Two-Level Negotiations and U.S. Foreign Policy: The Failure of the Johnson Plan for the Palestinian Refugees, 1961-1962

The Kennedy administration sought to resolve the Palestine refugee problem in 1961-62 with a plan for compensation, resettlement, or repatriation under the formal auspices of the United Nations Palestine Conciliation Commission and negotiated by UN special envoy Dr. Joseph Johnson. The negotiations failed and the plan was canceled by the administration in December 1962. The article utilizes a multi-level conceptual model which examines the links between interstate negotiation, domestic politics and boundary-crossing interactions between foreign states and non-state domestic actors and their impact on foreign policy. It analyzes the multi-level negotiations that were conducted between representatives of the governments of Israel and the United States regarding the Johnson proposals, discussions held between Israel representatives and American Jewish leaders and prominent Jewish individuals, and between American government representatives and these same Jewish leaders and individuals. The study analyzes the factors that contributed to the failure of the plan and illustrates the nexus between foreign policy and domestic politics and the role of non-state actors in foreign policy decision making.     

Two-Level Negotiations and U.S. Foreign Policy: The Failure of the Johnson Plan for the Palestinian Refugees, 1961–1962

The Kennedy administration sought to resolve the Palestine refugee problem in 1961–62 with a plan for compensation, resettlement, or repatriation under the formal auspices of the United Nations Palestine Conciliation Commission and negotiated by UN special envoy Dr. Joseph Johnson. The negotiations failed and the plan was canceled by the administration in December 1962. The article utilizes a multi-level conceptual model which examines the links between interstate negotiation, domestic politics and boundary-crossing interactions between foreign states and non-state domestic actors and their impact on foreign policy. It analyzes the multi-level negotiations that were conducted between representatives of the governments of Israel and the United States regarding the Johnson proposals, discussions held between Israel representatives and American Jewish leaders and prominent Jewish individuals, and between American government representatives and these same Jewish leaders and individuals. The study analyzes the factors that contributed to the failure of the plan and illustrates the nexus between foreign policy and domestic politics and the role of non-state actors in foreign policy decision making.     

Public Diplomacy and the International Paralympic Committee: Reconciling the Roles of Disability Advocate and Sports Regulator

Abstract

Whilst the link between international diplomacy and the Olympic movement has been the subject of extensive academic and journalistic enquiry, the experience of diplomatic discourse relating to the relatively youthful Paralympic movement has received little attention. It occurs not just in the context of state diplomacy, where for example the Paralympic Games may provide a conduit for the pursuit of specific policy objectives, but also in relation to the engagement of the International Paralympic Committee [IPC] as an evolving non-state actor in the diplomatic process. The idea of the IPC as an advocacy body engaged through public diplomacy in promoting disability rights needs exploration as an element of the contemporary politics of disability. This analysis considers the relationship between the activities of the IPC and wider lobbying by disabled people’s organisations as a means of leveraging change in domestic and international policy toward disability. In relation to the global development agenda, it also assesses IPC responses to the gulf in resourcing for para-sport as well as related health and education provision between high- and low-resource regions. It considers the response of the organisation from the perspective of public diplomacy and locates that response within the wider diplomacy of development.     

The power of informality: European Union’s engagement with non-state actors in Common Security and Defence Policy

This article examines the little explored issue of non-state actor (NSA) participation in the European Union’s (EU) Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). Despite the fact that NGOs and civil society are shielded from formal access to CSDP, EU staff in both Brussels and the missions engage with them informally. Drawing on interviews with policy-makers and NSA representatives, the article analyses the practices of the EU in its engagement with NSAs, focusing on civilian missions in Georgia and Palestine. It shows that such engagement is more intense during implementation at the level of CSDP missions rather than during policy-making in Brussels. It argues that a combination of rational choice-based (functional needs of policy-makers and intensity of NSA advocacy) and constructivist (organisational and individual cultures) explanations helps us better understand why CSDP structures open up to NSAs. The article contributes to the nascent academic and policy debate on EU–civil society cooperation in CSDP and, more broadly, to the studies of informal governance in the EU and NSA participation in international organisations.     

