Powerless and Frustrated: Britain's Relationship With China During the Opening Years of the Second Sino–Japanese War, 1937–1939

Foreign policy is multi-faceted. It was not only diplomatic, political, socio-cultural, economic, Imperial, and strategic factors that structured—and limited—Britain's foreign policy during the interwar period; so, too, did those of other countries. Given the number and variety of Britain's—and the interconnected other Powers'—interests in China, Britain's relationship with China during the opening years of the Second Sino–Japanese War provides a useful insight which has wider implications on Britain's road to war narrative. Given the topic's neglect, one can be forgiven for inferring that events in Europe entirely eclipsed those of East Asia. This article demonstrates the contrary. As awareness of Chinese suffering spread and as Japanese aggrandisement threatened British interests, sinophilism became vogue once again. However, the often insurmountable obstacles that the interwar period presented to Britain and others—particularly the United States—limited Britain's ability to aid China. It was not for want of fortitude.     

The future of the United States as a European power: The case of NATO enlargement

Abstract

European Union enlargement has left Russia on the margins of European political processes and led to widespread suspicion in the Moscow foreign policy establishment of European motives. This has resulted in, first, increasing resistance to the imposition of European norms and, second, a more assertive policy, particularly in the EU's and Russia's ‘overlapping neighbourhoods’. Although Moscow is likely to continue the strategy of engagement initiated under Putin, Brussels must radically rethink the nature and extent of Russia's ‘Europeanisation’. Russia's drive for modernisation will coexist with the strengthening of sovereignty and the power of the state, seen by the Putin administration as key to external and internal security. The EU will have to limit its ambition and work within this ‘window’—wider or narrower depending on state of play—of policy possibilities.     

‘Gunboats of soft power’: Boris on Africa and post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’

As Britain prepares to leave the European Union after the popular vote of June 2016, the government is embarking on the revision of foreign policy. Boris Johnson, or ‘just Boris’, has been entrusted with forging the new ‘Global Britain’ for the post-Brexit era and reinventing British economy around new relationships. Boris has a track record of misrepresenting and offending foreign peoples, leaders and countries. This article assesses the prospects for Africa in Johnson’s vision for ‘Global Britain’ as presented in his foreign policy speeches. The paper unpacks Johnson’s discursive construction of ‘Africa’ and inserts it into a broader historical and political context of British relations with Africa. It argues that, by constructing Africa as a ‘problem’ and offering liberal values as a condition for development, Johnson is continuing British imperial and post-colonial discourses of ‘developing’ or ‘civilizing’ Africa. In the post-Brexit world of a changing global balance of power, democratic conditionality serves to sustain and reproduce British forms of power and policies.     

National Security and Imperial Defence: British Grand Strategy and Appeasement, 1930–1939

British grand strategy in the 1930s had two cardinal elements: security of the home islands and Imperial Defence. This article questions the view that Britain did not have a strategic commitment to the continent of Europe till late in the 1930s. It also provides an over-arching analysis of the two distinct but intertwined periods in the evolution of national strategy and Imperial defence in that decade: before 1930 till late 1937 built around the strategy of the balance of power; and from late-1937 till early 1939 built around the strategy of appeasement. Moreover, it is impossible to understand the high level debate within the British government over strategic issues without putting the domestic political situation into the context of the impact of the First World War on Britain's society and economy. Similarly, the development of the new international order created at the Paris Peace Conference – and its demise in the ‘hinge years’ of the early 1930s – also needs to be better understood in terms of how British grand strategy emerged in this period. A rational and realistic policy, appeasement was a tactical diplomatic manoeuvre; it had no place serving as the strategic basis of British external policy.     

The security–development nexus and securitization in the EU's policies towards developing countries

This article assesses how and to what extent the European Union (EU) uses a security perspective to define and shape its relationship with the developing world. In order to evaluate the EU's development policy and its relations with developing countries we link the concept of ‘security–development nexus’ with the concept of ‘securitization’. The article examines whether securitization can be observed with regard to four dimensions: discourse, policy instruments, policy actions and institutional framework. The analysis demonstrates a securitization of the EU's development policy and its relations with developing countries, particularly in Africa. However, paradoxically, the securitization's extent and nature suggest that the EU can also use it as a way to avoid a more direct involvement in conflict areas.     

