The Petroleum Paradox: Oil,Coercive Vulnerability,and Great Power Behavior

Why do great powers fear oil coercion, and what explains the strategies they adopt to protect themselves from it? The paper identifies three types of anticipatory strategies great powers pursue: self-sufficiency, indirect control, and direct control. A state's choice of strategy depends on its degree of vulnerability to oil coercion, which in turn is determined by two independent variables: the amount of oil the country possesses compared to what it needs to meet strategic objectives and the susceptibility of its imports to physical disruption. Great powers fear oil coercion not only because they worry about damage to their economies; petroleum denial also threatens a country's military capabilities. Four case studies illustrate the theory, including Great Britain's efforts to reduce coercive vulnerability at the close of the First World War and Adolf Hitler's attempts across three periods to safeguard German oil access before and during World War II.     

Art of the Power Deal: The Four Negotiation Roles of Donald J. Trump

In this article, I mine President Donald Trump’s considerable writing and speaking record to synthesize the key elements of his deal‐making approach to help make better sense of his rhetoric and actions on the world’s diplomatic stage. My argument is that Trump’s coercive negotiation style is best understood through the prism of his four public roles: observer, performer, controller, and disrupter. In this article, I analyze how these roles translate into his negotiating behavior. Spotting and exploiting vulnerability is his trade; leverage and bravado are his tools. After assessing the opposing side, Trump uses leverage to threaten his counterparts’ weaknesses, while using bravado to play up the advantages of reaching an agreement on his terms. This way, he presents a drastic structured choice to his opponents, leaving them the least maneuvering space. In the final section of the paper, I illustrate how the four‐role framework helps explain Trump’s decisions in the nuclear negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. I also consider opportunities for further research.     

Coercive or Corrosive: The Negative Impact of Economic Sanctions on Democracy

This article seeks to analyze the impact that sanctions have on democracy. We argue that economic sanctions worsen the level of democracy because the economic hardship caused by sanctions can be used as a strategic tool by the targeted regime to consolidate authoritarian rule and weaken the opposition. Furthermore, we argue that economic sanctions create new incentives for the political leadership to restrict political liberties, to undermine the challenge of sanctions as an external threat to their authority. Using time-series cross-national data (1972–2000), the findings show that both the immediate and longer‐term effects of economic sanctions significantly reduce the level of democratic freedoms in the target. The findings also demonstrate that comprehensive economic sanctions have greater negative impact than limited sanctions. These findings suggest that sanctions can create negative externalities by reducing the political rights and civil liberties in the targeted state.     

Coercion and Control: Explaining India's Victory at Kargil

This article argues that most analyses of the Kargil conflict concede the important role played by the United States in understanding how India regained control of the Kargil heights, but fail to explain how India's intra-war compellent threat forced Washington to bring irresistible pressure to bear on Islamabad. The Indian decision to threaten asymmetrical escalation was the result of domestic pressures and military difficulties facing the Vajpayee-led caretaker government. The article shows that Washington pursued an “impartially” interventionist strategy until it came under Indian pressure to forsake its “balanced” approach towards ending the conflict. The article also shows how the “asymmetry of motivation” between New Delhi and Washington was an important factor in terminating hostilities in India's favor.     

原始宗教在当今印尼社会的遗留初探

原始宗教是在尚不具有成文历史的原始社会中,在人类社会生产力极度不发达的情况下产生的。据考证,早在100万年前便有原始人类在印尼的土地上繁衍生息,他们在与自然磨合     

新时期中美合作的动力和阻力——新兴大国和守成大国的对弈

新时期中美合作的动力和阻力大多围绕如何平稳调整新兴大国和守成大国关系而产生和发展,既要在必要的碰撞和磨合中逐步解决双方的结构性矛盾,也要从战略思维、制度保障和民众基础等方面设计和推进两国的全方位合作。     

U.S.Int''l Power:Comparison and Change

Four angles come to mind for an examination of vicissitudes in U.S. international power. You may take either a longer time span in assessing the basic situation of contemporary international power configuration and U.S. clout or opt for a much shorter time span in your survey, say from the September 11 events up to the Iraq war.     

