A Rising India's Search for a Foreign Policy

As India seeks to become a major player on the international political stage, it will face two major internal constraints. First, India will have to recognize the need to exploit the extant structure of international system to its advantage more effectively. Structural constraints are the most formidable ones a state encounters in its drive towards the status of a major power. Yet, Indian foreign policy continues to be reactive to the strategic environment rather than attempting to shape the strategic realities. While such an ad hoc response to the structural imperatives carried little costs when India was on the periphery of global politics, it holds grave risks now that India seems poised to play a significant role in global politics. Second, India must come to grips with its discomfort with the very notion of power and in particular its wariness of the use of “hard power.” Throughout history, all major powers have been required to employ the military instrument skillfully. India's reluctance to accept a more sophisticated understanding of power, in general, and military power, in particular, will continue to undermine Indian foreign and security policy.     

Commercial Diplomacy and Statecraft in the Context of Economic Reform: The Indian Experience

It is almost a decade since India began its economic reforms. Apart from the purely domestic economic objectives that the reforms were expected to achieve, there was a recognition that reform was imperative if India wanted to become an economic power of consequence within and beyond its region. This had important foreign policy implications. Official pronouncements reflected the concern that the balance of fiscal power as opposed to military power was the key factor in determining a country's international standing. This called for an integrated strategy to bring economic and foreign policies closer. The implementation of a vigorous foreign economic policy could not be undertaken without sharpening the commercial diplomatic tool. Indian foreign policy over the last decade has been grappling with this challenge. This article analyses the reorientation in Indian foreign policy, assesses the efforts undertaken so far to make commercial diplomacy viable and highlights the challenges that multi-layered diplomacy poses for a country like India.     

Uganda and U.S. Foreign Policy

Washington's relationships with the “leveraged allies” preferred by realists—those countries that have little choice but to follow America's lead—have long been considered more reliable than in its relationships with the “natural allies” favored by idealists: prosperous, democratic nations that share the goals and interests of the United States. President Bush's foreign policy requires these natural allies, but many U.S. government officials are more wary. Uganda under President Museveni is a model “natural ally” candidate, with its relatively humane and democratic internal policies, but its greater capacity to act without American leverage, approval, or supervision is likely to worry realist career diplomats.     

For the Present and the Future: The Well-Conceived,Successful, and Farsighted Statecraft of President Theodore Roosevelt

“It is difficult to escape the conclusion,” this historian has claimed in previous writings, “that in the foreign policy arena [Theodore] Roosevelt was probably the greatest of all US presidents.” Such a laudatory interpretation is built on an assessment of both the record achieved by Rooseveltian diplomacy during the years of Roosevelt's presidency and the long-term significance of TR's statecraft. In its own time Roosevelt's foreign policy success grew out of a sophisticated understanding of a complex international environment, a well-conceived perspective on America's interests within that environment, and a multitude of attributes in the realm of execution that usually enabled Roosevelt, even in the most challenging cases, to attain the results he was seeking. As to its long-range importance, Rooseveltian statecraft was anchored to three precepts that might be labeled the “precept of broadly defined US interests,” the “precept of US power,” and the “precept of Anglo-American leadership.” By conducting a foreign policy grounded on these precepts, Roosevelt – certainly well ahead of the great majority of his contemporaries – anticipated the type of foreign policy approach that would become and has remained the foundation for the practice of statecraft by many Republican and Democratic presidents and their most influential advisers from 1939 to the present day.     

‘Ali Baba's Cave’: The Sea of Okhotsk's Contentious Triangle

Amidst international furor over its annexation of Crimea, Russia quietly acquired a far more lucrative territory through different means: in March, the United Nations recognized Russia's claim to the resource-rich “Peanut Hole” in the center of the Sea of Okhotsk. This strategically and economically important body of water—a “real Ali Baba's cave” of untapped oil and gas reserves—lies within a contentious triangle formed by eastern Russia and northern Japan. Securing the Okhotsk's legal status as an internal sea goes far to advancing Russian claims in the Arctic, and bolsters Russia's bargaining position over four disputed Kuril islands which Japan callsits “Northern Territories.”     