EU power and armed humanitarianism in Africa: evaluating ESDP in Chad

This article analyses the European Union's (EU's) largest European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) military mission outside Europe to date; Eufor Tchad/RCA was a 3700-strong force involving personnel from 23 states, deployed to Chad and the Central African Republic for 12 months from March 2008. Far from this mission achieving EU ‘supremacy’ or projecting an ‘imperial’ reach, an evaluation of its objectives and achievements reveals acute limitations in the EU's ability to project power. The article analyses the context in which Eufor was conceived and deployed. It notes that the mission's weaknesses, like those of the United Nations mission to whom the EU transferred its security role in 2009, reflected its convoluted origins and objectives. Finally, the article examines whether the EU as a unitary actor has the desire or the ability to ‘replace’ individual European nations—in this case France—in their post-colonial military and ‘humanitarian’ roles in sub-Saharan Africa.     

Second Face of Security Strategies: Anglo-German and Anglo-Japanese Trade Concessions During the 1930s

Great powers can pursue deliberate Trojan horse policies to transform rising and threatening states into followers and supporters rather than challengers by altering their domestic political and economic institutions. I contend that a great power can use trade concessions, rather than punishment, to enable a favorable foreign policy coalition in a target country. The intent is to strengthen the political power of state and societal elites who have a stake in deepening international ties, while opponents of such policies will be weakened politically and economically. The societal winners will then apply pressure on the government to support their preferred outward-oriented grand strategy. I term this process the second face of security since it entails a less direct and more nuanced method of creating security. I examine Britain's commercial policies toward Germany and Japan during the 1930s to better understand second-face strategies. I argue that the intent of Britain's industrial and commercial policy was to strengthen conservative business, government officials, and economic circles in banking, light industry, and finished goods, and even heavy industry in order to steer Berlin and Tokyo away from rearmament, extreme autarky, and war.     

British Policy and the Ruhr Crisis 1922–24

This article provides an overview of British policy during a defining episode in the interwar period — the Ruhr crisis of 1923–4. The author assesses the external considerations influencing Britain's policy (especially the roles of France, Germany, and the United States), and also explores the processes of foreign policy making within Britain's complex bureaucratic system. In particular, the relationship between the Foreign Office and the Treasury is analyzed and its impact on European policy assessed. The article challenges traditional views of British policy at this time, concluding that it was far more complex, but also far more limited and constrained, than previous studies would suggest.     

Missing the nuclear boat? British policy and French military nuclear ambitions during the EURATOM foundation negotiations, 1955–56

This paper examines the neglected nuclear dimension of the ‘relaunch’ of Europe at Messina. France favoured British membership of EURATOM and some interests in Britain saw the commercial and diplomatic advantages of Britain's leadership of the European nuclear industry. However, the possibility of a French military nuclear programme and European nuclear proliferation compounded Britain's established reluctance either to participate in European integration or to jeopardize the prospect of Anglo‐American nuclear weapons cooperation. Britain's aversion to using the hypothetical ‘nuclear card’ is a recurrent theme in Anglo‐French diplomacy.     

Towards a new aid paradigm: South Africa as African development partner

As the largest African economy and the leading African aid-provider, with plans to establish an aid agency, South Africa is often ranked among the developing world's ‘emerging donors’. However, the country's development cooperation commitments are smaller in scope, scale and ambition than the aid regimes of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) or Gulf state donors. Given its limited resources and domestic socioeconomic challenges, South Africa prefers the role of ‘development partner’. In this role, South Africa's development cooperation in Africa has ranged from peacekeeping, electoral reform and post-conflict reconstruction to support for strengthening regional and continental institutions, implementing the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and improving bilateral political and economic relations through dialogue and cooperation. This article seeks to determine whether Pretoria's development cooperation offers an alternative perspective to the aid policies and practices of the traditional and large rising donors. We conclude that South Africa does not fit neatly the ‘donor’ category of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and neither is Pretoria's aid-spending typically ‘ODA’ (official development assistance). Instead, with its new aid agency, South Africa occupies a unique space in Africa's development cooperation landscape. With fewer aid resources, but a ‘comparative advantage’ in understanding Africa's security/governance/development nexus, South Africa can play an instrumental role in facilitating trilateral partnerships, especially in Southern Africa.     

THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING: (RE)CONSIDERING THE EXCELLENCE OF ACTIVISM IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN MINING INDUSTRY

ABSTRACT

One of the greatest changes organisations in South Africa experienced through the country's democratisation is the introduction of ‘legitimate’ activism in organisational settings. Organisational communication literature – specifically as manifest in the excellence theory – compounded this through views on the potentially positive impact activism could have on organisations by ‘pushing’ them beyond equilibrium to a state of dynamic equilibrium – mediated through strategic and effectual communication. This view, however, is somewhat fouled by occurrences such as those at Marikana, and concomitant strikes in the country's platinum industry, which have held the economy ‘captive’ in various ways. Organisations – especially the mining industry – need to ask ‘How much activism is too much activism?’ and organisational communication practitioners need to introspectively consider whether this theoretical contribution should not perhaps have come with greater guidance in terms of the chary (if not restrained) implementation of this potentially positive, yet almost insidiously dangerous, communicative feature. this article aims to explore activism in the mining industry of South Africa, specifically from the vantage points of industry heads, as it concerns the changed communicative landscape in this industry post-marikana. to this end, the article will report on seven qualitative, semi- structured interviews – along with existing literature on the topic – as it offers up six considerations in applying the aspect of excellence and ‘positive activism’ within organisations in South Africa's mining industry.     

