The Surprising Logic of Transparency

The article examines the concept of transparency and its effect on international crises. It tests two possible "logics" of transparency, one positive and one negative. In the former, transparency is seen as defusing international crises by illuminating other states' peaceful intentions and ameliorating the security dilemma. In the latter, transparency is seen as exacerbating crises by overwhelming diplomatic signals with the "noise" of domestic politics and confusing opponents about which domestic voices are authoritative expressions of state policy. The authors conclude that, surprisingly, transparency makes conflicts worse more often than not—a conclusion that casts doubt on one possible explanation ofthe democratic peace.     

The Theory of Democratic Peace and Threat Perception

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's assessment of Hitler as a potential threat to American security in the aftermath of the Munich crisis highlights the role of liberal-democratic norms in shaping the threat perceptions of democratic leaders. A critical factor in Roosevelt's post-Munich expectation of future trouble for the United States was his judgment that Hitler's contempt for democratic processes of accommodation forecasted unlimited aims. Since Roosevelt did not link his perception of threat to regime type, however, this episode also calls into question a central tenet of the theory of democratic peace: the notion that democracies invariably harbor a "presumption of enmity" toward nondemocracies. Nevertheless, the Munich case allows us to see which democratic norms do matter in threat perception and establishes that they are not simply the epiphenomena of state interests. Moreover, Roosevelt's response to the Munich crisis shows that threat can be assessed primarily on the basis of intentions and suggests how democratic predispositions can provide indicators of intent. Finally, in analyzing why some democratic leaders derive diagnostic information about aggressive intentions from such indicators, while others do not, this article explores the connection between different leaders' perceptions and the foreign policy processes of democratic states.     

Towards a more peaceful world? A critical view

Contemporary scholars do not agree on whether there is a declining prospect of war and armed conflict. A substantial number of authors of quantitative studies have concluded that the current worldwide trend is towards peace. I argue that this conclusion builds on insufficient evidence and possibly on misleading categorisations. The complacent view on the contemporary international system is based on inadequate awareness of the changing patterns of violence. The so-called new wars are not played out on the traditional battlefield. Valid conclusions about present trends would require a reconsideration of definitions, empirical evidence, and coding rules. Moreover, the current wave of democratisation and the increasing number of international interventions probably do not make the world more peaceful. Therefore, the conclusions in some of the most extensive recent analyses of war and peace, that the world is becoming more peaceful, are flawed.     

A Diamond of Intense Brilliance in the Diadem of Brazilian Diplomacy: The 1953 Plan for Peace in Jerusalem

In 1953, the Brazilian government decided to advance a plan for the demilitarisation and internationalisation of Jerusalem within a 50-kilometre radius. After consultations, the Holy See initially perceived the Brazilian initiative as agreeable. Also approached, the United States and Britain distrusted the plan, thinking they were dealing with a Papal overture. Israel suspected the Holy See to be behind the initiative and distrusted its intentions. For a few months, rumours stirred concern in the interested parties. After confusing mutual consultations, the Holy See did not really support the initiative and finally rejected and abandoned it. The fate of Brazil’s plan is relevant to understand the stalemate about the fate of Jerusalem, divided by Israel and Jordan, in the early years of the Cold War. Washington and London had already abandoned efforts to solve the issue through the United Nations but were unable to produce an alternative. Although attached to the prospect of internationalisation, the Holy See did not entertain the possibility of negotiating the city’s future. Brazil was making its initial foray into a more universalistic foreign policy and experimenting with different possible identities—Catholic, Western, peaceful—to substantiate its interest in making a broader contribution to international politics.     

The Chicken or the Egg?: A Coevolutionary Approach to Disputed Issues and Militarized Conflict

Is state behavior influenced by the context in which it occurs, or does context arise because of the way in which states behave? I investigate these questions in the context of international disputes over issues and states’ militarized behavior. The prevalent assumption in interstate conflict research is that disputed issues are exogenous to militarization patterns. I question the validity of this assumption, arguing there are reasons to suspect certain states self-select into disputes. I use a coevolution modeling strategy to allow the existence of disputes and states’ behavior to mutually affect one another. I find disputes are not exogenous to states’ militarized behavior. States that resort to militarized behavior are more likely to dispute an issue than peaceful states. I also find evidence of behavioral contagion among states engaged in disputes: Militarized behavior begets militarized behavior.     

The Forgotten Prophet: Tom Paine's Cosmopolitanism and International Relations

The recent questions about the viability of political realism highlight a need for alternative theoretical frameworks to guide international relations research. These alternatives, however, have been slow to emerge, due in part to the field's traditional neglect of political theory. In this essay I present an alternative based on a survey of Paine's international thought. Sir Michael Howard referred to Paine as the most important internationalist writer of all time, but his contributions have been largely ignored by students of international relations. Paine was a classic second image theorist who first posited how democratic governance would promote a peaceful world. Paine's works leave us with all the features of cosmopolitan thinking in international relations: Faith in reason and progress, the evils of authoritarian regimes, the democratic peace, the peaceful effect of trade, nonprovocative defense policies, open diplomacy, obsolescence of conquest, the universal respect for human rights, and the democratic propensity to engage in messianic interventionism. I conclude with a comparison of Kant and Paine where I argue that Paine is the more faithful representative of the Enlightenment for students of international relations.     

