The Danzig Question in British Foreign Policy, 1918–1920

Among the many and often bitter territorial disputes following the collapse of Germany and Russia in Central and Eastern Europe — to mention only the questions of Vilna, Memel, Teschen, or Lemberg — the problem of the Polish sea access was particularly explosive and became the most vexing territorial problem of the whole conference. This paper examines the question of Danzig and the lower Vistula within the context of contradicting Polish, German and Western, mainly British ambitions and preferences. The author shows that the proclamation of the Free City of Danzig and the creation of the Polish Corridor, dividing Germany into two parts, was a compromise not liked in Warsaw and Berlin and one the British, always fearing fatal repercussions to future stability, only considered to be the lesser choice of evils.     

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.     

The Rhetoric of Appeasement: Hitler's Legitimation and British Foreign Policy, 1938–39

Few grand strategies have been more scrutinized than Britain's decision to appease Nazi Germany. From 1933 to 1938, Britain eschewed confrontation and attempted to settle German demands. However in the five months following the negotiations at Munich, the British abandoned appeasement and embraced a policy of confronting the German state. The roots of both appeasement and confrontation can be found in Germany's legitimation strategies. Until the Munich crisis, Adolf Hitler justified Germany's aims with appeals to collective security, equality, and self-determination—norms central to the European system established by the Treaty of Versailles. After Munich, in contrast, German politicians abandoned these legitimation strategies, arguing instead that expansion was justified as a matter of German might, and not international rights. As Britain came to see German demands as illegitimate, so too did they decide this revisionist state was insatiable, impervious to negotiation, and responsive only to the language of force.     

A Closed Book? British Intelligence and East Asia, 1945–1950

This article focuses on British intelligence in China, Japan, and Korea from the end of the Second World War to the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950. It seeks to ascertain whether the collection of secret intelligence and its subsequent interpretation provided an accurate picture of Soviet and local communist intentions in East Asia. Since the war against Japan began, the region was largely an American responsibility and remained so after 1945 when they occupied Japan, Korea below the 38^th parallel, and sent forces to China. Much of the intelligence effort for East Asia also devolved upon the Americans. Yet, the British retained an intelligence interest there not least because of their extensive commercial assets in China and the region's proximity to Britain's imperial position in Southeast Asia. That interest gathered pace after growing Communist threats inside China and Korea. However, the available intelligence resources for the Far East as a whole were scarce, making it difficult to piece together a clear picture of fast moving events in East Asia.     

Sir Austen Chamberlain and British Foreign Policy 1931–37

This article seeks to analyze Sir Austen Chamberlain’s critique of British foreign policy in the six years before his death in 1937. It presents Chamberlain as one of the most perceptive contemporary observers of the international scene, and in particular of Hitler’s Germany. Unusually among British politicians, Chamberlain drew a direct causal connection between the domestic policy of the Nazi regime and its likely behaviour in the international arena. However, it is suggested that the basis for his understanding was an innate anti-Germanism, which can be dated back to his experiences as a young man in the 1880s.     

Atrocities and armed conflict: state consolidation in Israel, 1948–56

This paper contrasts four cases of atrocity in the early years of the Israeli state and contends that, due to ethnic-cleansing incentives, competitive inducements and outbidding, the stated Israeli ideology of self-restraint had little impact on policy. The article further argues that, during the early periods of democratic state consolidation, democratic states act in very similar ways to authoritarian states and that little restraint is exercised in relation to ‘enemy’ civilians located within the territorial boundaries of the new state. In this respect, arguments that democracies are superior to non-democracies with regard to respect for human rights might be called into question during the initial phases of state consolidation. The paper speci?cally questions how con?ict stalemates impact on the use of violence against noncombatants in order to tip the balance of the war and it argues against the assertion that only paramilitaries would ever use terror against unarmed civilians.     

Status and Foreign Policy Change in Small States: Qatar’s Emergence in Perspective

ABSTRACT

Small states are just as easily seduced by status and glory as other states. When conceived as situated in a stratified international society, small states acquire an inherent tendency to overcome their disadvantage in conventional power terms through the pursuit of status. Hence, it is precisely because of their position in the international hierarchy, not in spite of it, that strategic ideas based on state size stimulate foreign policy change in small states. This mechanism provides an explanation to the question why the small state of Qatar has pursued such a high-profile diplomatic strategy since its emergence in the late 1990s.     