Why has the United States not bombed Iran? The domestic politics of America's response to Iran's nuclear programme

Why has the United States (US), under both the Bush and Obama administrations, refrained from attacking Iran even though US officials have depicted the Iranian threat in all but apocalyptic terms and even though a loud chorus in Washington has been persistently calling for a preventive strike against Iran? I present an analysis—informed by Graham Allison's famous bureaucratic politics model—of the main political and bureaucratic forces in Washington acting to promote or impede a preventive attack on Iran's nuclear sites. I argue that America's abstention from attacking Iran should be understood not as a coherent national response to Iran's nuclear programme but rather as (in Allison's terms) an ‘intra-national political outcome’ resulting from the ‘pulling’ of ‘Iran Threat’ interests—primarily Vice President Cheney's camp in the Bush White House, members of Congress, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—and the countervailing ‘hauling’ of the Pentagon, the military's top brass, the intelligence community and the Department of State. The main reason why neither the Bush nor the Obama administration has opted for a military strike is that the ‘haulers’, who were led by a formidable bureaucratic-political player, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, have had the upper hand over the hawkish ‘pullers’.     

The African national congress and its critics: ‘predatory liberalism’, black empowerment and intra-alliance tensions in post-apartheid South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa is characterized by centralized, neo-liberal policymaking that perpetuates, and in some cases exaggerates, socio-economic inequalities inherited from the apartheid era. The African National Congress (ANC) leadership's alignment with powerful international and domestic market actors produces tensions within the Tripartite Alliance and between government and civil society. Consequently, several characteristics of ‘predatory liberalism’ are evident in contemporary South Africa: neo-liberal restructuring of the economy is combined with an increasing willingness by government to assert its authority, to marginalize and delegitimize those critical of its abandonment of inclusive governance. A new form of oligarch power, combining entrenched economic interests with those of a new ‘black bourgeoisie’ promoted by narrowly implemented Black Economic Empowerment policies, diminishes prospects for broad-based socio-economic transformation. Because the new policy environment is failing to resolve tensions between global market demands for increasing market liberalization and domestic popular demands for poverty-alleviation and socio-economic transformation, the ANC leadership is forced increasingly to confront ‘ultra-leftists’ who are challenging its credentials as defender of the National Democratic Revolution which was the cornerstone in the anti-apartheid struggle.     

Towards convergence and cooperation in the global development finance regime: closing Africa's policy space?

The revival of China's interest in Africa is often highlighted as being an opportunity to provide African governments with a choice between development partners that may strengthen negotiation leverage and thereby carve out policy space to define and implement policies that affect social and economic development. This article critically reviews the most recent developments in Chinese and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) approaches to development finance to Africa. It argues that although we can detect a number of incidents that point towards more policy space for African governments, the revival of China's development finance does not fundamentally alter the power relations between African countries and their financiers, as the tendency now is towards convergence and cooperation between China and Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors—not divergence and competition, which could have created policy space as it did prior to the end of the Cold War. This follows the trend of other ‘emerging’ donors who increasingly play by DAC rules and thereby minimize the future possibility of playing out one partner against the other.     

Mining codes in Africa: emergence of a ‘fourth’ generation?

A burgeoning interest among academics, policy-makers and civil society groups has developed concerning Africa's extractive sector and particularly its mining codes, which are now at the centre of a wider policy debate over natural resource governance and economic development on the continent. This article reviews the evolution of Africa's regulatory codes in the mining sector, which has undergone what Bonnie Campbell describes as ‘three generations’ of liberalization since the 1980s. We also highlight new voluntary, regional and transnational initiatives, driven by a host of heterogeneous actors from Africa and abroad, which constitute a ‘fourth’ generation of mining codes and natural resource governance practices that place primary emphasis on transparency and accountability by both mining companies and host governments. This new generation of natural resource governance initiatives presents new opportunities as well as unique challenges, particularly with the growing role of emerging economies such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). We conclude by assessing future trends and policy challenges in Africa's extractive sector governance.     

