States,Nations, and Territorial Stability: Why Chinese Hegemony Would Be Better for International Order

How would a hegemonic China shape international norms related to states, nations, and territoriality? Scholars have noted the conflict between the right of minority nations to self-determine and the right of states to maintain their territorial integrity. An unrestricted application of the former would risk considerable state fragmentation; an unconditional acceptance of the latter would condemn stateless nations to a subordinate status. Powerful actors like the United States have attempted to navigate these norms by specifying the conditions under which one norm should take precedence over the other, but such decisions are difficult to make in an international environment that lacks consensus, and the result is an ambiguous international order where conflict is common. I analyze the future of these norms in a Chinese-led international order, explaining why China would champion territorial integrity over self-determination, and why this would be better for territorial stability.     

Managing the Goal-Setting Paradox: How to Get Better Results from High Goals and Be Happy

Many negotiation teachers share the same tip early on: negotiators who set higher goals do better. It turns out that one of the most empirically supported truths about negotiation comes with a big but. Negotiators who set higher goals are likely to feel worse. In other words, negotiators who set optimistic goals are likely to obtain better objective outcomes but worse subjective outcomes.
We call this empirical finding the goal-setting paradox. This article considers sources of and explanations for the goal-setting paradox and suggests how negotiators and negotiation teachers may better manage this paradox through mindfulness and other techniques.     

Chinese Military Power: What Vexes the United States and Why?

The enhancement of Chinese military power over the past decade is generating ample debate over its meaning and consequences for American security interests. China's characterization in larger conceptions of U.S. national security strategy has experienced repeated shifts over the decades. China is now an arrived major power according to virtually all relevant power criteria, without U.S. policy makers conclusively resolving the implications of China's military modernization for American security interests. Comparable uncertainties bedevil Chinese thinking about American military power. The latent elements of strategic rivalry (if not outright confrontation) are beyond dispute, and could readily take deeper root in the bureaucratic processes of both countries. Without leaders in both systems fully imparting and communicating to one another their respective strategic equities in Asia and the Pacific, the emergence of a reconfigured regional security order fully accepted by both states remains very uncertain.     

The United States and its Atlantic partners: the evolution of American grand strategy

The Cold War's end posed immediate challenges to the Atlantic alliance, but a variety of factors, many of them temporary, conspired to mask this shift for more than a decade. In the longer term, the absence of a common foe has allowed previously suppressed tensions within the Atlantic community to play a more prominent role than in the past. Interests, and especially security interests, within the Alliance are less convergent now than during the Cold War. The challenge for the Allies in the future will be to cooperate absent the discipline once imposed by their respective international situations.     

The Alienated Frontier: Why the United States Can’t Get Osama bin Laden

Since the Russian-supplied Afghan army overthrew progressive President Daud in 1978, the nation has endured the long Soviet-Afghan war, the Taliban, and the arrival of U.S troops. These military actions have only heightened the historical alienation of the Pashtun tribes who overspread the long-contested border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. These are the people who are almost certainly sheltering Osama bin Laden. The Alienated Frontier is a centuries-old problem that must be solved if we are to win the war on terror, and solving it will require rebuilding the infrastructure, developing alternatives to poppy cultivation, and solving the “Pashtunistan” question. The capture or elimination of given individuals will achieve little if the conditions that allow radicals to thrive are not addressed     

The United States in 1990: the debate over immigration

Trends in migration to the United States are reviewed, with a focus on migration policy and changes in migration legislation in recent years. The author evaluates the U.S. policy of selective immigration based on migrants' professional qualifications or socioeconomic status. (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

"全球化时代的南北关系:美国与拉美的合作与对抗"学术研讨会综述

2005年6月27～28日,由复旦大学国际问题研究院和中国社会科学院拉美所共同主办的“全球化时代的南北关系:美国与拉美的合作与对抗”学术研讨会在复旦大学美国研究中心召开。来自中国社科院拉美所、现代国际关系研究院、商务部国际贸易经济合作研究院、上海社会科学院、上海国际问题研究所、上海国际关系学会、复旦大学等单位的专家和学者及《文汇报》《解放日报》等新闻媒体的记者30多人参加了研讨会。与会者主要讨论了以下问题。(一)全球化时代的南北关系。有的学者认为,南南合作的重点在于推进区域合作,加强贸易合作和金融合作,建立推动南…     

美国气候变化政策分析

美国为了维护其现实利益,在现阶段不会以承担温室气体强制性减排义务为代价来参与国际气候变化合作。从长远利益考虑,美国需要利用气候变化政策为其能源安全战略服务。在石油替代能源技术取得突破性进展后,美国可能调整其气候变化政策,在国际气候谈判中采取强硬立场。美国气候变化政策给发展中国家带来了政治压力和经济影响。     

Fracas in Caracas: Latin American Diplomatic Resistance to United States Intervention in Guatemala in 1954

The Eisenhower Administration claimed a diplomatic triumph—and a mandate to overthrow the elected government of Guatemala—after the Tenth Inter-American Conference held in Caracas, Venezuela, in March 1954, when 17 nations voted for an American resolution condemning international Communism. This article disputes the official story and some recent scholarly depictions of the conference. Caracas was the scene of intense Latin American opposition to the American agenda. Vote-buying was rampant as Washington made hundreds of millions of dollars worth of concessions to individual countries. Nonetheless, amendments pushed through by Latin American diplomats transformed the interventionist American resolution into a strong statement against intervention. The American “triumph” was actually a fiasco that called into sharp relief the difference between United States and Latin American understandings of the inter-American system, demonstrating Latin American diplomatic resistance to intervention and the limits of diplomacy's potential to constrain the actions of the most powerful American state.     