Fixing the Meaning of 9/11: Hegemony,Coercion, and the Road to War in Iraq

As the costs of the invasion and occupation of Iraq mount, scholars have sought to explain how the United States came to launch this war in the first place. Many have focused on the “inflation” of the Iraq threat, and indeed the Bush administration did frame the national dialogue on Iraq. We maintain, however, that the failure of most leading Democrats to challenge the administration's case for war in 2002–2003 cannot be explained fully by the bully pulpit, Democrats' reputation for dovishness, or administration misrepresentations. Rather, we argue that leading Democrats were relatively silent in the run-up to war because they had been “rhetorically coerced”, unable to advance a politically sustainable set of arguments with which to oppose the war. The effective fixing of the meaning of the September 11 attacks in terms of the “War on Terror” substantially circumscribed political debate, and we explain why this discourse became dominant. The Bush administration then capitalized on the existing portrait of Saddam Hussein to bind Iraq tightly into the War on Terror and thereby silence leading Democrats and legitimate the war. The story of the road to war in Iraq is not only one of neoconservative hubris and manipulated intelligence. It is also the story of how political actors strove effectively after 9/11 to shape the nation's discourse of foreign affairs and of how the resulting dominant narratives structured foreign policy debate. Behind the seemingly natural War on Terror lurk political processes of meaning-making that narrowed the space for contestation over Iraq.     

美国在拉美软实力的构建及其对中国的启示

从历史的角度看,门罗主义和泛美主义为美国确立其在拉美的霸权和维护其利益提供了合理合法的依据.美国以其自身的民主政治制度、发展道路为模式,不断向拉美国家输出其民主政治和自由市场价值观,帮助拉美国家确立美国认同的民主制度,统一西半球经济思想意识.同时,美国在国际制度方面也不断创新,以集体约束的方式使拉美国家置于美国的领导之下,锁定对其有利的"软"资源.美国还通过各种公共外交手段使其价值观在拉美得到了更深入的传播.地理的邻近使美国的大众文化在拉美国家的传播和影响迅捷和普遍,产生了巨大的吸引力.伊拉克战争虽然削弱了美国在拉美的软实力,但毋庸置疑的是,目前仍然没有一个国家在这一地区的软实力可以与之匹敌.美国在拉美软实力的构建为中国在外交战略、价值观传播和文化交流等方面提供了借鉴.     

The EU and Libya and the Art of the Possible

In spite of geographic proximity and a number of shared interests, the European Union and Libya have a history of strained relations. The war of 2011 provided an opportunity for a fresh start, but so far neither side has been able to reap benefits from an entirely new political situation. Instead, Libya’s difficult internal situation has not only slowed down the process of rapprochement, but also increased EU concern. At a time when cooperation becomes a necessity rather than a choice, Libya is now down-spiralling into implosion at the levels of security, bureaucracy and economy, to the point where it cannot absorb the offers being made.     

论中美之间的海权矛盾

近来中美两国在海洋领域的摩擦引起了国际社会的关注。本文认为,中美海权矛盾主要源于美国。美国基于国家安全、地缘政治和军事战略考虑,企图在海洋领域对中国进行限制,以延阻中国和平崛起。中国海洋利益的拓展则加深了中美之间在海洋领域的矛盾。中美海权矛盾有逐步深化、规模加大、从黄海向南海转移的趋势,但不至于爆发全面海上武装冲突。中国在发展海权时,应处理好与美国在海洋领域的竞争与合作关系。     

Descending Eagle: The 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review & the Decline of U.S. Power

This article reviews power transition theory and emerging threats to U.S. national security. It then analyzes how the 2014 QDR will ensure U.S. relative power decline and how the strategy fails to effectively counter the rise of China and Russia as challenger states in the international system. Finally, several policy options are proposed to address the deficiencies of the QDR and to counter an increasingly aggressive China and revisionist Russia.     

The Enduring Power of Isolationism: An Historical Perspective

Are Americans becoming more “isolationist”? Four years ago, for the first time since the Vietnam War, almost half of those polled by the Pew Research Center stated they would rather the United States “mind [its] own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own” and work to “reduce military commitments overseas” in order to decrease the deficit. Such cautious views about American involvement abroad are on the rise, up ten percentage points over the past decade, according to Pew polls released in 2011 and 2012. A majority of Americans think the United States is withdrawing from Afghanistan too slowly and are reticent to take direct action in Syria. This article explains the long historical context of these recent events to argue for the enduring power and significance of isolationist thought.