Overcoming ‘Gnosticism’? Realism as political theology

This paper takes issue with approaches that relate realist political theology exclusively back to its Schmittian and neo-orthodox roots. While not entirely denying those influences, it argues that realist thought is more accurately described as rooted in the tensions characterizing Augustine's anti-heretic diatribes rather than taking inspiration from Schmittian political theology or the ‘Gnostic’ tendencies in Protestant neo-orthodox theology. Augustine's refutation of both the Manichaean Gnostic and the Pelagian solutions to the problem of evil gave rise to a complex understanding of the relationship between human free will and original sin based on a combination of ontological monism and ethical dualism. Building on this heritage, realists can be read as rehearsing Augustine's ambiguous gesture of overcoming Gnosticism with equally uncertain success. In responding to the modern ‘Gnostic’ challenge in terms that recognized the dialectical tension between ontological monism and ethical dualism, realists such as Morgenthau and Niebuhr should rather be seen as direct heirs of Augustine's ambivalent orthodoxy rather than Schmitt's unorthodox, semi-‘Gnostic’ Catholicism. This intellectual legacy may, then, explain their abhorrence of purist positions in politics—be they quietism, pacifism or, their opposite, political messianism—and adherence to an anti-‘Gnostic’ pragmatism grounded in the tensions of Augustinian theology.     

Securitisation from below: the relationship between immigration and foreign policy in South Africa's approach to the Zimbabwe crisis

The political and economic debacle in Zimbabwe has led to a large-scale influx of Zimbabweans into neighbouring South Africa. This article argues that there is a complex and significant link between the domestic response to this immigration influx and South Africa's foreign policy towards Zimbabwe. South Africa's foreign and security policy elite preferred to use an immigration approach of benign neglect as a tool to promote its ‘quiet diplomacy’ approach towards the Zimbabwean regime, treating the influx as a ‘non-problem’. But increased xenophobic violence, vigilantism and protests in townships and informal settlements against Zimbabwean and other African immigrants, culminating in widespread riots across the country in 2008, contributed to a change not only in immigration policy but also in the mediation efforts towards the Zimbabwean parties. I argue that this foreign policy change was pushed by a process of ‘securitisation from below’, where the understanding of Zimbabwean immigrants as a security threat were promoted not by traditional security elites but by South Africa's marginalised urban poor.     

Russia's quest for multipolarity: A response to US foreign policy in the post‐cold war era

A good deal of attention has recently been focused on whether and how new ‘poles’ will rise to challenge American hegemony. This article examines the conscious effort by Russian policymakers and commentators to foster a multipolar world designed to resist American domination of the international system. In particular, three policies are examined: the formation of a Slavic Union with Belarus; the developing de facto alliance with China; and the ‘democratization’ of international politics. In light of Moscow's policies, I conclude that American foreign policy has become counterproductive by sparking balancing behavior on the part of other great powers.     

The (un)making of the Pax Turca in the Middle East: understanding the social-historical roots of foreign policy

Turkey’s foreign policy activism has received mixed reviews. Some feel threatened by the alleged increasing Islamization of the country’s foreign policy, sometimes called ‘neo-Ottomanism’, which is seen as a significant revision of Turkey’s traditional transatlanticism. Others see Turkey as a stable democratic role model in a troubled region. This debate on Turkish foreign policy (TFP) remains dominated by a sense of confusion about what appear to be stark contradictions that are difficult to make sense of. Intervening in this debate, this article will develop an alternative perspective to existing accounts of Turkey’s new foreign policy. Offering a historical sociological approach to foreign policy analysis, it locates recent transformations in Turkey’s broader strategies of social reproduction. It subsequently argues that, contrary to claims about Turkey’s ‘axis shift‘, its changing foreign policies have in fact never been pro-Western or pro-American. All foreign policy ‘shifts’ and ‘inconsistencies’, we argue, are explicable in terms of historically changing strategies of social reproduction of the Ottoman and Turkish states responding to changing domestic and international conditions.     

‘Local is lekker’: Nation,narration and the sABC's Afrikaans programmes

Abstract

This article provides an exploration of the role of the SABC's Afrikaans language programmes in contemporary South African constructions of national identity. It examines the programmes’ engagement with the construction of (a) national identity by addressing the SABC's mandated obligation towards nation building, and exploring how the broadcaster's Afrikaans programmes are positioned in this regard. The article suggests that the SABC's task to ‘narrate the nation’ is complicated not only by the theoretical dilemmas faced by the terms ‘nation’ and ‘nation building’, but also by the broadcaster's historical ties to the apartheid government. This matter is further complicated for the Afrikaans-language programmes on SABC, given the language's binary position as both ‘unifier’ and ‘oppressor’.