Power, sovereignty, and the great republic: Anglo-American diplomatic relations in the era of the Civil War

Historians have tended to view the American Civil War (1861-65) as a milestone in Anglo-American relations. It marked the transfer of dominance from Great Britain to the United States in the Western Hemisphere. As Great Britain backed the losing side overwhelming American power brought about a British withdrawal. This article argues that this is a very oversimplified interpretation of their relations in this period. Britain did not intervene in the Civil War because it was not good policy; throughout the British relied on deterrence because, save for the war years, American power could not be translated into military power. The British secured most of their policy objectives thanks to a combination of prudent and conciliatory conduct, and a desire to avoid war, but also due to calm resolution that belied belligerent and sometimes outlandish public statements. British leaders have often been criticized for hypocrisy and double standards, but such criticisms seem unfair. Their belief that the Civil War was futile resulted from a humanitarian desire to halt the killing. It should be remembered that although the nineteenth century witnessed many local conflicts, great wars seem to have disappeared. It therefore appeared to be a laudable objective to attempt to arbitrate in what turned out to be the greatest war after 1815. It is also important to recall that Europeans were less interested in this conflict than the Americans themselves, and that preoccupation with affairs closer to home led to hasty and erroneous judgements.     

Expectations,Rivalries, and Civil War Duration

This paper criticizes the status quo position in African politics on two accounts. First it furthered the consolidation of the state system, and thereby, the failure of integration on the continental level. Second, it resulted in the spread and escalation of ethnic conflicts as a reaction to the suppression of the aspirations for independent expression and equality.

At one level, explaining ethnic conflict requires the reconstruction, in terms of a theory, of the specific context in which it occurs. In this regard, we suggest that ethnic conflicts in Africa are an outgrowth of the consideration that ethnicity constitutes the dominant mode of political practice akin to the state system of dependent, nurture capitalism. Four conditions determine the conflictive potentialities of the ethnic situation: communalization of political practice, catastrophic balance between ethnic groups, economic and political inequalities, and articulation of class conflict and ethnic organization.

Conflict and integration processes are grounded in the dynamics of identity formation. Our hypothesis is that identity formation is contingent on four elements: a) maximum structured relations; b) minimum differentiation; c) maximum ideological interpellation; and d) maximum unity of labor processes. By projecting these conditions on African politics, we advance the thesis that integration in Africa could be worked out as a mode of ethnic conflict resolution and prevention if, in addition to the progressive substantiation of the four elements mentioned above, it takes place on the continental level.     

International relations in the ancient Near East: The birth of a complete diplomatic system

Over the three millennia of ancient Near Eastern pre-classical history, the second millennium BC represents a kind of 'golden age' as regards international relations. Particularly at the time of the so-called 'amorrite kingdoms' (eighteenth to seventeenth centuries), then during the El Amarna period (fifteenth to fourteenth centuries), a real, rational, methodical and complete diplomatic system developed throughout the Near East, with a whole series of shared institutions, procedures and rituals. This system was rigorously drawn up at the end of the third millennium, then ritualized and improved during more than 1,000 years. Recently, the rich documentation from the cuneiform tablets of Mari (Syria, seventeenth century) has deepened our knowledge on this question. Finally, during the first millennium, this international system disappeared with the advent of empires with a 'universal' claim and then with the hellenization of the East and the vanishing of the 'cuneiform culture'.     

Incentives to Rebel,Bargaining, and Civil War

To fully understand the effects of factors that encourage rebellion, we must differentiate between the way such factors influence mass decisions to join an ongoing rebellion and the way they influence the level of concessions offered by the government. We analyze a three-player bargaining model that allows us to do so. Our results indicate that governments tolerate a greater risk of conflict with their chosen concessions when any conflict that does occur is likely to take the form of a limited, rather than popular, rebellion. We demonstrate that rebellions are more likely to be popular when the general populace is relatively dissatisfied with the status quo and when the government is relatively incapable of putting down rebellions. Widespread poverty and low state capacity might therefore be associated with a lower likelihood of conflict, but a greater probability that the general populace will participate in any conflict that does occur.     