Democracy,Regional Security Institutions,and Rivalry Mitigation: Evidence From Europe,South America,and Asia

The fact that democracies maintain peaceful relations with each other is regarded as one of the few law-like correlations in international relations, but the causes of this empirical phenomenon remain contested. This paper tries to fill this theoretical gap by attributing the remarkable stability between democracies to inter-democratic institutions. At the same time, it contributes to the debate on the need to differentiate among international organizations in order to assess their peace-building effects. We identify transnational and trans-governmental linkages as crucial features that distinguish inter-democratic from traditional institutions with non-democratic or mixed membership. In order to explain these institutions’ peace-building effect, we analyze the impact of international institutions on rivalry mitigation with a view to five pairs of states: France-Germany, Greece-Turkey, Argentina-Brazil, Indonesia-Malaysia, and Japan-South Korea. Those dyads all look back at a history of rivalry, conflict, and mutual threat perceptions, and they are located in highly institutionalized regional settings but vary with regard to their political regime type. The controlled comparison of cases demonstrates that the embeddedness of international institutions in transnational and trans-governmental linkages corresponds to each member's regime type and that these institutional differences are responsible for the varying extent of rivalry mitigation.     

China’s Public Diplomacy Rhetoric, 1990–2012: Pragmatic Image-Crafting

During Hu Jintao’s period of leadership, careful public diplomacy language was deployed by the People’s Republic of China from 2000–2012 to describe the international system and China’s role within it. The terms looked at in this analysis are those introduced in the 2000s to recalibrate the ‘multi-polarity’ [shijie duojihua] emphasis of the 1990s. These terms have been deployed within a general ‘reassurance diplomacy’ that emphasised concepts like ‘responsible Great Power’ [fuzeren da guo], ‘multi-lateralism’ [duobian zhuyi], ‘good neighbourhood policy’ [mulin zhengce], ‘democratisation of international relations’ [guoji guanxi mingzhuhua], ‘peaceful rise’ [heping jueqi], ‘peaceful development’ [heping fazhan] and ‘harmonious world’ [hexie shijie]. Ambiguities, implications, impact, and tensions surrounding these terms are considered, and China’s deliberate adjustments pinpointed. China’s soft power intentions emerge from its instrumentalist use of diplomatic rhetoric, though a credibility gap also emerged between actions and words by 2012.     

论中美之间的权力转移

经过60余年的物质性和社会性成长,中国的国家实力已经有了明显提高。中国实力的增长和美国实力的相对衰退使中美之间出现了权力转移现象。由于中国坚持和平发展道路和对现存国际秩序持基本满意的态度,中美之间的权力转移未必引起冲突与战争,权力能否和平转移取决于美国对中国崛起的战略判断。中美之间的权力转移并不意味着中崛美落,而是中美和其他主要国家或国家集团一道在国际事务中发挥重要作用。     

International System and China’s Asia-Pacific Strategy

What impact does a shift in the global distribution of power have on the international order? According to the views of traditional realists,power transitions in the international order are usually accompanied by major wars,the best example being the two world wars of the twentieth century.China’s peaceful rise is conducive to the peace and stability of Asia and Pacific regions.The steady rise of China’s position and its role in dealing with international and regional problems have proved China’s success in...     

改革开放与中国硬软实力的构建

改革开放是一场伟大的革命,不仅彻底改变了国家和民族的面貌,而且具有重大国际战略意义。改革开放既解放了物质生产力,也解放了精神生产力;既大幅提升了中国的硬实力,也增强了中国的软实力,提高了中国的国际地位。为了实现国家的全面发展,需要中国特色的硬软实力,而塑造和平和谐的硬软实力则需要永久的改革开放。     

Regime and Power in International Terror Crises: Strong Democracies Fight Back Hard

This study explores regime, power, and violence in international terror crises (ITCs). It examines terror strikes and retaliations against the terror groups and their hosts. The exploration tests two hypotheses: first, democracies, like other states, retaliate, even at the risk of escalation; and second, strong democracies fight back with massive violence as do authoritarian regimes. Historical narratives of ITCs from 1934 to 2006 show that strong democracies were the most common targets of terror. Like authoritarian states, they responded to terror, but were the most violent retaliators, followed by weaker states, democratic or not. So the democratic constraints affect weaker states more than stronger ones. These trends draw attention to the destabilizing nature of international terror and its challenge to the peaceful resolution of international disputes.     

