'The limits of international leadership': The Eisenhower administration, East-West trade and the cold war, 1953-54

This article examines the Eisenhower administration's trade policy towards the Soviet Union in 1953-54. It argues, contrary to previous scholarship on the subject, that the liberalization of East-West trade controls in August 1954 cannot be attributed solely to the presidential leadership of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Instead, whilst Eisenhower played a significant role in changing American embargo policy, it was the Churchill government which provided the impetus required for the revision of the international export control lists. Despite conflict and confrontation over the shape and contents of the new embargo between Washington and London, the two governments forged a compromise in the summer of 1954.     

Eisenhower Reconsidered: Policymaking Lessons for Today

President Dwight D. Eisenhower oversaw an unprecedented period of U.S. peace and prosperity. These accomplishments were not all preordained or simply the result of favorable domestic and international conditions. When he became president in 1953, Ike inherited a contentious global and domestic environment. The challenges led many Americans to wonder if the sacrifices made during World War II had only garnered a fleeting peace. Eisenhower's achievements are notable because of this setting and should lead us to explore the methods that he used to navigate the ship of state. In particular, Ike's comprehensive and disciplined approach to policymaking stands out. It allowed Eisenhower to escape the worst aspects of America's partisan politics and guide the nation toward its most vital and enduring interests.     

冷战后韩国的东北亚安全战略构想

自朝鲜战争结束以来,韩国安全政治中一直面临着严重的安全困境问题。韩国认为,周边强国之间的均衡关系是韩国生存与繁荣的保障。从现实情况看,韩国的力量难以同周边大国中的任何一个进行抗衡,归根结底,只有在大国间的力量取得平衡并相互制约的前提下,韩国的活动范围才能得以扩大。所以,推动东北亚多边安全机制的建立,维持当前的地区力量均衡,防止因为周边大国实力的强弱变化导致的地区秩序瓦解,对于韩国意义重大。冷战后,韩国所提出的东北亚多边安全战略构想无疑将对维持该地区长期和平发挥关键性作用,韩国也能从中获得可观的和平红利。但由于其内在缺陷,这一构想并不能一劳永逸地化解韩国长期所面临的安全困境。     

The liberian civil war: new war/old war?

The Liberian civil war has been portrayed as a primary example of ‘new wars’, drawing attention both to the economic motives and the global character of the conflict. However, to focus excessively on material explanations and greed-inspired motivations of actors may lead to one-sided explanations of conflict. This article suggests that there is little ‘new’ about the Liberian war. Rather, it can best be understood as a violent expression of the tendencies, organisation and attitudes towards identity, society and class that have underpinned Liberia since its formation in the 19th century. The ‘new war’ literature helps us to understand one important dimension of the Liberian conflict. However, too much emphasis on this dimension may also lead scholars and policy-makers to neglect the ideational aspect of conflict. These are of immense importance to a full understanding of civil war and its dynamics.     

Understandable Failure: The Eisenhower Administration's Strategic Goals in Iraq, 1953-1958

The present article contends that while the United States did not link Iraq to the West in a Northern Tier alliance aimed at containing the Soviet Union, the failure to do so was not principally a result of mistakes made by Washington. American actions in Iraq were constrained by the competing imperial ambitions of the United Kingdom and by the regional political goals of the Iraqi monarchy. The criticism that the Eisenhower administration undermined the stability of the Iraqi monarchy by not supplying it with sufficient aid, and encouraging it to join the unpopular Baghdad Pact ignores the importance that Britain and the Iraqi government itself had on fate of the Iraqi monarchy.     

Voting for peace,mobilizing for war: post-conflict voter turnout and civil war recurrence

In democratic elections around the world, high levels of voter turnout are frequently praised as a sign of democratic legitimacy and consolidation. However, while popular participation should be lauded in many circumstances, under certain conditions it can also have nefarious side effects. In post-conflict countries, high levels of voter turnout may make it easier for militants to return to arms because everyday people are invested in the political process and the electoral outcome. Through the use of survival modelling, this study finds that voter turnout is positively correlated with civil war recidivism in post-conflict first elections. Even when elections are not particularly contentious or when structural factors (such as level of development) are auspicious, voter turnout continues to have a positive and statistically significant relationship with recidivism.     

1958年印尼内战与艾森豪威尔政府的政策

美国对1958年印尼内战的干涉是美国与第三世界关系史上一个有代表性的事件。艾森豪威尔政府从美苏两极对抗的角度认知和处理美国与新兴的民族主义国家的关系,将美国对亚非民族主义国家的政策附属于美国对苏冷战战略。正是基于这样一种政策思维,美国对印尼内战采取了干涉政策。干涉行动的失败,迫使美国决策当局重新检视对印尼政策的基本构架,并着手制定一项更为可行、更能反映印尼政治经济和社会现实的政策。     

North Korea: The Case for Strategic Entanglement

North Korea is a state shrouded in secrecy, yet it receives an enormous amount of media attention. Its reclusive nature makes analysis difficult and speculative. What is certain is that a dangerous stalemate regarding nuclear weapons has persisted for far too long and is an obstacle to any real change in the political system. History, culture, and ideology all rule the state's actions; it is therefore a mistake to assume North Korean negotiators can act with autonomy. A new and dynamic means to deal with this dilemma should be developed, for the past has demonstrated that threats and demands will not coerce Pyongyang into submitting, in fact, that approach will only exacerbate the problem. An effective means to move beyond the stalemate is needed.     

