Influence Without Power: Middle Powers and Arms Control Diplomacy During the Cold War

This article examines the evolution of middle power diplomacy on arms control during the Cold War. It argues that despite several attempts to influence major arms control negotiations, the structural constraints imposed by strict bipolarity—particularly during the early stages of the Cold War—limited the room for diplomatic manoeuvre by the small and medium-sized states. Factors such as the geographical voting groups within the United Nations system and the self-imposed discipline within traditional alliance structures typically restricted middle power initiatives on the important questions of international security such as arms control. Nonetheless, a number of efforts were made by leading middle powers such as Australia and Canada to progress the cause of arms control and significant policy ideas were at least canvassed during this time. The historical evidence shows that the middle powers were not innocent bystanders in the Cold War arms control debates, but whatever influence they had was ultimately subordinate to the overwhelming structural power of Washington and Moscow.     

The leadership deficit in Europe

The emerging global order is challenging multilateralism in the sense that power is becoming situational: centres of gravity are overlapping and transient, and the transnational interdependence that characterises this ‘polypolar’ world challenges small and great powers alike. Emerging powers are forming a ‘new middle', straddling the North-South divide with dynamic new multilateral formations, and prioritising economic self-interest. South Africa is at risk of being relegated to a new global periphery if it gives priority to political solidarity with the global South rather than economic pragmatism in its multilateral strategies. Its comparative advantage in the diplomatic arena is its middle power credentials. If it rationalizes its multilateralism to focus on diplomatic niche areas it can enhance its political influence in global governance institutions, despite its small economic stature.     

Economic Interdependence and the Balance of Power

To account for variance in great powers responses to threats and the implications for the peacefulness of the international system since the late nineteenth century, this article elucidates a theory which refines and synthesizes economic liberal perspectives and realist balance of power theory. I argue that different patterns and levels of economic interdependence in the great power system generate societal-based economic constraints on, or incentives for, state leaders of status quo powers hoping to mobilize economic resources and political support to oppose perceived threats. This mobilization process influences strongly the preferences of status quo powers, other states beliefs about those preferences, and the interpretation of signals in balance of power politics. In this way, economic ties influence the strategies great powers pursue. Firm balancing policies conducive to peace in the international system are most likely, I then hypothesize, when there are extensive economic ties among status quo powers and few or no such links between them and perceived threatening powers. When economic interdependence is not significant between status quo powers or if status quo powers have strong economic links with threatening powers, weaker balancing postures and conciliatory policies by status quo powers, and aggression by aspiring revisionist powers, are more likely. I then illustrate how these hypotheses explain the development of the Franco-Russian alliance of the 1890s and its effectiveness as a deterrent of Germany up to 1905, British ambivalence toward Germany from 1906 to the First World War, the weakness of British, French, Soviet, and American behavior toward Germany in the 1930s and World War II, and the American and European responses to the Soviet threat, including the NATO alliance, and the "long peace" of the post-1945 era.     

Balance of Power Politics and the Rise of China: Accommodation and Balancing in East Asia

Realists agree that great powers balance the military power of rising powers, but there is little agreement regarding secondary-state responses to rising powers. First, there are differences regarding whether secondary states balance or accommodate rising powers. Second, there are differences among realists regarding the distinct roles of economic and military factors in secondary-state alignment policies. Third, some scholars argue that state alignments are not necessarily determined by realist variables, but can reflect preferences shaped by intentions, historical experiences, or cultural influences. This paper addresses these issues in balance-of-power theory. Its empirical focus is the impact of the rise of China on secondary-state alignments in East Asia. After examining the complex mix of China's military and economic reach in East Asia, it concludes that secondary-state behavior is sensitive to local variation in the great power capabilities and that secondary states tend to accommodate rather than balance rising powers. It further concludes that economic capabilities alone are insufficient to generate accommodation, so that the political-economy literature should reexamine cases of apparent secondary-state accommodation to economic dependency, sensitive to the presence of military vulnerability on the part these secondary states to proximate great powers. These conclusions suggest that there is nothing sui generis or culturally-determined in East Asian international politics and that realism can explain alignment behavior among East Asian states as well as it does among European states. Research on East Asia's response to China's rise that is sensitive to intra-regional variations in U.S. and Chinese military and economic capabilities also challenges assumptions of an emerging Chinese regional hegemony or of a costly region-wide U.S.-China competition.     

