Saving the league: V.K. Wellington Koo,the league of nations and Sino‐Japanese conflict, 1931–39

In 1919, VK. Wellington Koo, the most famous Chinese diplomat of the early twentieth century, participated in the creation of the League of Nations at the Paris Peace Conference. Little over a decade later, as Japanese forces expanded into Manchuria and North China, Koo struggled to save the League he had helped found. He argued that inability or refusal to brand Japan as an aggressor would sound the League's death knell. In vain, Koo tried to convince European statesmen that the Far Eastern Crisis was a litmus test of the League's viability as a collective security organization. From 1936 on, League inaction in the face of Japanese, German and Italian expansion left Koo thoroughly disillusioned. The lessons of the League were not forgotten during World War II, when Koo argued that a more effective collective security organization, in the form of the United Nations, be created on a basis similar to Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Policemen concept.     

Tweaking the Lion's Tail: Edgar J. Tarr,the Canadian Institute of International Affairs,and the British Empire, 1931–1950

In its first 2 decades the Canadian Institute of International Affairs (CIIA), Canada's premier foreign policy think tank, never functioned merely as a neutral and apolitical research organization. Under the leadership of Edgar Tarr, president of the Monarch Life Assurance Company, and in its capacity as the Canadian Council of the transnational Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), in the 1930s and 1940s the CIIA became an instrument that championed Canadian national autonomy and sought to expand Canada's international role, while challenging British imperialism, racism, and Anglo–Saxon dominance. Prominent Canadian diplomats and other officials were complicit in this enterprise, which reached its apogee at the IPR conference held at Mont Tremblant, Quebec, in December 1942. The CIIA's activities during this period revealed the porosity and imprecision of the boundaries in Canada between the state and non-state realms. Throughout World War II, DEA and other Canadian government representatives attended CIIA and IPR conferences as “official non-officials,” effectively cooperating with private individuals in a network of purportedly non-governmental organizations that enabled Canada to exert leverage on the British government, reject British leadership, align itself with the United States, and secure a greater world role. CIIA leaders and Canadian officials also consciously encouraged nationalist forces in India, China, and Southeast Asia that sought to reject colonial rule and Western dominance. CIIA activities thus became part of a web of diplomatic interactions across a transnational network of think tanks within and outside the British Empire that had their own impact upon international affairs.     

Greater Periphery and China, the U. S. and Neighbors

Lu: The world situation tends to be relaxed generally. Big powers often interact, especially in Asia, because China is developing and Asia is developing as well. When we review peripheral and regional situa- tions, we can see it. In China's concept of diplomacy, periphery is put at the foremost position and China's periphery is in a sense the U. S. ' strategic front. Therefore, building a greater peripheral environment, coping well with China's relations with the U. S. and China's Neigh-…     

A Review of: “Stefan Aust. Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F. Uwe Steinhoff. On the Ethics of War and Terrorism. Seth G. Jones. Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Ekaterina Stepanova. Terrorism in Asymmetrical Conflict: Ideological and Structural Aspects. Laura K. Donohue. The Cost of Counterterrorism: Power,Politics and Liberty.”

Approaches to terrorism and peacebuilding have a complex relationship with each other, which may be explained according to four categories outlined in this article. These range from blocking each others’ aims, nullifying terrorism, supporting a very limited, or a broader peace process. Each of these categories has implications for the inclusion and reconciliation of a wide range of actors and the hybrid nature of the emerging peace. This relates to the critical approach of using theory to create emancipatory forms of peace, which is used as a basis for the examination of the production of hybridity via the interaction of approaches to terrorism and peacebuilding in five cases in this article. These include Sri Lanka, Kashmir, the Middle East, Nepal, and Northern Ireland. We argue that “post-liberal” possibilities for a hybrid form of peace (which are inherent in such conflicts) offer a “post-terrorist” potential for peace processes.     

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.     

