Hispanics and foreign policy

Difficulties abound in any attempt to generalize about the role of ethnicity in foreign policy-making in the United States. First, some ethnic groups have become more iduential than others. Second, those that have succeeded have seen their influence rise and fall, depending on multiple factors and circumstances. Still other groups, despite their increasing numbers, have yet to attempt to influence foreign policy.

The Hispanic experience in iniluencing foreign policy belongs to the last category. Several factors account for the limited Hispanic influence in foreign policy, such as their fragmentation and their lack of clout in domestic issues. Other factors are more specifically political and have to do with the fact that active involvement by Hispanics in politics has yet to come.

The end of the Cold War has displaced security issues from the top of the foreign policy agenda of the United States. The overarching rationale granted by anti-communism is no longer available.

Simultaneously, the Summit of the Americas, of December 1994, has recognized that economic issues, such as trade and investment, have gained ascendancy in the Hemispheric agenda.

The primacy of economics in Hemispheric relations furnishes an opportunity for Hispanic businesses to participate more actively in trade and investment relations in the Hemisphere.

However, as revealed by the debate on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), trade and investment have proven to be very divisive issues for Hispanics. Consequently, the Hispanic business community, particularly those small and medium size companies that are already active in international trade and investment, will have to act deliberately to benefit fiom the opportunities that are emerging.     

Russia says no: Power,status, and emotions in foreign policy

Since 2003, Russian foreign behavior has become much more assertive and volatile toward the West, often rejecting U.S. diplomatic initiatives and overreacting to perceived slights. This essay explains Russia's new assertiveness using social psychological hypotheses on the relationship between power, status, and emotions. Denial of respect to a state is humiliating. When a state loses status, the emotions experienced depend on the perceived cause of this loss. When a state perceives that others are responsible for its loss, it shows anger. The belief that others have unjustly used their power to deny the state its appropriate position arouses vengefulness. If a state believes that its loss of status is due to its own failure to live up to expectations, the elites will express shame. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has displayed anger at the U.S. unwillingness to grant it the status to which it believes it is entitled, especially during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, and most recently Russia's takeover of Crimea and the 2014 Ukrainian Crisis. We can also see elements of vengefulness in Russia's reaction to recognition of Kosovo, U.S. missile defense plans, the Magnitsky act, and the Snowden affair.     

Population growth and foreign policy

Australian foreign policy is examined in light of the population issue and its relationships to its developing Asian neighbors. Rapid population growth has been a 20th-century phenomenon. In the ESCAP region, almost all governments are anxious to reduce growth rates and welcome international assistance for population programs. The motivation of these governments seems to be both political and economic. Asian countries do not share the view expressed at Bucharest by Latin American and African representatives that high population growth rates are not a problem. Results of national family planning programs in 16 developing Asian countries are assessed. Major fertility decline has only occurred so far in the most prosperous of these countries. Future fertility trends are hard to predict. Present inadequate knowledge of the determinants of human fertility and limited knowledge regarding fertility limitation techniques hamper progress in population reduction. Australia has aided these countries in demographic training and data collection. For both economic and humanitarian reasons, this aid should be extended to program implementation.     

日本政府开发援助及其外交策略

2008年是“日本湄公河交流年”。新年伊始，日本便决，定在1月16日召开的首届日本——湄公河流域国家外长会议上向泰国、越南、缅甸、老挝和柬埔寨五国提供约2000万美元的无偿援助，旨在构建“东西走廊”物流网络。据悉，5月份日本将在横滨市举办第四届非洲开发会议，届时将讨论有关非洲开发的具体事宜：日本政府的上述举动令人关注。     

Hegemony,institutionalism and US foreign policy: theory and practice in comparative historical perspective

This paper explores the theoretical and policy implications of contemporary American hegemony. A key argument is that the development ofUS hegemony generally, and the distinctive turn in US foreign policy that has occurred in the wake of 11 September in particular, can best be understood by placing recent events in a comparative and historical framework. The immediate post-World War II order laid the foundations of a highly institutionalised multilateral system that provided key benefits for a number of countries while simultaneously constraining and enhancing US power. An historical reading of US hegemony suggests that its recent unilateralism is undermining the foundations of its power and influence.     

US foreign policy,intersectional totality and the structure of empire

Debates about US empire have subsided somewhat in the aftermath of the George W Bush presidency but the issues underlying such debates have not gone away. In arguing that the history of the United States is an imperial one, this article proposes that US empire is the expression of an intersectional totality, one shaped by various vectors of power but reducible to none. To make this case, the article presents a sketch of US imperial history in order to show how this intersectional totality has evolved over time. Such an exercise can give useful context to the foreign policy initiatives of the Barack Obama administration, one that differs from that of its immediate predecessor but is not outside the structure of imperial history’s longer duration.     