后冷战时代日本环境外交战略研究

冷战结束后,环境议题成为日本谋求"政治大国"地位的重要手段,其纳入日本对外战略框架有着深刻的国内社会背景和国际政治环境,以对外输出资本和环保技术为主要内容的日本环境外交战略在树立环保大国形象及提高国际声誉方面取得了一定成绩,但公益性的实施方式并没有改变其作为一国外交政策的利益性本质。     

NGOs: A ‘New Class’ in International Relations

Nongovernmental organizations have attempted to take control of civil society, displacing traditional governing institutions. This serves the interests of the terrorists, warlords, and mafia dons, who benefit from weak central government, and hinders the West's ability to mobilize allies to participate in the war on terror. NGO leaders who are hostile to the nation-state itself seek to transform a voluntary system of participation in international organizations by sovereign member-states via a “power shift” to an unholy alliance of multinational corporations and NGOs. Since they do not possess the traditional sources of legitimacy enjoyed by nation-states, they seek to impose their will by financial or forceful means—for example, “sanctions” or “humanitarian intervention.” A new class of NGOs has thus emerged that is essentially opposed to the diplomatic, legal, and military measures required for dealing with civilizational conflict.     

Applied Grand Strategy: Making Tough Choices in an Era of Limits and Constraint

This article hopes to contribute to the strategic content of U.S. foreign policy by offering a definition of grand strategy and case for reorienting U.S. policy around it. Rather than advocate a specific grand strategy—a matter still open for debate—the analysis concludes with a set of attributes to assess whether a proposed grand strategy constitutes a “good” grand strategy. It concludes by introducing the concept of an applied grand strategy approach, which may help to identify and assess the strategic implications of foreign policy choices.     

A. Adamishin and R. Schifter,Human Rights,Perestroika, and the End of the Cold War

The international community's March 2011 military intervention in Libya contrasts sharply to its reluctance during the preceding forty years to halt the Qadhafi regime's sponsorship of transnational terrorism and pursuit of WMD. American diplomacy, eventually supported by international sanctions, was a four decade effort to end Qadhafi's violent foreign policy. This commentary discusses how diplomacy and the American judicial process combined to achieve this successful outcome. Diplomatic and legislative efforts to compel Libya's payment to terrorism victims helped create judicial remedies enforceable in US Courts and ultimately, a bilateral claims settlement agreement that, while disappointing to the terrorism litigants, normalized relations between the Libya and the United States.     

The Construction of the China–ASEAN Free Trade Area: A Study of China's Active Involvement

The central argument of this paper is that China's economic diplomacy not only improves its political relations with ASEAN countries but also promotes regional economic co-operation and integration. This paper is organised into two parts. The first part starts with a review of Chinese foreign policy changes in order to show how Beijing adjusted its foreign policy to pursue its economic and political interests. It also examines China's political and institutional efforts to forge the coming Free Trade Area (FTA) with ASEAN. The second part studies China–ASEAN trade relations from three aspects: the adjustment of Chinese industrial structure, foreign direct investment to both sides and the formation of a production network with China at the centre. While difficulties and problems are unavoidable in the construction of CAFTA, with China's active efforts and the enhanced co-operation between China and ASEAN, the building of CAFTA is moving towards fulfilment.     