Refugee movements in the post-Cold War era

"This article briefly describes the scope and dimensions of contemporary refugee movements by analyzing some of the forces which shape these flows. Democratization, problems of nationality and minority rights, and structural, political, economic, environmental and social changes in the post-Cold War world (especially in large parts of the developing world and in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union), are likely to result in growing numbers of refugees and internally displaced persons in the years ahead. Refugees and asylum seekers are increasingly regarded not only as a major humanitarian challenge but as a political problem and a threat to the national security of Western states. Refugee policy involves much more than defining or adjudicating claims for asylum, safe haven and refugee status for those who seek to enter or stay in the West. It is now apparent that an effective response to these issues will have to involve major Western foreign policy and international actions." (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

越战时期英美国绕英国出兵问题的分歧与协调

英美对越南战争的认识和观点差别较大,两国围绕英国是否出兵越南产生很大矛盾。虽经多次磋商,但英国自始至终拒绝美国的出兵要求。然而,由于英国在诸如西欧防务、英镑的支持等方面有求于美国,所以英国政府也竭力与美国协调以避免关系破裂,坚持为美国的越南政策提供道义上和外交上的支持,同时极力斡旋调停,帮助美国”体面地”撤离越南,但最终还是未能避免由此给英美关系带来的严重的负面冲击。     

Sustaining the Peace: Determinants of Civil War Recurrence

Over half of all civil wars that began and ended between 1944 and 1997 were followed by at least one if not more episodes of civil war. We present a model to explain which characteristics of a civil war and the post-war environment make civil war more or less likely to recur. We test this model with data on civil wars that began and ended between 1944 and 1997. Findings suggest that civil wars are less likely to recur following rebel victories and peace agreements supported by peacekeeping forces. Post-war economic development also reduces the probability of civil war recurrence, and the longer the peace can be sustained, the less likely civil war is to recur. These effects hold regardless of whether the previous war was ethnically based or not, and whether it was secessionist or revolutionary.     

Bilateral diplomatic and economic relations between East Asia and the new EU members: The case of Latvia

As the result of historical, political and geographical reasons, Latvias relations with the East Asia are a new field of study. Even though the diplomatic and economic relations between Latvia and the East Asian countries have not been significant, the volume of trade and cooperation in other fields has been increasing particularly with China, Japan and Singapore. Latvias joining the EU will impact this cooperation in different ways. Mostly it will give more opportunities for Latvia to build fruitful diplomatic and economic relations with the East Asian countries. This explorative research will examine the current state of the bilateral diplomatic and economic relations between Latvia and the East Asian countries (ASEAN, Japan, China, and South Korea) as well as clarify future trends, particularly related to the effects of the accession of Latvia to the EU. This is one of the first researches in this field and is intended for those interested in bilateral relations between the new EUs members and the East Asian countries, as well as for those analyzing the consequences of the EUs enlargement on these relations.     

State Capacity,Regime Type,and Sustaining the Peace after Civil War

About half of the nations that experience civil war eventually relapse into renewed conflict within a few years after the original war ends. This observation has motivated a stream of research into the factors that affect the risk of peace failure in the aftermath of civil war. While the outcome of the previous civil war—for example, military victory versus peace agreement—structures the post-war environment in ways that affect the risk of peace failure, the capacity of the post-war state to enact and implement policies that affect the incentives for and capacity of groups to undertake armed violence as a means of advancing their interests should also affect the risks of peace failure. Using Geddes’ categories of nondemocratic regime types, we will present a theory of how different regime types have varying capacities to repress and/or implement accommodative policies that affect the risk of peace failure. We test propositions derived from this theory with a series of event history models. Our findings suggest that while peace agreements significantly increase the duration of post-civil war peace, peace agreements involving some types of nondemocratic regimes actually increase the risk of post-civil war peace failure.     