The United Nations Plan to Establish an Armed Jewish Force to Implement the Partition Plan (United Nations Resolution 181)

On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into two independent states, Jewish and Arab, with Jerusalem as a corpus separatum under international control. The General Assembly then established the United Nations Palestine Commission to implement partition. Amongst other things, the Commission was to establish “armed militias” under UN supervision to help realise the plan. The analysis examines various aspects of the sequence of events related to this idea, from its conception in the General Assembly to its death in February 1948. It demonstrates that under the militia clause, the United Nations intended to rely on the Jews’ main military organisation – the Haganah – to establish the Jewish state and shows how and why this plan went awry despite the converging interests of the Jews and the United Nations.     

Boko Haram and the discourse of mimicry: a critical discourse analysis of media explanations for Boko Haram’s improved video propaganda quality

The Nigeria-based violent non-state actor Boko Haram is increasingly reported on in the news media in relation to the Islamic State, another, more prominent, violent non-state actor. In particular, these comparisons have been drawn within the context of reports on Boko Haram’s recent improvement in video propaganda quality. While the associations with the Islamic State are often warranted, there are broader social consequences when colonial power relations are brought into play. Borrowing an approach from critical discourse analysis, 16 online English-language news articles were read through a postcolonial lens in order to analyse the structural relations of dominance that arise when discussing African non-state actors. The analysis revealed that among the corpus of articles, nine developed a discourse of mimicry, which serves to deny Boko Haram full agency, relegate them to a silenced subaltern status, and ultimately to diminish the sense of threat posed to the dominant geopolitical security paradigm.     

More Sinned Against than Sinning? The Case of the Arab Office, Washington, 1945-1948

In 1945, as a final settlement of the Palestine question drew near, the Arab states established the Arab Office, Washington, as part of their unprecedented effort to influence public and elite opinion on this matter in the United States. It was staffed by many of the leading young Arab intellectuals of the era. This article charts the Arab Office's attempt to reduce American support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. In particular, it examines the accusations, made at the time, that the Arab Office, in pursuing its anti-Zionist agenda had co-operated with leading American anti-Semites and was under the control of the notorious former Mufti of Jerusalem, who had collaborated with Hitler during the Second World War.     

The New Diplomacy: Evolution of a Revolution

The continued rise of the non-state actor in twenty-first century international politics issues a potent challenge to state primacy in the area of diplomacy. Diplomacy's statist tradition, once the bedrock organising institution for pursuing international politics, is ceding influence to non-state actors—the “new” diplomats—who have displayed impressive skill at shaping policy through means that foreign ministries fail to grasp. To the chagrin of established scholars and practitioners, this paper claims that nothing has transpired to suggest the diplomatic profession is doing anything but pluralising. Furthermore, the process by which the foreign ministry opens itself to the public increasingly resides with the latter. Does this revolution mean the evolution of the “new diplomacy” has materialised? The contents in the following pages suggest so, and the main reason for this is built upon a radical view of agency: the age of diplomacy as an institution is giving way to an age of diplomacy as a behaviour. Yet despite who dominates in the art of influence, caveats remain and it appears likely that each side will need the other to achieve successful statecraft in the years to come.     

A Doctrine of Contingent Sovereignty

Disengagement of U.S. leadership in recent years has not only emboldened the world's worst actors, it has enabled the emergence of non-state groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) to threaten a new and ominous trend in international affairs—the pursuit of sovereign authority by transnational violent-extremists. Amending both the Clausewitzian “remarkable trinity” to explicitly encompass non-state actors in war and the balance-of-power praxis of Talleyrand to one favoring dynamic repair of failed and failing states in diplomacy, the Doctrine of Contingent Sovereignty proposed in this article provides the requisite tools for bolstering legitimacy of weakened states while simultaneously affording the necessary freedom-of-action for the United States to secure its vital national interests. Analogous to the Monroe Doctrine of the nineteenth-century, which put putative expansionist powers on notice, this new doctrine asserts that the privilege of sovereignty remains contingent upon adherence to accepted international norms of behavior.     