Exit Britain: British Withdrawal From the Palestine Mandate in the Early Cold War, 1947–1948

The British decision to withdraw from the Palestine mandate in 1947–1948 may at first glance appear contradictory to British strategic interests. The Middle East and Palestine were vital to Britain's Cold War strategy, and its government repeatedly stated the need for a continued British presence in the region to prevent Soviet expansion. Why then withdraw from Palestine just as the Cold War started? The traditional explanation is that Britain withdrew because of economic exhaustion and its inability to remain a great power. But this article shows that economic and strategic considerations both contributed to the decision to withdraw. Britain's involvement in Palestine threatened to undermine its relations with the independent Arab states, and the decision to withdraw from Palestine was therefore taken in the hope that this would secure Britain's position in the rest of the Middle East.     

“The Greatest Success of British Diplomacy in East Asia in Recent Years”? British Diplomacy and the Ending of Confrontation, 1965–1966

Arthur de la Mare, an under-secretary of state at the British Foreign Office, wrote in 1967 that the ending of the Malaysia–Indonesia Confrontation of 1963–1966 was “the greatest success of British diplomacy in East Asia in recent years.” However, historians generally believe British influence in the process to end this conflict was extremely limited, as it has been widely accepted that this conflict ended through bilateral negotiations between Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur. On one level, this view is accurate, but “Confrontation” took months to end and, during this process, British, American, and Malaysian officials hoped to encourage a change in leadership in Jakarta and an eventual end to the conflict. Confrontation was an anti-colonial and a regional dispute greatly affected by the Cold War environment in Southeast Asia and, therefore, not immune from international events or actors, especially the final phase of the conflict.     

The Change and Posture of the Security Situation in Northeastern Asia

The U. S. war against Iraq has greatly shaken the security situation in different quarters of Northeast Asia, especially North Korea. And the Taiwan issue is another flashpoint in the region. After the U.     

Richard Nixon and Economic Nationalism in Latin America: The Problem of Expropriations, 1969–1974

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Nixon administration confronted the problem of how best to protect US economic interests in Latin America during a period of rising economic nationalism. After extensive debate, the president approved a policy designed to deter expropriations and rein in nationalist economic sentiment by threatening to terminate US and international financial assistance to countries that expropriated American holdings without prompt and adequate compensation. As it turned out, however, this policy was little short of a disaster. Nixon's stance heightened American unpopularity during a period when US credibility in Latin America was already on the wane, and failed to have any restraining effect on either the number of expropriations by Latin American countries or the strength of economic nationalism in the area. Informed by domestic and bureaucratic pressures and the same ideological proclivities that have long characterized American relations with the underdeveloped world, Nixon's policy on the expropriations issue ultimately proved ineffective and even pernicious to US interests in Latin America.     

Threats,opportunity, and force: Repression and diversion of domestic pressure, 1948–1982

This paper explores empirically how domestic political and economic challenges affect political leaders’ propensity to respond with the use of force at home and abroad. The foreign policy and world politics literatures are replete with references to leaders’ alleged use of external conflict when confronted with domestic challenges, but rarely consider domestic responses to dissent or the role of interstate threats. Comparative research on repression primarily focuses on linkages between domestic challenges and leaders’ resort to repressive policies, but ignores international alternatives. Neither literature considers the influence of external threats and opportunity structures on resort to use of force and coercion at home and abroad. Alternatively, we contend that foreign conflict and repression are complementary and potentially interchangeable policies that leaders may use to maintain political power in the face of domestic pressure. We hypothesize that the level of domestic political constraints conditions the opportunity and likelihood of selecting either repression or foreign conflict in response to domestic challenges. Since the ability to capitalize on external conflict involvement in all likelihood is not independent of international opportunity structures, we explicitly address differences in the availability of historical interstate animosity. We test our hypotheses on resort to repression and external dispute involvement on a global sample of political leaders for the period 1948–82. Our results indicate that repression and external conflict involvement appear to be largely independent and driven by different challenges: While there is some evidence that domestic conflict increases the likelihood of disputes and that external threat may promote repression, there is little support for the idea of direct substitution in kind since leaders frequently combine both dispute involvement and repression.     

A. Johnstone,Dilemmas of Internationalism: The American Association for the United Nations and US Foreign Policy, 1941–1948

Middle Powers are generally understood to perform diplomatic functions of constructive engagement and consensus-building to facilitate agreement in international negotiations. Middle Powers may, however, adopt more confrontational roles, especially when their accommodative functions become deficient. Whilst theoretical perspectives on Middle Powers account for such roles, limited empirical evidence has been provided to explore the conditions under which they revert to combative diplomacy. This article contributes to this area by examining the role of South Africa in the 2003 Cancun Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation. During this period, South Africa shifted to a more confrontational approach epitomised by the heightening of its public diplomacy against developed countries and its co-leadership of the G-20 coalition of developing countries. The Cancun Ministerial collapse reflected both the possibilities and limitations of combative diplomacy as South Africa enhanced its international prestige but failed to extract any meaningful concessions, whilst triggering the threat of diplomatic retaliation by the major trading powers.