Prosecuting war criminals: the case for decentralisation

Michelle Sieff is a Senior Research Associate on African Affairs at the Eurasia Group, a consulting company in New York City. Leslie Vinjamuri is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science, and an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, Washington, DC.¹     

The war in Afghanistan: its background and future prospects

If the West loses in Afghanistan and its region, the most important reason will be that we are pursuing several different goals simultaneously, most of which are in contradiction to the others. Western governments need to choose between these goals, and co-ordinate a strategy in pursuit of the most desirable and achievable ones. The creation of a democratic Afghanistan needs to be recognised as a hopeless fantasy. Instead, the West should imitate the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and concentrate on creating an effective military force that can survive Western withdrawal and continue to fight the Taleban. In the meantime, something to be avoided at all costs is the further destabilisation of Pakistan, since Pakistan in the end constitutes a far greater potential threat to the region, the West and the world than does Afghanistan.     

International politics: The continuing search for theory

The decline of the search for a general theory of international politics during the past two decades is generally conceded by scholars. Disillusionment with the search developed out of the conviction that the ambitious efforts of the 1950's proved to be inadequate and unsatisfactory in explaining the complexity of international politics. In recent years scholarly interest has shifted to the development of inductive approaches involving the increasing use of quantitative methods and techniques as an aid to the understanding of international behavior. These efforts have also prompted criticism and dissatisfaction but they continue to dominate research. To correct or reverse this trend and to revive interest in explicit theorizing, Kenneth Waltz in Theory and International Politics has attempted the formulation of a systems theory of international politics using a philosophy of science approach. His purpose is to indicate the relative influence of international system and state forces on international behavior, the variation of causes and effects in different types of international systems and the specification of the elements of international systems. A critical examination of Waltz's work reveals that he has achieved only the last objective primarily because of a pronounced tendency to neglect or minimize the influence of states on the international system and to attribute too much influence to international systems on the behavior of states. The result is at best a theoretical framework but not a rigorously developed systems theory. The writer has modestly attempted a reformulation of Waltz's framework taking into account the increasing importance of the regional level in systems theory. Hypothetical relationships between the global system, regional systems, and states are suggested to draw attention to the interrelationship of levels of analysis in the study of international politics in an effort to promote theoretical coherence if not a general theory of international politics.     

Stalin's moustache: The Soviet Union and the coming of war

Michael Jabara Carley, 1939. The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999), pp.xxv + 321. ISBN 1-56663-252-8.

Patrick R. Osborn, Operation Pike. Britain Versus the Soviet Union, 1939-1941 (Westport, CT and London, 2000), pp.xiii + 274. ISBN 0-313-31368-7

Gabriel Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion. Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), pp.xvi + 408. ISBN 0-300-07792-0.     

Stalin's moustache: The Soviet Union and the coming of war

Michael Jabara Carley, 1939. The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999), pp.xxv + 321. ISBN 1–56663–252–8.

Patrick R. Osborn, Operation Pike. Britain Versus the Soviet Union, 1939–1941 (Westport, CT and London, 2000), pp.xiii + 274. ISBN 0–313–31368–7

Gabriel Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion. Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), pp.xvi + 408. ISBN 0–300–07792–0.     

Terrorism,war and the economy of scale: an interview with Ted Goodnight

Apart from the great debates on the definition of terrorism or its causes, the discussion about whether ‘new terrorism’ can really be considered new or not has become one of the central disagreements in terrorism research. This article will respond to the criticism voiced by some of the proponents of the ‘new terrorism’ idea and reflect on the merits of their arguments. It will emphasis the importance of words and the implication of small predicates such as ‘new’ for the construction of terrorism and our reaction to it.     

A social theory of war: Clausewitz and war reconsidered

This article presents a new theory of war that is grounded in the insights of Clausewitz on the social nature of conflict. Clausewitz had argued that war is a political process; he therefore distinguished between ‘war’—understood in political terms—and warfare—understood as fighting. He then created a typology covering a spectrum of war ranging from total to limited, the political stakes of a conflict determining where it would fall on the spectrum. I develop and modify this basic framework by arguing that the social organization of the actors has a determining role in predicting the stakes of war. I then show how this framework helps us understand some key problems in the political science literature on war and conflict. I attempt to show two main things: (1) that there are different types of wars (and that these differences are not necessarily related to the standing of the actors, i.e. the presence or absence of sovereignty); and (2) that how war and warfare are related is more complicated than previously understood and that this has implications for the political science literature on order, conflict and violence.     

Beating the water: The terrorist search for power,control and authority

Starting from Mao's well‐known metaphor of ‘water and fish’, this article examines the nature of power as it applies to terrorist groups. Terrorists are under constant pressure actively to increase their influence and control over their constituent communities. Our understandings of how terrorist groups can do this has generally suffered from being too limited and overly simplistic. Focusing on Northern Ireland, this article explores how terrorist groups can first identify and then access various sources of power which can be used to strengthen the group's position and authority. The article argues that there are identifiable strategies which can be exploited by current and future terrorists in virtually any setting. It is in the interest of those combating terrorism to study these principles closely if they wish to limit the power and durability of terrorist opponents.