‘Something old,something New’: The politics of recognition in post‐cold‐War Europe

In 1945, as a final settlement of the Palestine question drew near, the Arab states established the Arab Office, Washington, as part of their unprecedented effort to influence public and elite opinion on this matter in the United States. It was staffed by many of the leading young Arab intellectuals of the era. This article charts the Arab Office's attempt to reduce American support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. In particular, it examines the accusations, made at the time, that the Arab Office, in pursuing its anti-Zionist agenda had co-operated with leading American anti-Semites and was under the control of the notorious former Mufti of Jerusalem, who had collaborated with Hitler during the Second World War.     

Al-Qaeda and Anarchism: A Historian's Reply to Terrorology: Response to Commentaries

The Lehi, a fringe Jewish paramilitary group created in 1940, conducted a concerted terrorist campaign against the British authorities in Palestine during and after World War II, proclaiming that its activities were undertaken in the name of national liberation. Lehi was founded and led by Avraham Stern, also known as “Yair.” Scholar, intellectual, and poet, Stern developed a fundamental ideology of national and messianic Jewish terrorism, which became the ideological basis not only for the work of the Lehi, but also for later Jewish terrorist activism. The present article examines the intellectual foundations of Lehi terrorism and how its intellectual and ideological principles influenced Lehi's most controversial activities—internal terrorism and the execution of its own members. In conclusion, the author traces the impact of Stern's intellectual legacy on later generations of Jewish terrorists.     

Ethics,terrorism and counter‐terrorism

Traditionally, the Talmudic Orthodoxy always postulated the reestablishing of a Jewish state only by an act of God's grace at messianic times. The establishment of Israel by secular Jews thus caused real consternation among Orthodox sects. Ultra Orthodox sects did not even recognize Israel as a Jewish entity. However, the occupation of the West Bank, the site of the ancient Jewish kingdoms, in 1967 was seen by many Orthodox Jews as a sign of redemption and also an opportunity to take an active, even a leading, role in a “true Zionist” enterprise of fulfilling God's promise to Abraham that the whole land will belong to his offspring. The settling of the West Bank was congruent with the government's political aims. This led the government to provide deep financial and massive military support to settlers, both the religious population that follows a radical nationalistic policy enveloped with messianic motifs, and other settlers, attracted by the substantial perks. The violent conduct of the militant religious sector among the settlers provides a radical threat to Israel's character, and even its existence. Above and beyond that provided by the military and economic burden of the West Bank settlements themselves.     

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 negotiation burden of institutional interactions: non-state organizations and the international negotiations on forests

The participation of non-state actors in international politics has been investigated since the creation of international institutions. Yet, the rules, principles and norms of global governance are no longer discussed in single isolated institutions. Rather, with the proliferation of international regimes and organizations, international issues are now negotiated in a context of institutional interactions known as ‘regime complexes’. This poses new questions, in particular on the negotiation burden that these new processes place on international actors. To answer this question, this contribution compares non-state participation in both contexts (single regimes and regime complexes), using the international forest negotiations as a case study. It uses quantitative methods to measure the negotiation burden of single regimes and compare it with the negotiation burden of regime complexes. The negotiation burden of single regimes is found to be insignificant, political interest being the major motivation for participation, while the negotiation burden of regime complexes is found to be real, demanding a certain type of material and organizational resources in order for non-state actors to participate. Yet a certain diversity of non-state representation is maintained within regime complexes, non-governmental organizations being dominant with respect to business groups.     

Conflicting Identities: French Economic Diplomacy between the State and Companies in the Twentieth Century

The question of diplomatic identity has rarely seen study from a specifically historical perspective rooted in the long term. This analysis explores the role and self-perceptions of an unknown and, yet, central actor in the French economic diplomacy: the commercial counsellor. It offers new and stimulating ideas on the entangled links between State and the business sphere in France. The fundamental ambivalence of the commercial counsellor’s identity illuminates the atypical nature of French commercial diplomacy from 1918 to the 2000s. Through assimilation into the Ministry of Economy and in a Janus-like role facing both the Quai d’Orsay and French companies, French commercial counsellors have had to endure a complicated situation whilst remaining the Cinderella of the diplomatic sphere. Deploying an historical analysis to enrich the contemporary debate on the state of diplomacy, this study explores the impact of interventions by non-state actors at the heart of the diplomatic machinery. Far from being an innovation of the 1990s, this intervention was a recurring theme throughout the twentieth century, and its examination sheds new light on the persistence of the neo-corporatist practice of commercial diplomacy in France.     