冷战后东盟的大国平衡战略

冷战结束后,东盟作为亚太地区唯一的由中小国家组成的国家集团,一直在寻找一种能够保证东南亚地区安全与稳定的地区战略.在东盟各国看来,单纯依靠东盟自身的力量是无法保障本地区安全的,而大国出于利益的驱动和对权力的追求,一定会在东南亚地区进行扩张和竞争.     

A Qualified Success for Collective Security: The Concert of Europe and the Belgian Crisis, 1831

Some scholars claim that collective security always fails. This article analyses a case where it succeeded. When Belgians rebelled against Dutch rule in the early 1830s, all five great powers agreed no fewer than four times to threaten or to use force against one or both sides. Why? Drawing extensively on diplomatic correspondence from Austrian, German and Russian archives, I show that the Concert of Europe functioned as a security regime, helping the powers to agree. Great power consensus broke down when Britain and France imposed a peace settlement on the Dutch in 1832. Yet the Belgian case—like Iraq's 1991 expulsion from Kuwait—shows that collective security can sometimes succeed against cross-border aggression.     

Invading Europe: The British army and its preparations for the Normandy campaign, 1942-44

Some scholars claim that collective security always fails. This article analyses a case where it succeeded. When Belgians rebelled against Dutch rule in the early 1830s, all five great powers agreed no fewer than four times to threaten or to use force against one or both sides. Why? Drawing extensively on diplomatic correspondence from Austrian, German and Russian archives, I show that the Concert of Europe functioned as a security regime, helping the powers to agree. Great power consensus broke down when Britain and France imposed a peace settlement on the Dutch in 1832. Yet the Belgian case—like Iraq's 1991 expulsion from Kuwait—shows that collective security can sometimes succeed against cross-border aggression.     

Status and Foreign Policy Change in Small States: Qatar’s Emergence in Perspective

ABSTRACT

Small states are just as easily seduced by status and glory as other states. When conceived as situated in a stratified international society, small states acquire an inherent tendency to overcome their disadvantage in conventional power terms through the pursuit of status. Hence, it is precisely because of their position in the international hierarchy, not in spite of it, that strategic ideas based on state size stimulate foreign policy change in small states. This mechanism provides an explanation to the question why the small state of Qatar has pursued such a high-profile diplomatic strategy since its emergence in the late 1990s.     

Small state soft power strategies: virtual enlargement in the cases of the Vatican City State and Singapore

The concept of soft power, or symbolic power, offers unexplored potential for analysing small state power. This article argues that it is a means of virtual enlargement of small states' foreign policy reach and presence. If one examines the bases of soft power, it becomes evident that small states can utilize their political economy potential, models of good governance and diplomatic mediation as forms of power that defy their territorial limitations. Case studies of the Vatican City State and Singapore illustrate ‘small state soft power’.     

Syria's and Lebanon's Meandering Road to Independence: The Soviet Involvement and the Anglo-French Rivalry

This article attempts to describe and examine the process of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR, Syria, and Lebanon. While it places special emphasis on the reaction of Britain and France - the hegemonic powers in the Levant, to this development, it also examines the implications of the growing French-British tension in this area on the Soviet-Syrian-Lebanese process of rapprochement. This article covers the period from mid-1944 - the beginning of the Soviet-Lebanese-Syrian diplomatic dialogue, to 1950 - the year which marked Syria's tilt towards neutralism and the powers reaction to it.     