“Exporting Democracy”? Neoconservatism and the Limits of Military Intervention, 1989–2008

This article challenges the almost universal consensus that post–Cold War neoconservative foreign policy has been characterised by the objective of “exporting democracy” abroad for strategic or moral reasons or both. Instead, the article contends that the touchstone of neoconservatism was the attempt to preserve America's so-called “unipolar moment”—its apparent position as the single pole of power in every region of the world. Moving beyond the abstract and grandiose rhetoric employed by many neocons, the article points out that neocons made a distinction between the respective uses of military and non-military power, arguing that the former should be reserved only for situations where strategic interests were at stake rather than for the sake of ideals. The article goes on to argue that this focus on strategic interests facilitated a close alliance with other conservative nationalists who were also dedicated to maintaining America's position as the single pole of world power. Thus neoconservatism should be analysed and evaluated—by both conservatives and liberal interventionists alike—on the basis that it was a strategy dedicated primarily to preserving American unipolarity, not to the promotion of ideals.     

Europe's global ambitions and the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD): of what relevance is the Politique Africaine?

The New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) agreed in 2001 between the G7 and African leaders is an ambitious initiative to resolve the problems of economic underdevelopment, political instability and armed conflict in Africa. Essentially, it rests on the promise of increased economic aid in exchange for African commitment to liberal political and economic governance. This article examines the implications of NEPAD for the EU's policies towards Africa. It argues that the EU's economic instruments are more suitable for tackling security problems in Africa than its evolving military capacity or global multilateral cooperation with African states through NEPAD structures. It is argued that extant structures of European-African relations can significantly impact on African governance processes and their security outcomes only if they can be graduated into ‘constitutive’ forms of economic intervention similar to processes of accession into the EU. Such a modification, based on variegated competitive partnerships, would be consistent with the French origins of European-African relations and maybe possible because of the links between French foreign policy and Europe's evolving global role.     

Liberal intervention in the foreign policy thinking of Tony Blair and David Cameron

David Cameron was a critic of Tony Blair's doctrine of the ‘international community’, which was used to justify war in Kosovo and more controversially in Iraq, suggesting caution in projecting military force abroad while in opposition. However, and in spite of making severe cuts to the defence budget, the Cameron-led Coalition government signed Britain up to a military intervention in Libya within a year of coming into office. What does this say about the place liberal interventionism occupies in contemporary British foreign policy? To answer this question, this article studies the nature of what we describe as the ‘bounded liberal’ tradition that has informed British foreign policy thinking since 1945, suggesting that it puts a distinctly UK national twist on conventional conservative thought about international affairs. Its components are: scepticism of grand schemes to remake the world; instinctive Atlanticism; security through collective endeavour; and anti-appeasement. We then compare and contrast the conditions for intervention set out by Tony Blair and David Cameron. We explain the similarities but crucially the vital differences between the two leaders' thinking on intervention, with particular reference to Cameron's perception that Downing Street needed to loosen its control over foreign policymaking after Iraq. Our argument is that policy substance, policy style and party political dilemmas prompted the two leaders to reconnect British foreign policy with its ethical roots, ingraining a bounded liberal posture in British foreign policy after the moral bankruptcy of the John Major years. This return to a pragmatic and ethically informed foreign policy meant that military operations in Kosovo and Libya were undertaken in quite different circumstances, yet came to be justified by similar arguments from the two leaders.     

China's ‘Peaceful Rise’ Enters Turbulence

This article seeks to place recent developments in China in a larger context through three arguments. First, Chinese military policy has indeed made a major turning over the past decade; second, this turning is based on a fragile and unrealistic strategy that is already eliciting counterreactions that will make achievement of its apparent goals increasingly difficult. Finally, this strategy's failure will present China with unwelcome choices about how far to take her use of force. The “rise” of China is now encountering turbulence that may undo it.     

The Invincible Wilsonian Matrix: Universal Human Rights Once Again

A conservative or realist approach has little appeal in the present debate over American foreign policy. In the twentieth century, according to George F. Kennan, the United States succumbed to “the evils of utopian enthusiasms.” In recent years, this worldview has been associated most closely with the neoconservatives, but even the Clinton administration leaned in the same direction. Crusading moralism has been the recurrent theme of America's self-image as a global power. Whether or not neoconservatives and liberals today are really dedicated to the same democratic political culture as the one that Wilson idealized, a recognizable Wilsonian manner of conceptualizing international relations has come to dominate American politics, reflected in a shared rejection of any foreign policy that is not based on the temporal salvation of humanity. Yet many Wilsonians seem unable to imagine that one can be “moral” without trying to make everyone resemble one's self.     

