1974 and 1975. The trips were intended to reemphasise American commitment to longstanding allies in the Pacific, shore up recent gains in relations with Beijing, and boost his image with voters at home. On the first two points, Ford was broadly successful, but his moderate diplomatic achievements did not translate into electoral success. In assessing both the impact of his diplomacy and failure to leverage this domestically, the article demonstrates the importance of presidential diplomacy in furthering American interests, the power of the media in shaping the narratives of diplomatic travel, and the interconnected nature of domestic and foreign affairs. It also adds depth to our understanding of an often-overlooked administration and its impact on a region of crucial strategic importance to American foreign relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Varia História is the property of Varia Historia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Prior to the creation of the United Nations and even prior to Woodrow Wilson's philosophy of intervention, members of Congress called for a humanitarian intervention to aid the people of Cuba as they fought against the violent oppression of the Spanish government. Spurred on by the first-hand accounts of horrifying atrocities, President William McKinley overcame his reluctance and called for the American military to aid the revolutionaries in Cuba. This initial decision marks the beginning of a very different path towards international dominance than the one created by European empires. Unlike their European counterparts, the United States would claim to use its military to protect those fighting for their freedom all over the world due to their longstanding commitment to the liberal ideal of selfdetermination. While it may appear benevolent, the United States struggled with questions about how a self-governing people could develop and use a large military to overthrow governments as well as whether these actions could be considered imperialism. Looking into this early effort to rid a country of violent oppression by offering military assistance provides a prism through which to view the ongoing struggles of liberalism that informs American foreign policy decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians now recognize the political significance the Protestant ecumenical movement of the early twentieth century. American ecumenists contributed to the architecture of international organization and were among the first to promote a global discourse of human rights, and ecumenical plans for world order were designed for the peaceful spread of national self-determination and to combat racial prejudice. Ecumenical missionaries were at the forefront in reconceiving race relations, globally as well as in the United States. But the overriding ecumenical concern was the creep of secularism, which, despite their modernism and liberalism, ecumenists saw as the root of all evil. In 1945, when forced to choose between their vision of world peace as secured through international organization and their desire for racial equality, ecumenists sacrificed the latter so as to protect religious liberty and advance the Protestant interest. Ironically, despite their longstanding criticisms, ecumenists had to accept the dictates of national sovereignty for the sake of religious universalism. The contours of the liberal international system that resulted from this compromise remain to this day. In addition to primary-source research, this article is based on a synthesis of a tsunami of recent secondary literature on liberal Protestant internationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides supplementary information on topics related to international relations which appeared on the November 2, 2004 issue of "Diplomatic History."

The interaction between domestic politics and foreign policy has recently grasped a great deal of scholarly as well as public attention. The existing literature primarily focuses on a host of domestic actors--the president, the legislature, the media, public opinion, interest groups and political parties--and how they connect with the making of foreign policy. This paper introduces a new angle--the impact of electoral cycles on foreign policy. When politicians mull over dramatic foreign policy breakthroughs, they consider how the timing of policy achievements can help their political standing. Of particular importance to the effect of political timing is the election cycle, which presidents and lawmakers strategically consider and yet, cannot arbitrarily change in representative democracies. In this paper, I give special attention to the post-midterm election period in the United States when the sitting president attempts to make a dramatic comeback from a political setback. The three historical case studies involve the U.S. normalization of relations with former adversaries, namely China, Vietnam, and Cuba. The context of American politics provides for a convenient experimental backdrop by which politicians face elections every other year with presidential contests every four years and congressional elections in between. Dealing with such politics of time, this article offers analytical analogies while not necessarily setting out to prove causal mechanisms. This firstcut research attempts to shed a new light on the way election strategy and foreign policy are linked in representative democracies and global communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Aussen- und Sicherheitspolitik is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The importance of the study lies in analyzing the foreign policy of Yemen towards the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, especially after the unity of Yemen and the emergence of its role in the Arab and Gulf arena, and its endeavor to redraw its borders with Saudi Arabia, as well as its attempt to be an influential member in the Gulf Cooperation Council. So we find that most of the decisions Yemen made were in the interest of Iraq, and that is in its desire to banish external interference first, and to be a country with an effective decision in the Gulf Cooperation Council second.Through Yemen long relations with Iraq and Iraq's supportive stances, we find that Yemen sought to enter that war on the side of Iraq in secret, that is, its positions were supportive of Iraq, although it was confirming its endeavor not to interfere in the affairs of the Arabs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the conduct of American foreign policy on the subject of the Armenian genocide. This conduct serves as an excellent study of a major theme in the history of the formulation of American foreign policy--the clash between moral values and pragmatic economic and strategic interests and constraints and between the declared policy of President Wilson and the real policy of his and subsequent American administration on the Armenian genocide issue. A special emphasis was placed on "denial" as the final stage of a genocide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Trump administration, Sino-American relations have deteriorated to the point where the new consensus in the U.S. foreign policy establishment is that a new Cold War has begun between the U.S. and China. This article looks at the origins of the "first Cold War" for insight into how a second Cold War might be avoided. There is a danger of the Cold War turning hot because of power transition dynamics. This article also invokes the pre-1914 Anglo-German rivalry, and argues that if conflict is to be avoided, the U.S. must accommodate China's rise by yielding hegemony in East Asia and meeting China's status claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the intricate dynamics of Turkey's relations with Britain and the United States at a critical juncture during the early Cold War era (1946–1952). The article analyses the implications of a dual transformation of triangular relations in the aftermath of the Second World War. This transformation was on the one hand marked by an ongoing hegemonic transition from Pax-Britannica to Pax-Americana, and on the other hand a systemic transformation resulting in a bi-polar global order. This article utilises levels of analysis framework for a more systematic analysis of the complex web of triangular relations. While focusing on a comprehensive analysis at the international level, the implication of factors at the decision-maker and domestic levels are also examined. The article argues that in response to these drastic transformations as a strategically located regional actor Turkey struggled to strike a delicate balance between its resilient British and newly increasing US ties, while also aiming to institutionalise its Western alliance, leading to NATO membership in 1952. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on three books about Panama's international relations. 'The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914,' by David McCullough; 'The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective,' by Walter LaFeber; 'The Truth About the Panama Canal,' by Denison Kitchel.

