Beijing’s perception of the international system and foreign policy adjustment in the post-cold war world

This study, applying an international system-centered approach, represents a modest attempt to analyze Beijing’s official perception of the change in the international system from the Cold War bipolar confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union to a new post-cold war multipolar world, and to examine China’s foreign policy adjustment in recent years. It argues that Beijing’s perception of a multipolar system is a matter of normative truth rather than an empirical or analytical assessment. Because the multipolar system is its goal, Beijing “perceives” it. While working hard to encourage a multipolarity, Beijing in fact finds a unipolar reality in the post-Cold War era and has accommodated to it through its foreign policy adjustment. He will join the faculty of Colby College at Maine in the fall of 1993.     

国际体系变迁与战后韩国政治发展

国际体系是国际行为体之间依据某些原则所形成的排列组合和内在联系；从层次分析出发，可将国际体系分为三个层面，全球层面、区域层面和国家层面（某些分裂国家），韩国民主化就是在朝鲜半岛南北分裂的情况下进行的。20世纪80年代末90年代初，柏林墙倒塌、苏联解体、东欧剧变．冷战体系宣告终结，国际体系从冷战时期的两极体系逐渐转变为以美国为主的一超多强体系；在国际体系变迁的过程中，韩国的政治发展随之展开。鉴于朝鲜半岛的地缘战略地位，无论是冷战时期还是后冷战时期，韩国一直处于大国角逐的前沿阵地，政治发展过程带有明显的国际影响的特点。     

Domestic–External Linkages and the Cold War in 1953 and 1989: Using International Relations Theory and Comparative Politics to Explain the End of the Cold War

Drawing on theories of international relations (IR) and comparative politics, this article explains why the cold war ended in 1989 rather than 1953. Numerous scholars have used IR theory to discuss the end of the cold war, but most of the circumstances they highlight were also present in the spring of 1953, right after the death of Joseph Stalin. This article presents three broad theoretical approaches that deal with the connection between domestic politics and international relations, and it then shows how these approaches can help us understand the similarities and differences between 1953 and 1989. In particular, the article emphasises the importance of time. In the spring of 1953, the window of opportunity was very brief—only a few months, which was insufficient for the two main cold war antagonists to overcome their deeply entrenched suspicions and make far-reaching adjustments in their policies. In the latter half of the 1980s, by contrast, the sweeping reorientation of east–west relations occurred over several years, giving policy-makers on both sides sufficient leeway to adapt and to 'learn' new ways of interacting.     

Engaging with the self-captive nation: Albania in the US official documents from 1945 to 1980

This paper aims to analyse US policy towards Albania during the cold war, as a case that illustrates Washington’s approach towards individual Communist countries in Eastern Europe in the light of the grand contest between the antagonist superpowers. This analysis is based almost exclusively on published US archival documents related to Albania from 1945 to 1980. This analysis underlines that in the American perception, the geopolitical importance of each Communist country was intrinsically linked with its position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Albania was no exception, despite the rigid Communist dogma it vigorously pursued.     

Why did We Get the End of the Cold War Wrong?

In many important ways the history of modern international relations (IR) begins at the point when the international order collapses in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Indeed, the withering of communism in Central and Eastern Europe followed by the break–up of the USSR two years later, posed what many in the field saw then (and continue to regard now) as a series of problems to which the hitherto dominant paradigm in IR—realism—had no ready or easy answers. This article neither seeks to defend nor criticize realism. Rather it shifts the debate about the end of the cold war—and why most experts failed to anticipate it—away from the field of IR to the more specific study undertaken in the West of the Soviet system. It goes on to argue that the source of so much academic embarrassment may be better explained not through a rehearsal of realism's supposed flaws as an international theory, but rather through a detailed examination of the different ways that different writers understood, or more precisely failed to understand, the operation of the Soviet system itself. The conclusion reached is that few analysts could have predicted what happened between 1989 and 1991. In fact, as the article seeks to show, their often complicated and diverse theories about the USSR as the living alternative to market capitalism led most of them (with one or two notable exceptions) to the conclusion that whatever problems faced the Soviet Union as a power in the 1980s, the system as such was likely to endure.     