The single-state alternative in Palestine/Israel

Since the Oslo Accords, the two-state solution has dominated, and frustrated, the official search for peace in Palestine/Israel. In parallel to it, an alternative struggle of resistance—centred upon the single-state idea as a more liberating pathway towards justice to the conflict—has re-emerged against the hegemony of Zionism and the demise of a viable two-state solution in Palestine/Israel. This paper inquires into the nature of this phenomenon as a movement of resistance. To this end, it reconstructs the re-emergence of the single-state solution intellectually and organisationally from within a Gramscian-inspired lens—while specifically focusing upon the centrality of the anti-Oslo writings of Edward Said and the consequent role of the Diaspora within this alternative. This it does from within a de-colonial approach to the politics of resistance which centres the political practices of the oppressed themselves in its analysis. Thus, it analyses the potential of the single-state alternative as a Gramscian ‘philosophical movement’ from within its own self-understandings, strategies and maps to power. In doing so, it aims to shed light upon a largely silenced pathway of resistance to the current peace process, to question its location between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’, and to take its possibility as a more just alternative to the status quo seriously.     

Revisiting Putnam’s two-level game theory in the digital age: domestic digital diplomacy and the Iran nuclear deal

Few studies to date have investigated the impact of digitalization on Putnam’s two-level game theory. Such an investigation is warranted given that state and non-state actors can employ digital tools to influence decision-making processes at both national and international levels. This study advances a new theoretical concept, Domestic Digital Diplomacy, which refers to the use of social media by a government to build domestic support for its foreign policy. This model is introduced through the case study of the @TheIranDeal twitter channel, a social media account launched by the Obama White House to rally domestic support for the ratification of the Iran Nuclear Agreement. The study demonstrates that digitalization has complicated the two-level game by democratizing access to foreign policy decisions and increasing interactions between the national and international levels of diplomacy.     

Mending the “Unhinged Alliance” in the 1970S: Transatlantic Relations,Public Diplomacy,and the Origins of the European Union Visitors Program

This article examines in depth the foundation of the EU’s one explicit example of public diplomacy, the European Union Visitors Programme. The narrative covers the historical background to the EUVP, the main individuals involved, and its significance for the development of the EU as an international actor. Public diplomacy relies on personal contacts, and the intention here is to demonstrate the importance of this petit histoire. The contribution of the EUVP towards establishing a transatlantic “community of values,” as demonstrated by the support it received from the U.S. diplomatic representation in Brussels, is an important extra dimension. The article concludes that the EUVP, while offering a potential model for the EU to project its “soft power” and world-view internationally, remains limited in scope and unable to fulfill its potential.     

Mending the “Unhinged Alliance” in the 1970S: Transatlantic Relations, Public Diplomacy, and the Origins of the European Union Visitors Program

This article examines in depth the foundation of the EU's one explicit example of public diplomacy, the European Union Visitors Programme. The narrative covers the historical background to the EUVP, the main individuals involved, and its significance for the development of the EU as an international actor. Public diplomacy relies on personal contacts, and the intention here is to demonstrate the importance of this petit histoire. The contribution of the EUVP towards establishing a transatlantic “community of values,” as demonstrated by the support it received from the U.S. diplomatic representation in Brussels, is an important extra dimension. The article concludes that the EUVP, while offering a potential model for the EU to project its “soft power” and world-view internationally, remains limited in scope and unable to fulfill its potential.     

How the International Criminal Court Came to Life: The Role of Non-governmental Organisations

The negotiations which led to the adoption of the International Criminal Court Statute in Rome in July 1998 owe much to non-governmental organisations' (NGOs) activism. These non-state actors developed professional skills enabling them to match state diplomats and experts. They developed particular strategies of mobilisation and thereby achieved a double goal: not only does the Rome Statute bear their mark but also their role is consecrated both within the text itself and in their relations with institutional actors. Although one has to nuance the scope of the participation of non-state actors in international negotiations and to balance it in the light of the interlocutors they have to face, this case study analyses the expertise gained by NGOs and their growing role in law-making processes.