What strategies does the United States pursue when it no longer perceives overt military intervention as politically viable or desirable but the problems or issues for which it was formerly undertaken remain? This analysis identifies three such periods in American foreign policy since the United States became a World Power and draws from the work of Peter Hall to develop a typology of strategies according to the magnitude of policy change. These range from adjustment in the settings of interventionism – persistence; the substitution of alternative instruments of foreign policy – ameliorism; and the principled rejection of interventionism in conjunction with a more systematic critique of prevailing foreign policy assumptions – transformationalism. Yet each approach is beset by certain structural limits and contradictions arising from the domestic politics and constitutional-institutional system of the United States that are important in understandiing and appreciating more fully the challenges – and opportunities – of the period 'after interventionism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'In foreign affairs, Japan is often thought of as a big country acting like a small one. Yet that is to miss the significance, range and effectiveness of Japan's economic statecraft, in which the country not only acts its true size but also does so with much more autonomy and agency than it does in classic diplomacy. Yuka Koshino and Robert Ward shine a truly illuminating light on how Japan thinks and behaves as a geo-economic actor, whether through trade, investment, aid, rule-setting or, crucially, technology. This Adelphi book deserves to be widely read, for it adds greatly to our understanding of a much neglected and under-appreciated aspect of Japanese strategy.' Bill Emmott, Chairman of the IISS Trustees; Chairman of the Japan Society of the UK; and author of Japan's Far More Female Future (Oxford University Press, 2020) 'Groundbreaking work and a penetrating analysis of the geo-economic challenges facing Japan, a frontline country in the age of US–China rivalry and economic statecraft.' Dr Funabashi Yoichi, Chairman of Asia Pacific Initiative Geo-economic strategy – deploying economic instruments to secure foreign-policy aims and to project power – has long been a key element of statecraft. In recent years it has acquired even greater salience, given China's growing antagonism with the United States and the willingness of both Beijing and Washington to wield economic power in their confrontation. This trend has particular significance for Japan, due to its often tense political relationship with China, which remains its largest trading partner. While Japan's post-war geo-economic performance often failed to match its status as one of the world's largest economies, more recently Tokyo has demonstrated increased geo-economic agency and effectiveness. In this Adelphi book, Yuka Koshino and Robert Ward draw on multiple disciplines – including economics, political economy, foreign policy and security policy – and interviews with key policymakers to examine Japan's geo-economic power in the context of great-power competition between the US and China. They examine Japan's previous underperformance, how Tokyo's understanding of geo-economics has evolved and, given constraints on its national power projection, what actions Japan might feasibly take to become a more effective geo-economic actor. Their conclusions will be of direct interest not only for all those concerned with Japanese grand strategy and the Asia-Pacific, but also for those middle powers seeking to navigate great-power competition in the coming decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ankara Review of European Studies (ARES) / Ankara Avrupa Çalışmaları Dergisi (AAÇD) is the property of Ankara University European Union Research Centre and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The 'Thucydides trap' exaggerates the risk of war breaking out between the rising power and the ruling power in the contemporary age. The greater challenge facing China and the United States is to avoid falling into the 'Churchill trap'. That is, falling into a long-term confrontation by repeating the mistakes of the Cold War between the US and the USSR. Both the 'old' history of the ancient East Asian bipolar system and the current experience of Sino-US interaction in East Asia suggest that, in addition to hegemonic war and cold war, there is a third type of great power relationship between the two poles, which I call 'co-ruling', whereby rather than being geographically demarcated according to their respective 'spheres of influence', the two superpowers jointly lead all or most of the small and medium-sized countries in the system. The theoretical and case studies examined in the article imply that the 'co-ruling' mode will appear and be sustained at a time when the two superpowers' foreign functions are differentiated (i.e. each of the two poles can only meet one of the indispensable needs of small countries, and the two needs that the two poles can respectively meet are different ones), when inter-great-power war is no longer a viable strategic option. The antagonistic and geopolitical colours of the Cold War 'dividedruling' mode of power politics will be less strident in the 'co-ruling' mode, so offering an illuminating escape from both the 'Thucydides trap' and the 'Churchill trap'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using recently declassified documents from Moscow, this article recounts Anastas Mikoyan's trip to Japan in the summer of 1961. The trip served as an inflection point in the commercial relationship between the Soviet Union and Japan—a relationship that by the end of the decade had become the most extensive between the Soviet Union and a country of the “free world.” The article indicates that narratives focusing on ideologies of great-power rivalry during the Cold War tend to miss the kinds of global ideological currents that shaped many states’ behavior after 1945. Mikoyan's discussions with political and business elites in Japan suggest that an ideology of economic growth increasingly underlay concepts of political governance on both sides and ultimately allowed for the kind of cooperation that characterized Soviet-Japanese relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the intent of the U.S. to deter adventurism of China in South China Sea and the revisionism of Russia in Eastern Europe.