苏联改革的两面性:从改革走向崩溃

在毫无征兆的情况下,苏联突然解体了。苏共领导人戈尔巴乔夫的改革把苏联带入了一场典型的革命性进程之中。苏联的政治经济体制改革的起步非常谨慎,随后逐步扩大到政治层面,并升级为激进的政治诉求和改革,进而持续升温成为一场革命性的大动荡。旨在恢复社会秩序、实现社会稳定的苏联版"热月政变"由此出现。实际上,前苏联的这场改革并不像当下一些政客抑或是戈尔巴乔夫本人所讲述的那样,是一场有计划的、有组织性的,旨在实现民主化、西方式的民主社会类型和市场经济的改革。苏联的解体也并非因为灾难性的经济危机,事实上,苏联的经济早已是一潭死水。苏联之所以会走向解体,主要在于其一系列旨在解决严重的社会经济问题的改革准备既不充分,信息也不全面。历史上不乏各种经意和不经意的结果,这场改革将苏联整个社会推入了政治经济不断沉沦的漩涡,引起权贵阶层尤其是苏联加盟共和国中执政者的不安。这反过来又催生了一股压力,要求迅速纠正这些意料之外的结果。从本质上说,苏联解体是这场自上而下改革的结果,这场改革的开始是由于部分苏联精英利用了苏联上层社会对激进改革以及加盟共和国的民族主义的诉求,然而却以整个社会体系的改变而告终。     

Southeast Asian Trajectories: Eurocentrism and the History of the Modern Nation-State; Southeast Asia: Past and Present,by D. R. SarDesai

Abstract

In the aftermath of World War II, the number of nationstates worldwide expanded dramatically. Over the course of approximately two decades colonial boundaries, sometimes the result of centuries of custom, became national boundaries. State power was transferred to, or eventually seized by, nationalist elites and movements throughout much of Asia and Africa and later Oceania. The international recognition of these former colonies and their incorporation into the international system epitomized by the United Nations conferred legitimacy on nationalist leaders and on the territorial boundaries of the new nations. Decolonization and the expansion of the nation-state system were key trends in the post-1945 era. Equally crucial was the emergence of the United States as the dominant international economic and politico-military power. The United States was driven forward by an unprecedented economic boom and by an increasingly assertive anticommunist globalism directed at the Soviet Union and its satellites or allies in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. Connected to the onset of the cold war was the growth and professionalization of area studies. It was against this background that Asian studies was consolidated as a discrete field of knowledge production.     

China’s view of the war threat and its foreign policy

In analyzing China’s foreign policy since 1949, people tend to take for granted the nature of China’s concern for its national security as the predominant factor in the development of its foreign policy without distinguishing changes in the functions of this factor. The evidence given in this article argues that at least as early as the late 1970s, leaders in Beijing, predominantly Deng Xiaoping, no longer held Mao’s view of the inevitability and imminence of world war, and of the Soviet threat to China’s national security. Therefore I propose that from the beginning of the Deng era in 1978, national status enhancement or muscle building through modernization had replaced national security as the persistent and principal theme in China’s foreign policy. We should not interpret the main reason for China’s increased push for the formation of an international antihegemony united front as its increasing concern about the Soviet threat to its national security. In turn, we may conclude that when China abandoned this united front foreign policy to adopt the Independent Foreign Policy in 1982, it was neither because of a new global reality that was shaping the reorientation of its foreign policy nor because only in 1982 did China rediscover the Soviet threat.     

The International Criminal Court and the Darfur crimes: The dilemma of peace and supra-national criminal justice

ABSTRACT

The supra-national criminal prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of the alleged crimes committed in Darfur raises critical legal and conceptual issues. This article addresses the dilemma of peace, justice and reconciliation from a legal perspective, as well as the justice options that are available. The article also assesses the Sudan's criminal and military laws (both at the substantive and procedural levels) in terms of the country's ability to prosecute international crimes such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. In this respect, the article argues that these laws fall short of international criminal law standards and principles – particularly the amendments introduced after the United Nations Security Council referred the Darfur situation to the ICC. The article critically examines the Sudan government's policy of non-engagement, which ultimately led to supra-national criminal prosecution (represented by the ICC intervention under the complementarity principle of the Rome Statute). Finally, the article interrogates the report issued by the African Union High-Level Panel on Darfur (AUPD), and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of its recommendations.     