美国与伊朗关系研究的新作——读范鸿达博士的《美国与伊朗:曾经的亲密》

随着阿富汗塔利班、伊拉克萨达姆政权的相继倒台和国际“反恐”斗争的不断深入,早被美国列为“邪恶轴心”的伊朗被推到国际政治斗争的前沿,尤其是当今伊朗核危机局势的持续紧张,使美国与伊朗的关系再次成为国际社会关注的焦点。其实,在伊朗巴列维国王时期(1941~1979年),美国和伊朗还保持着非常密切的双边关系,伊朗是美国十分倚重的地区重要盟友,而美国则是伊朗独立和安全的重要保证。针对这一时期美伊关系,国内虽然不乏有论文发表,但是缺乏系统的研究成果,可喜的是,这一不足随着范鸿达博士著的《美国与伊朗:曾经的亲密》一书(社会科学文献出…     

A Weary Hercules: The United States and the Fertile Crescent in a Post-Caliphate Era

Since the 9/11 attacks, the United States has tended to engage in regime change missions with a short-term and improvisational approach that focuses on removing adversaries from the battlefield rather than achieving consolidated political gains. Today, Washington may repeat the same mistake by prioritizing the military destruction of ISIS, rather than creating a tolerable political order. The policy challenges are particularly acute because, like a weary Hercules, Washington is confronted with endless labor, but limited capability. The answer is to pursue a long-term strategic approach that aligns the ends and means of war, seeks ugly stability rather than illusory goals, accepts that nation-building in some form is inevitable, and wins the narrative war.This article is part of a special project conducted by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, titled: “After the Caliphate: Reassessing the Jihadi Threat and Stabilizing the Fertile Crescent,” which includes a book, a thematic issue of Orbis: FPRI's Journal of World Affairs (Summer 2018), and a series of podcasts. Each element of the project can be found here: https://www.fpri.org/research/after-the-caliphate-project/.     

美国与冷战后的联合国维持和平行动

冷战结束期间及冷战后是联合国维和行动急剧增加的时期,我们看到大量分析冷战后维和行动形势变化的材料,这无疑是必要的。但形势中一个重大的因素,就是冷战剩下的惟一超级大国美国的动向。很少有人把联合国维和行动面对的形势变化同美国冷战后的战略策略变化联系起来,本文拟就此略加填补。     

论美国在南越灭亡前的撤离行动

在南越即将灭亡之际,美国组织了一场大规模的撤离行动,从南越撤走美国公民及其家属,以及大批南越公民。本文主要利用《数字化美国国家安全档案》所收录的解密文件,论述了美国政府在整个撤离过程中的决策及其实施步骤,分析了其缺点与不足。     

Approaches to Defining "Empire" and Characterizing United States Influence in the Contemporary World

The militant unilateralism of the George W. Bush administration has revived interest in such closely related and contested terms as "superpower,""hegemon,""empire," and "imperialism." This article identifies four different but somewhat overlapping approaches to defining "empire": ideal type, self-consciously empirical, constructivist, and overtly normative. The author's personal view is that any notion of American Empire or indeed U.S. hegemony or even superpower is profoundly misleading. Although the United States still ranks high on the scale of most traditional realist power factors, United States capabilities appear to be gravely waning today and its exercise of both hard and soft power has recently been so inept as to limit its current influence and possibly future role in global politics.     

The Travails of Balance of Power Theory: The United States in the Middle East

Balance of power is a ubiquitous concept in theory and practice, but it is rarely tested. This study tests balance of power and balance of threat theories in the case of U.S. intervention in the Persian Gulf. Propositions are derived from the theories and from a conceptualization that treats external states as facing potentially competing and contradictory pressures to balance at the global and regional levels as well as against power and threat. Evidence strongly disconfirms balance of power theory, while balance of threat theory is partly confirmed. Conditions are identified that make balance of threat theory more robust against the historical period explored and possibly in other cases.     

Internet Governance in a Multipolar World: Challenging American Hegemony

This article traces the evolution of Internet governance, beginning with the earliest trans-Atlantic Internet ‘community’ associations that formed in the 1970s, up to and including the present mosaic of semi-private ‘self-regulating’ agencies headquartered mostly in the US. The effectiveness of the current system of Internet governance, based in large measure on US-sponsored bodies such as the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), is assessed and contrasted with an emerging international paradigm that seeks greater cross-border harmonisation and multilateral oversight of cyberspace resources. Political disputes arising amongst governments and other interested stakeholders concerning allegations of American regulatory unilateralism are examined. Fuelled in part by a digital divide between the technological haves and have-nots, the battle for the heart and soul of the Internet has reached fever pitch, without any definitive prospects for achieving a global consensus. Special emphasis is placed on emerging US–EU policy differences, as well as divergent North–South positions within the UN-sponsored Working Group on Internet Governance and related conferences. Strategies for enhanced international coordination of Internet governance, building on existing organisational structures and processes, are proposed.     

The United States and central Asia: in the Steppes to stay?

11 September 2001 elevated the importance of the South Caucasus and Central Asia in US global strategy. The Central Asian republics proved crucial bases for military and intelligence operations. The South Caucasus, in turn, provided the only realistic air corridor for the deployment of Europe‐based US forces to Afghan territory. As its Central Asian footprint grows, Washington must consider the interests of key Eurasian powers and demonstrate a sustained economic and political commitment to the region.