Syria's and Lebanon's Meandering Road to Independence: The Soviet Involvement and the Anglo-French Rivalry

This article attempts to describe and examine the process of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR, Syria, and Lebanon. While it places special emphasis on the reaction of Britain and France - the hegemonic powers in the Levant, to this development, it also examines the implications of the growing French-British tension in this area on the Soviet-Syrian-Lebanese process of rapprochement. This article covers the period from mid-1944 - the beginning of the Soviet-Lebanese-Syrian diplomatic dialogue, to 1950 - the year which marked Syria's tilt towards neutralism and the powers reaction to it.     

Managing great powers in the post-Cold War world: old rules new game? The case of the global war on terror

This article investigates the impact of the Global War on Terror (GWoT) on the primary institution of great power management. To this end, it first identifies a misalignment between the new post-Cold War social reality and the capacity of some traditional norms of great power management to mediate this reality. Having established and described this environment of normative uncertainty, I then probe how the GWoT propels the consolidation of new identities and norms of great power management in interstate society. I argue that since the beginning of the GWoT the primary institution of great power management has institutionalized new norms to address transnational violence within its processes. At the same time, as hard balancing amongst great powers is becoming increasingly obsolete, two distinct social structures have been constructed with the GWoT: one that privileges an inequitable social structure of friends/rivals amongst states; and another that shapes a social structure of enemies with regard to terrorist–state relations. In this process, the capacity of managing transnational violence globally has increasingly become one of the central constitutive elements of being a great power. I conclude by demonstrating how the GWoT has acted as a subtle ‘bargaining bid’ in the process of organizing the current social meaning of polarity and great power management amongst states. State practices under the GWoT have delineated, in a clearer form, underlying expectations about the pattern of interactions between the superpower and great powers. Consequently, the GWoT has exerted a symbolic and psychological impact over international society by institutionalizing not only a specific meaning of unipolarity but also further raising the threshold of what is acceptable behaviour on the part of the superpower within an interstate social structure of friends/rivals.     

Controlling coalitions: Social lending at the multilateral development banks

Multilateral development banks (MDBs) dramatically increased social lending for health, education, and safety nets after 1985. Yet the great powers’ social policy preferences remained relatively static from 1980 to 2000. This contradicts the conventional view that powerful states control IOs. We argue that highly institutionalized IOs like MDBs require a complete model of possible member-state coalitions encompassing the preferences of all member states—not just major powers. We develop multiple measures of state preferences and include all member states in our coalitional model. We evaluate our model and alternatives with an analysis of more than 10,000 MDB loans from 1980 to 2000. We find that when we include all member states weighted by their voting shares, principal preferences are significantly related to lending outcomes.     

The Making of the Inter-American Democratic Charter: A Case of Complex Multilateralism

This article examines the diplomatic process found in the making of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Many components of this dynamic point to a significant bending of the "old" pattern of multilateralism associated with the Organization of American States (OAS). The normative purpose behind the charter centered on the collective right to democracy as opposed to the traditional defense of sovereignty. The pattern of involvement contained some parallels with initiatives considered the prototypes of a "new" multilateralism, namely the campaigns against antipersonnel land mines and for an International Criminal Court. That is to say it featured an intense style and a "bottom-up" diplomacy with extensive engagement by secondary states and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Notwithstanding these features, the multilateralism in the making of the Inter-American Charter is depicted as not simply "new" but complex. Stimulated by the 2000 political crisis located in that country, leadership on the charter came from Peru not a classic middle power. The United States was not the maker of the charter but neither was it an opponent or breaker of the initiative. The early burst of speed slowed when resistance appeared from a cluster of states. Serious splits appeared among NGOs involved with the charter process on a north/south basis. To nuance the claims of "new" multilateralism is not to discount the conceptual or (as witnessed by its use in the April 2002 crisis in Venezuela) operational significance of the charter. The argument made in this article, however, is that it was this hybrid nature of the initiative that contributed to its claims of innovation and measure of success.     