冷战后老挝外交政策的特点及走向

冷战后,老挝外交政策表现出四个特点:由政治外交转向经济外交;重点发展与越南、中国等传统友好国家的关系;从地缘政治考虑,参与并扩大与东盟各国的合作;转向"全方位外交",增进与各大国的交往。今后老挝外交政策将围绕政治独立、经济发展、安全维护、地位提升等方面展开,以实现国家利益最大化。     

Commercial Diplomacy and Statecraft in the Context of Economic Reform: The Indian Experience

It is almost a decade since India began its economic reforms. Apart from the purely domestic economic objectives that the reforms were expected to achieve, there was a recognition that reform was imperative if India wanted to become an economic power of consequence within and beyond its region. This had important foreign policy implications. Official pronouncements reflected the concern that the balance of fiscal power as opposed to military power was the key factor in determining a country's international standing. This called for an integrated strategy to bring economic and foreign policies closer. The implementation of a vigorous foreign economic policy could not be undertaken without sharpening the commercial diplomatic tool. Indian foreign policy over the last decade has been grappling with this challenge. This article analyses the reorientation in Indian foreign policy, assesses the efforts undertaken so far to make commercial diplomacy viable and highlights the challenges that multi-layered diplomacy poses for a country like India.     

The Road to Baghdad: Ideas and Intellectuals in Explanations of the Iraq War

Why did the Bush administration take the United States to war with Iraq in the aftermath of September 11, 2001? The constructivist approach used in this article to answer this question argues that the ideas of a handful of policy intellectuals affected political outcomes in remarkably consequential ways. These ideas shaped administration assessments of every major aspect of the Iraq war, beginning with its necessity and justification. Although the administration's ideational commitments were complex and evolving, four sets of ideas were central to its risk-filled gambit in the Middle East: a belief in the necessity and benevolence of American hegemony, a Manichaean conception of politics, a conviction that regime type is the principal determinant of foreign policy, and great confidence in the efficacy of military force. Taken together, these ideas defined the social purpose of American power, framed threats to the United States, and determined appropriate solutions to core problems. Ideas are not the sole factors setting the course of u.s. foreign policy, but they are essential to explaining an otherwise puzzling administration decision.     

印度对非洲的软实力外交及经验借鉴

面临着冷战后国际形势的变革,印度的外交观念、外交方式也发生了相应的调整。印度在制定对外政策时愈加重视软实力的作用,这在对非洲关系中得到了明确体现。印度通过实施经济援助、加强教育文化交流、促进与非洲国家的军事合作以及支持非洲在国际体系中的合法权益等方式极大促进了双边关系发展。非洲在中国对外战略中具有重要地位,我国应积极借鉴印度对非洲软实力外交经验以促进中非关系发展。     

Dual engagement: France and the Persian Gulf

With the end of the Cold War international relations began anew without the bipolar constraints of two ideologically opposed superpowers. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 represented the first challenge to the nascent post‐Cold War Persian Gulf security environment. Within the region, France is once again increasingly active in the economic, political and military fields. The re‐evaluation of Washington's ability to remain engaged at its current levels within the Gulf may be attributed in large part to a growing sensitivity in Riyadh and other Arab capitals to the visible US presence coupled with an American foreign policy which is, at times, inconsistent. The net future effect of contemporary trends may be one in which the Gulf Sheikhdoms welcome French ascendancy and US decline. France has experienced its own foreign policy transformation marked by the leadership of President Chirac. Where President Mitterrand sought the role of power broker in regional affairs, President Chirac seeks increased influence and importance.