‘A conference now': Lloyd George and peacemaking, 1939: Sidelights from the unpublished letters of A.J. Sylvester

Lloyd George's latest infatuation [with Hitler, after his visit to Germany in 1936] was something more than the momentary lapse of a failing dotard. To sup with the devil was completely in character for the man who, at the summit of affairs in 1919, had been drawn to power like a moth to a candle, who had come to worship success for its own sake and on its own terms and to make it the first and last determinant oi his actions; and who, for his final appearance on the world stage, a few years after the Berchtesgaden visit, aspired to a role that would reconcile power with practical politics ‐ that of a British counterpart to Marshal Petain; in which capacity, let it be said, he would doubtless have pulled off a better “deal” than most. (A. Lentin, Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and the Guilt of Germany. An Essay in the Pre‐history of Appeasement, 1984, p. 154.)     

A Review of: “Fred Schreier. WMD Proliferation: Reforming the Security Sector to Meet the Threat.”

ABSTRACT

Previous research has argued that political inequality between ethnic groups increases the likelihood of both nonviolent and violent protest. In this study, I focus on civil resistance campaigns and argue that the probability that these large-scale, organized movements will take violent over nonviolent forms increases with the share of a country’s population that is excluded from political power on the basis of ethnic affiliation. I expect this to be so because ethnically exclusive regimes are more likely to counter political demands with violent repression, which increases the cost and decreases the anticipated success of nonviolent relative to violent resistance. I test this proposition in a global sample of countries for the period 1950–2006 and find, first, that high levels of ethnic exclusion make civil resistance campaigns more likely to occur violently than nonviolently. Next, to assess the mechanism at play, I conduct a mediation analysis and show that almost half of the effect of ethnic exclusion on violent campaign onset is mediated by the latent level of violent repression in a country. This result suggests that political authorities’ repressive strategies are key to explaining why regime opponents do not always opt for nonviolent forms of civil resistance.     

A Review of: “Mikel Dunham. Buddha's Warriors: The Story of the CIA-Backed Tibetan Freedom Fighters,the Chinese Invasion,and the Ultimate Fall of Tibet”

Brenda K. Uekert, Rivers of Blood: A Comparative Study of Government Massacres. Westport, CT and London: Praeger Publishers, 1995. Pp.256, biblio, appendix of data sources. $55. ISBN 0–275–95165–0.

Maria Tatar, Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Pp. 213.

James E. Jacob, Hills of Conflict: Basque Nationalism in France. Reno, Las Vegas and London: University of Nevada Press, 1994. Pp.568.

Mark S. Hamm, Hate Crime: International Perspectives on Causes and Control. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing, 1994. Pp.199, index. ISBN 0–87084–350–8.

David A. Korn, Assassination in Khartoum. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press (An Institute for the Study of Diplomacy Book), 1993. Pp.262, biblio, index. $24.95. ISBN 0–253–33202–8.     

Conflict over Israel: The Role of Religion,Race, Party and Ideology in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1997–2002

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the contours of support for the state of Israel in the House of Representatives from 1997 to 2002. In an analysis of votes and cosponsorship decisions, we find that when Congress considers innocuous resolutions of support for Israel, support is consensual and nonpartisan. However, as the violence escalated between Israel and the Palestinians in the 106th and 107th Congresses (1999–2001), the House increasingly considered bills and resolutions that directly engaged the Palestinian issue and forced legislators to take a side in the ongoing conflict. This transformed the politics of support for Israel and increased the level of conflict among legislators. With that, new partisan, ideological, religious, and racial cleavages emerged. Democrats, liberals, and African Americans started to identify with the Palestinians—not Israel—as the oppressed group. At the same time, religious and ideological conservatives and Republicans started to identify with Israel as a just state under attack from lawless individuals considered to be outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. At least with regard to Israel, this suggests that the development of U.S. foreign policy, which is often characterized as an elite-driven pursuit of national interests, is heavily marked by domestic ethno-religious forces.