中国国际关系理论研究的现实思考

世纪之交 ,中国国际关系理论研究愈来愈重要。就现状而言 ,中国国际关系理论研究仍处于草创和摸索阶段 ,尽管取得了重要的进展 ,但还存在一些不尽人意之处。冷战结束后 ,中国国际关系理论研究更是面临着新的课题、新的挑战。     

Third time lucky? Establishing diplomatic relations between Russia and South Africa

Diplomatic relations between Russia and South Africa were established in 1992, before South Africa's transition to democracy was completed. This move was perceived as a betrayal by many in both countries and beyond. For many decades the Soviet Union supported the African National Congress in its fight against the apartheid regime. South Africa's National Party government, in its turn, presented the USSR as the main force behind the ‘total onslaught’ – an all-out war purportedly waged against South Africa by international communism. Yet it was with the National Party government that the Russians established diplomatic relations. This article looks into the reasons for this change of heart in Moscow and Pretoria, discusses the political forces behind the decision to establish diplomatic relations, and analyses the process that led to this event and the results of establishing diplomatic relations the way it happened and at the time it happened for both countries.     

International Norms and the End of Apartheid in South Africa

This article examines the interface in the post-World War II era between expanding global movements supporting human rights and traditional great power concerns regarding global security, and asks why an international alliance of actors mobilized to pressure the Western powers, particularly the USA, to politically isolate and economically sanction South Africa in the midst of the cold war. We argue that in the international struggle against apartheid, humanist (human rights) ideology emanating from social movements in global civil society clashed with traditional realist ideology regarding what constituted state security in the global polity. The norms of self-determination of nations and anti-racism together fueled global activism and challenged powerful Western states. Facing mass protests and lobbying efforts from citizens, democratic states across the Western world found greater security in upholding their own professed human rights principles than in maintaining close economic ties to the apartheid regime.     

Religious change in Estonia and the Baltic states during the Soviet period in comparative perspective

Abstract

The article presents a comparative-historical treatment of the change in the religious life of Estonia from 1940 to 1991, when Estonia was part of the Soviet Union. The article is based largely on documents of the archive of the Estonian commissioner of the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults of the Soviet Union, documents which were not available to researchers before the collapse of the USSR. Religious change in Estonia has been compared to what happened in the neighbouring Baltic countries. The archival data shows an extraordinary decline of institutionalised religion in Estonia during the Soviet period (especially in the Lutheran and Orthodox Churches). Compared to the other republics of the Soviet Union (especially Catholic Lithuania), this fall was particularly drastic in “Lutheran” Estonia and Latvia. Also, some comparisons are made between Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the rest of Europe, in order to test the author's hypothesis that by the end of the Soviet occupation, Estonian society was among the most highly secularised ones in Europe (or possibly the most secularised).     

Soviet policy toward the two Koreas, 1985–1991: The new political thinking and power

This research explores the evolution of the Soviet Union’s Korea policy between 1985 and 1991, focusing on the correlation between Gorbachev’s shifting power position within the Soviet leadership and the development of the Soviet Union’s new policy toward the two Koreas. Soviet leaders utilized policy issues (foreign and domestic) to mobilize support in their internal power struggle. Conversely, they needed to establish a firm power base before launching new policies. Thus, power and policy in the Soviet political system often enjoyed a mutually reinforcing relationship, and foreign policy issues became entangled in the domestic political process. As Gorbachev’s power position improved and his reform policy (new political thinking) was refined, Soviet policy toward the two Koreas correspondingly evolved in three phases: (1) Gorbachev rising: the formulation of the new political thinking (March 1985–summer 1988); (2) Gorbachev ascendant: the implementation of new political thinking (fall 1988–summer 1990); and (3) Gorbachev in decline: the continuing momentum of the new policy (fall 1990–December 1991). In late 1990–1991, Soviet Korea policy was characterized by an undisguised tilt toward Seoul. Nevertheless, the Soviets did not consider Soviet relations with the two Koreas to be a zero-sum game. Moscow sought to establish a balanced relationship with both Pyongyang and Seoul, and hoped to play an active role in peace and security on the Korean peninsula.     