日本幕末开国对策探析

19世纪中叶,德川幕府统治下的日本面临着欧美列强的军事威胁和外交压力,处于开国抑或攘夷的十字路口。通过考察欧美国家对日本的冲击以及日美交涉过程,可以看出,开国与开港给日本带来了积极的影响,但由于不平等条约的签定,尽管近代日本并未遭遇中国那种割地赔款的命运,却使近代日本具有了殖民地的特征。     

Who wants to pay more? The European Union's military operations and the dispute over financial burden sharing

In 2014, the European Union (EU) launched the sixth review of the Athena mechanism that finances the common costs of military operations launched in the framework of its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). In the run up to the review, there were expectations that it would improve financial burden sharing in CSDP operations by expanding common funding for them. However, these hopes were disappointed; the review became a diplomatic tug of war between France, the strongest supporter of expanded common funding, and the UK, its strongest opponent. In the end, France agreed to the UK's terms to ensure that the existing level of common funding would not decrease. This article analyses the Athena review from a neoclassical realist perspective. It argues that the review's outcome was due to the imbalance of influence among EU member states and the diverging preferences of their Foreign Policy Executives (FPEs). These factors caused the Athena review to remain in the hands of a small group of member states that had diverging utility expectations and ideological preferences. Thus, the article shows that a surprisingly intense burden-sharing dispute has emerged within CSDP.     

Countering Aggressive Rising Powers: A Clash of Strategic Cultures

The United States has to contend with rising powers ranging from the prc, which is already an economic and political great power and potentially a military threat, to Al Qaeda and the network of Islamist terror organizations, whose means to power remain limited but whose will to power and aggression are great. In the middle are states that already or may soon possess nuclear weapons. Each of these powers has its own “strategic culture” that affects its decision-making, and attention needs to be paid to how the strategic habits of today's rising and aggressive powers might intersect with U.S. strategy.     

China's Periphery: Implications for U.S. Policy and Interests

The major, middle and small powers on China's periphery are often portrayed as passive objects of great power competition between the United States and China, but in fact the foreign policy strategies of these states plays a significant role in shaping Sino-U.S. relations and the overall order in Asia. Before examining the actors on China's periphery in this important FPRI conference, therefore, it is worth starting at the macro-level of international relations in Asia within which they operate.     

The balance of great-power influence in contemporary Southeast Asia

This article reviews and critiques recent scholarly work onSoutheast Asian relations with the great powers, examining thestrategies that ASEAN governments have used and the effectsof those strategies. The author argues that Southeast Asiangovernments have generally steered away from traditional balanceof power politics to promote a more complex ‘balance ofinfluence’ comprising military, economic, institutional,and ideational dimensions. A key feature of this balance ofinfluence strategy has been its inclusiveness. Southeast Asiangovernments have invited competing great powers to participatein the region's economic and diplomatic affairs so that theydevelop stakes in the region's peace and prosperity. The authorcontends that Southeast Asian efforts have been relatively successfulto date, contributing to a multi-dimensional balance that isrelatively resilient and places significant constraints on anyexternal power's ability to exercise unwanted dominance in theregion. Received for publication August 4, 2008. Accepted for publication September 24, 2008.     

Why unipolarity doesn't matter (much)

This article first argues that states have not balanced against US unipolar power because the potential balancers do not view the United States as a major threat, because they believe it has benign security-seeking motives, at least with regard to other major powers. This explanation runs counter to the Brooks–Wohlforth argument, which holds that states are not balancing because the magnitude of the United States’ power advantage makes balancing essentially infeasible. The second part of the paper challenges the conventional wisdom on the benefits of unipolarity, arguing that the benefits the United States derives from unipolarity are generally overrated. More specifically, US security need not be significantly reduced by growth in China's economy that supports a return to bipolarity.