Through its ambivalence towards its global security alliances, abrogation of free trade treaties and questioning of globalization, the Trump administration has argued that the United States-led liberal international order is too burdensome. How accurate is this portrayal? Drawing on theories of hegemonic leadership, the paper argues that the US national interest became globalized in the postwar international system and the US-led liberal order has given it enormous positional advantages. These include the capacity to shape the international preferences of other states, externalize domestic economic crises and construct the kind of international economy it wanted. Despite growing international competition, the US still has essentially the same global interests. However, neo-liberal globalization has weakened the domestic consent for American leadership among large sections of the American working class, who have rationally rejected continued US commitment to a system that has deepened economic inequality in the US. Trump has ridden the wave of this discontent, and although US elites may wish to return to the status quo after President Trump, these structural issues will remain. Trump may well do irreparable damage to the liberal order and thus, more broadly, to the West. While imperfect, the liberal order is still the 'best of a bad bunch' in terms of forms of systemic order on offer, and if the luxury of choice remains after Trump, a new domestic and international social contract is needed to revive US global leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the personal diaries of young people from "provincial" towns and cities of Soviet Ukraine, this essay illustrates the obvious limits of Westernization during the cultural détente of the 1970s in Soviet provincial society. The narratives of the personal diaries, writen during the 1970s and 80s, demonstrate that Soviet young people still shared the same communist ideological discourse, internalized it, imagined and perceived the outside world through the communist ideological "discursive lenses" and constructed their own identity, using the same communist ideological discursive elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both Gideon Rose's neoclassical realism and Andrew Moravcsik's liberalism attempt to solve the problem of how to incorporate domestic factors into international relations theory. They do so in very different ways, however. Liberalism is a "bottom-up" perspective that accords analytic priority to societal preferences; neoclassical realism is a "top-down" perspective that accords analytic priority to systemic pressures and treats domestic factors as intervening variables. These two approaches are not equivalent, and the choice between them has high stakes. Although it has gained rapidly in popularity, neoclassical realism is fundamentally flawed. Its intellectual justification is weak; it is logically incoherent; and it induces the commission of methodological errors. Realism can incorporate certain domestic factors without losing its theoretical integrity, but it does not need and should not use neoclassical realism to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Latin American Studies is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Scholars and officials persistently criticize China for low transparency in its military affairs. Why does Beijing exacerbate the asymmetric information problem, even though this theoretically increases the likelihood of conflict? I offer an explanation, the vulnerability hypothesis, for why rising powers are likely to reject military transparency and the conditions under which this may change. By evaluating over 100 authoritative Chinese sources, I identify four threads of Chinese strategic thinking consistent with the vulnerability hypothesis: the United States is inherently dangerous as a declining hegemon, transparency heightens the risk of war during power transitions, transparency grants operational advantages to the opponent, and only the strong can leverage transparency to enhance deterrence. These findings have implications for power transition theory and US–China military relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Introduces articles published in the November 2004 issue of "Diplomatic History."

Incorporating previously-untapped Dominican, Costa Rican, and Cuban sources, this article reveals how the international Cold War and US policy towards Guatemala overlapped with long-standing regional conflicts in the greater Caribbean basin. During the post-war democratic openings, exiles with patron presidents or dictators composed two loosely-formed networks seeking to destabilise opposing governments. The resulting inter-American conflicts contributed to critical events in the region, most notably US officials’ Cold War-influenced policy to overthrow the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in the early 1950s. These conflicts persisted and continued overlapping with the international Cold War while often challenging US officials’ Cold War goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]