Norm dynamics and international organisations: South Africa in the African Union and International Criminal Court

Over the past two decades, South Africa has sought to perform several roles on the world stage, such as the economic dynamo of Southern Africa, a diplomatic heavyweight representing the African continent, and a norm leader on the world stage as a so-called ‘middle-power’. Although South Africa's evolution and rise as an important player in global affairs has generated a welcome body of critical scholarly literature, comparatively little analysis has been allocated to understanding how norm dynamics and the country's ever-evolving international identities have enabled it to construct and reconstruct its ‘interests’. Social constructivism is best suited for such an analysis because it can operationalise norms, commitments, identities, and interests, and it provides the epistemological tools to map the increasingly multilateral connections between global, regional, and domestic forums. By employing a rationalist approach to constructivism, this paper remedies the aforementioned gap in the literature by illustrating how South Africa constructs and reconstructs its identities and interests in relation to membership in international organisations (IOs). To that end, the paper examines the evolution of South Africa's participation in the African Union (especially ‘peacekeeping’ contributions) and the International Criminal Court. The paper concludes by assessing the theoretical implications and practical ramifications of the norm dynamics involved in South Africa's commitment to these two IOs.     

Running dry: international law and the management of Aral Sea depletion

The Aral Sea disaster is the result of Soviet-era irrigation policy. The collapse of the Soviet Union left the issue under the purview of international law. This essay addresses how this shift has affected attempts to slow or reverse the sea's depletion. Treaties on the non-navigation use of international watercourses and on the prevention of desertification have had little effect. While a number of regional instruments and arrangements have been brought to bear, they have also done little to reverse damage to the sea. Finally, attempts to regulate the issue through domestic law, as evidenced in the case of Kyrgyzstan, have done little as well. While some progress has recently been made under the auspices of the World Bank, it is not a result of international law. The conclusion is that the shift from domestic to international law has little improved the situation, and may have made matters worse.     

China and Cambodia: In the Mirror of History

In recent years, China has been paying greater attention to Southeast Asia and to Cambodia in particular, says Nayan Chanda, director of publications at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. This interest is not new however, but reflects a partial return to the foreign policy followed by the leaders of China since the days of the Ming dynasty. Historically, China had not been interested in active involvement in Indochina, preferring to limit its role to policies that kept its southern neighbors in check and the region free of influence from another challenging power. This tradition of noninterference was broken in the 1970s, amidst increasing tension between the Soviet Union and China, and the beginning of the Sino-American détente in 1971, which changed the international context of China's foreign policy. Chanda points out that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a surge in Chinese aid, private investment, dispatch of labor and support for the growing local ethnic Chinese community in Cambodia.     

印俄战略伙伴关系的新发展

印俄战略伙伴关系是冷战时期印苏特殊关系的继承和演进。进入21世纪以后,随着俄罗斯的复兴和印度的崛起,双方重新审视对方在各自战略棋盘上的分量,决定建立"战略伙伴关系",加强在政治、经济、军事、科技、能源等领域的合作。由于俄罗斯与中国的"战略协作伙伴关系"不断深化,印度与中国"面向和平与繁荣的战略伙伴关系"正在推进,印俄战略伙伴关系对于中国具有某种积极意义。尽管印俄对中国的态度有一定区别,但是印俄战略伙伴关系对中国的良性作用值得肯定。     

The limits of coercive diplomacy: The 1979 Sino-Vietnamese border war

In 1979, China waged a brief but bloody war with Vietnam, with the hopes of punishing Hanoi for its invasion and occupation of Cambodia the previous year. Beijing’s attempt at coercive diplomacy was an embarrassing failure, however, resulting in tens of thousands of casualties for both sides. This article, using Alexander George’s models of coercive diplomacy and crisis management, examines the reasons for China’s failed coercion and confirms that the most important variable was the omnipresent military threat from the Soviet Union, which prevented China from successfully escalating the crisis to its advantage.     

Soviet Repatriation Efforts among “Displaced Persons” Resettled in Australia, 1950–53

In the early 1950s, the Soviet Union made great efforts to persuade its former citizens among the “displaced persons” (DPs) resettled in Australia after the war to repatriate. They sent two undercover military intelligence men to Canberra to identify DPs who might be interested in returning, offer them free passages, and organize the repatriation. The result was a paltry dozen repatriations, out of the estimated 50,000 eligible DPs resettled in Australia. This strange story — hitherto completely unknown and reconstructed on the basis of recently opened Soviet classified material in the State Archive of the Russian Federation and ASIO files in the National Archives of Australia — adds a new angle to our understanding of Soviet‐Australian (and, in general, Soviet‐Western) relations at the height of the Cold War.