Quiet diplomacy in a television era: The media and U.S. policy toward the republic of Korea

This study examines the role of television coverage in U.S. policy toward South Korea, focusing on the May 1980 Kwangji incident and the subsequent visit of South Korean president Chun Doo Hwan to the White House in February of 1981. It explores these two episodes in the context of major dimensions of U.S. policy toward Korea and the themes developed through sporadic, low‐level coverage of Korea by mainstream American media over the years. The analysis underscores the political impact of television's dramatic visual focus, its use of consistent visual images, its expansion of the geopolitical scope of the policy process, and its personalization of policy. The dramatically different public interpretations of the Kwangju incident and Chun visit in Korea versus the United States suggests that President Reagan's first major state visit, during which he declared that his administration would pursue “quiet diplomacy” on human rights in Korea, while successful within the United States and in the short term, was damaging over the long term.     

Ideas in Conflict: The Nationalism Literature and the Comparative Study of Civil War

The comparative study of civil war has recently gone through a “structural turn,” towards large-n quantitative studies that explain the variation in the incidence of civil wars in terms of structural factors. The alternatives have been a return to case studies and a constructivist critique that emphasizes the role of ideas in conflict. While there is no a priori reason to reconcile these approaches, it remains a practical task for those who want to understand how a given social situation escalates into civil war. After reviewing the two poles in the debate, we mine the literature on nationalism for insights into this issue.     

Anglo-American relations after Suez,the rise and decline of the working group experiment,and the french challenge to NATO, 1957-59

This article explores the establishment of a number of Anglo-American working groups at the Washington Conference of October 1957, and explains how the British regarded the groups as an attempt to institutionalize the principle of consultation in Anglo-American relations. American and British officials were anxious that the existence of the groups be kept secret for fear that they would be a cause of resentment to other close allies. De Gaulle's attacks on an Anglo-American monopoly within NATO, and disruptive calls for institutionalizing tripartite cooperation following his assumption of power in June 1958 underlined this point, and helped to cool US attitudes to any notion of formal machinery that by-passed established alliance structures. Practical problems associated with the functioning of the groups, as well as the potential for political embarrassment they could represent, meant that their role had largely by the spring of 1959, yet their brief history was illustrative of the tensions that exclusivity in ANglo-American relations could bring to the Western alliance.     

Anglo-American relations after Suez, the rise and decline of the working group experiment, and the french challenge to NATO, 1957-59

This article explores the establishment of a number of Anglo-American working groups at the Washington Conference of October 1957, and explains how the British regarded the groups as an attempt to institutionalize the principle of consultation in Anglo-American relations. American and British officials were anxious that the existence of the groups be kept secret for fear that they would be a cause of resentment to other close allies. De Gaulle's attacks on an Anglo-American monopoly within NATO, and disruptive calls for institutionalizing tripartite cooperation following his assumption of power in June 1958 underlined this point, and helped to cool US attitudes to any notion of formal machinery that by-passed established alliance structures. Practical problems associated with the functioning of the groups, as well as the potential for political embarrassment they could represent, meant that their role had largely by the spring of 1959, yet their brief history was illustrative of the tensions that exclusivity in ANglo-American relations could bring to the Western alliance.     

The foreign office of the federal republic of Germany and the question of relations with communist states, 1953-55

The thaw in the Cold War following Joseph Stalin's death in March 1953 initiated a debate within the West German Foreign Office about intensifying relations with Eastern European communist states. Several veteran diplomats advocated expanding economic ties in particular. By 1955, however, the ministry's leadership around Foreign Minister Adenauer had won out with its more cautious course of limiting contacts to diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. This early debate already highlighted most of the issues central to West German deliberations on expanding relations with communist states right up to Brandt's Neue Ostpolitik of the late 1960s and early 1970s.     

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。     

Civil War Victory and the Onset of Genocide and Politicide

Why do some governments engage in genocide and/or politicide? A common explanation for such government-sponsored mass killing is that civil war provides governments both the incentive and opportunity to eradicate their enemies during the fighting. However, many episodes of genocide and politicide begin once the fighting has ended. I argue that when the civil war ends with a clear victor the winning party is more likely to engage in mass killing than if the conflict ends through negotiated settlement or other inconclusive manners, since the victorious party does not fear armed resistance while they eliminate dissidents throughout the country. Moreover, I posit that the government will be more likely to engage in politicide rather than genocide, as politicide eradicates the leader’s political enemies across cross-cutting segments of the population, whereas genocide only destroys certain communal groups. Statistical examination of all post-civil war periods between 1955 and 2009 supports my argument.