Peacebuilding think tanks,Indian foreign policy and the Kashmir conflict

Abstract

Foreign policy making in India is typically viewed as highly centralised and dominated by the Prime Minister’s Office and bureaucracy. Yet in 2004, the Congress-Party-led United Progressive Alliance government launched a Composite Dialogue with Pakistan which included a place for Indian think tanks in the Kashmir dispute. We suggest that as India liberalised its economy amidst domestic political upheaval, think tanks were given greater access to domestic and foreign funding and adopted new roles in foreign policy making. In the case of the Kashmir conflict, peacebuilding think tanks were encouraged by the government to engage in cross-border activities that would build constituencies for peace with Pakistan and promote economic cooperation as an incentive for peace. While the government aimed to depoliticise the conflict, these think tanks used this opportunity to draw attention to marginalised perspectives and issues. Peacebuilding think tanks nonetheless faced significant challenges in shaping the peace process because of structural constraints regarding access to resources and lack of autonomy to further their agendas. This reflected resistance within the state to depoliticising a conflict that has long been India’s central national security issue.     

Status and emotions in Russian foreign policy

The importance of status concerns on Russia's foreign policy agenda has been increasingly observed. This preoccupation with status is particularly visible in Russia's relations with the West. Although strong claims about status in Russian foreign policy are frequently made in public and private by researchers, journalists, politicians, diplomats and other commentators, such claims often lack any closer theoretical or empirical justification. The aim of this introductory article is, therefore, to outline the basic components that form the research agenda on status. Status, if properly examined, helps us understand not only Russian foreign policy, put also present-day international politics and its transformation in a broader sense.In a first part, we identify the theoretical voids concerning the study of international status. In a second part we outline the drivers and logic of status concerns, considering in particular identity theories, psychological approaches and existing research regarding emotions. The presented research agenda on status, derived from International Relations and related theories, provides a well-structured tool-box for investigating the link between status, identity and emotions in Russian foreign policy vis-à-vis the West. In a third part we present the key questions rose by the contributors to this Special Issue and summarize their main findings.     

Migration after apartheid: Deracialising South African foreign policy

Some critics have pointed to South Africa's restrictive migration policy as one of the areas most deficient in overturning apartheid legacies. Yet it is not a lack of democratic process that forestalls change-witness open parliamentary debate, an array of think-tanks and researchers providing input into the policy-making process, and the mobilisation of diverse grassroots voices. Rather, a new non-racial xenophobia creates a potent barrier to reform. Therefore, advocates of migrants' rights and opponents of violence should utilise regional and international points of leverage to their fullest potential if postapartheid South Africa is to fulfill its democratic promise.     

Reframing the rising powers debate: state transformation and foreign policy

Abstract

The volume that we introduce breaks with the prevalent tendency in International Relations (IR) scholarship to treat rising powers (such as China, Russia, India and Brazil) as unitary actors in international politics. Although a neat demarcation of the domestic and international domains, on which the notion of unitary agency is premised, has always been a myth, these states’ uneven integration into the global political economy has eroded this perspective’s empirical purchase considerably. Instead, this collection advances the concept of ‘state transformation’ as a useful lens through which to examine rising power states’ foreign policymaking and implementation. State transformation refers to the pluralisation of cross-border state agency via contested and uneven processes of fragmentation, decentralisation and internationalisation of state apparatuses. The volume demonstrates the significance of state transformation processes for explaining some of these states’ most important foreign policy agendas, and outlines the implications for the wider field in IR.     

With friends like these: foreign policy as personal relationship

Governments are run by humans who have sympathies and moods. The study of leaders' personalities, albeit not widespread, is an important tool for foreign policy analysis. Plus, friendship is a feeling that decision-makers like to express for each other. This paper analyses the activity of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's three times premier, who has made ‘friendship’ a central tenet of his personal foreign policy. Three cases are considered, namely, Berlusconi's relationship with George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin. The paper concludes that his friendship-based foreign policy has somehow worked; but, because he decided to ignore Italy's structural constraints in the international arena, he ended up wasting opportunities and resources.     

Poland's foreign policy since 1989: the challenges of independence

In its first decade of post-communist independence, Poland achieved far more than most dared believe in 1989. Despite domestic political and economic turmoil, it has joined Europe as a new member of NATO and a prospective member of the EU. This article traces the evolution of Polish foreign policy since 1989 over four time periods: First, the early uncertainties from 1989 to 1992 when Warsaw — caught between a reunifying Germany and a collapsing USSR — was intent on solidifying its relations with Central European neighbors. Second, the watershed year of 1993, which witnessed changes in every aspect of Poland's external relations — the demise of Visegrad, first moves toward NATO and EU enlargement, the emergence of serious tensions in Warsaw's relations with the East, especially Russia. Third, the years in the anterooms of Europe from 1994 to 1996, when Poland and its central European neighbors lobbied for early accession to the EU and NATO, while relations with Russia remained in the deep freeze. And fourth, the period since 1997, in which Warsaw has been negotiating its “return to Europe”, joining NATO in 1999 and actively pursuing membership in the EU. These gains have not come quickly or easily; rather, they demonstrate a hard earned consistency in Poland's foreign policy agenda, despite numerous changes in domestic politics, as well as an increasingly realistic vision of the country's place in post-Cold War Europe.