REFLECTIONS ON THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL IN 2011REFLECTIONS ON THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL IN 2011

The first vision for removing the threat of nuclear weapons, within a year of their first use, was the far-reaching agenda of the Acheson Lilienthal Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy in 1946[1] proposing that all fissile material should be transferred to a new international agency (the Atomic Development Authority) which would release small amounts to individual nations for peaceful uses.This proposal, like many others, fell victim to the ideologically aggravated suspicions of the Cold War.But, over time, and even during periods of intense east-west suspicion, a substantial body of negotiated agreements has been achieved.Almost all necessarily involved the nuclear superpowers, who led the way in the expansion of nuclear weapons, and whose arsenals therefore needed to be limited as a precondition for achieving wider global nuclear stability.     

中国在东南亚的软实力和中美关系

软实力在国家的对外关系中的作用越来越引起人们的重视。中国在东南亚的影响力的上升在美国的舆论界和学术界引起了警觉,认为中国要超越甚至排挤美国在该地区的影响。作者考察了中国在东南亚的实际影响,实事求是地分析了中国影响上升的原因,并指出了这种影响的局限性。最后呼吁,为了本地区的和平、稳定与繁荣,中美两国应该和平共处,合作共赢,良性竞争。     

Finding peace in a world of hegemony and terrorism

Although acknowledging the importance of power, Immanuel Kantsuggested that republican constitutions, economic interdependence,and international law and organizations can form the basis fora dramatically more peaceful world. Statistical analyses ofthe behavior of pairs of states, 1885–1992, confirm thisliberal vision. Using methods common to medical epidemiology,we find that the Kantian elements substantially reduce the likelihoodthat states will become involved in a fatal militarized dispute.Indeed, two democracies linked by extensive trade and a densenetwork of international organizations are 95% less likely tofight than states that do not share these characteristics. Ouranalyses have important implications for the United States andChina, two countries destined to shape the twenty-first century.Engaging China in trade and integrating it into the major internationalorganizations over the last three decades has, with some liberalizationof its government, substantially reduced the risk of militaryconflict.     

News media,threats and insecurities: an ethnographic approach

This article presents research from a three-year study of shifting understandings of threat and security in Britain following the 2003 Iraq War. We develop the case for a more integrated and nuanced approach to studying the relationship between policymakers, media practitioners and media publics given the increasing importance of these relationships to international relations (IR) matters of concern. Our analysis demonstrates the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors that explain why certain individuals and groups arrive at certain understandings or perceptions of threats. Responding to recent calls in IR for the use of diverse and interdisciplinary methods, our methodology enables us to demonstrate how disparities emerge between official and public understandings of threats. These understandings result from people's engagement with political and media discourses, and the experience of this engagement can be characterized by connectivity, (un)certainty and contradiction.     

国际法与中国特色大国外交（英文）

International institutions and norms, founded on universally accepted international law, have created a relatively stable external environment for China's peaceful development. Without a concerted effort to buttress established international law, it would be impossible for China to conduct its major-country diplomacy, foster a new type of international relations and build a community with a shared future for mankind.     

Economic Interests and Threat Assessment in the US Congress, 1890–1914

Why do some domestic actors see the international environment as a threatening place populated by untrustworthy powers, when others find opportunities for peaceful cooperation in the same conditions? Because these actors confront the same international environment, the reasons for their divergent evaluations must rest on differences in their own beliefs and interests. In this article, we consider the impact of societal interests in trade and trade protection on elite assessments of the international environment. We examine evaluations of the international environment in speeches given in the US Congress during naval appropriations debates between 1890 and 1914. The manufacturing sector’s interest in trade protection led political leaders who represented manufacturing regions to offer more negative assessments of the international environment, while those representing export-oriented agricultural areas of the country gave more positive evaluations. These effects were roughly comparable to those associated with party, as well as individual-level characteristics, such as having served as a military officer.     

马来西亚和印度尼西亚岛屿主权争议案评论

2002年12月17日,国际法院在分析了1891年英国和荷兰的有关条约和国家继承之后,依据有效统治理论对马来西亚和印度尼西亚之间关于利吉丹岛和西巴坦岛的主权争议案作出了判决,将两个小岛的主权判给了马来西亚。本文首先简单介绍了该判决的主要内容,随后对本案在国际法以及国际政治方面的影响进行了简要的评论。本文认为,国际法院依据有效统治理论进行裁判是值得疑问的。这样的判决不利于保持有争议地区的稳定。     

Humanitarian Intervention and Communal Civil Wars:

How do policymakers in democratic nations mobilize support for hard-line strategies? Existing answers to this question emphasize the exaggeration of external threats. Yet this overlooks an important dilemma: because democratic citizens expect their leaders to explore peaceful solutions or less aggressive alternatives when foreign dangers are ambiguous, the same conditions that make threat inflation necessary also make it difficult to employ successfully. To mobilize support for hard-line measures when the public wants its leaders to demonstrate restraint, policymakers may therefore attempt to shift blame onto an adversary by using “counterfeit diplomacy.” Specifically, democratic leaders may adopt more cooperative or less coercive options than they believe are necessary, but which they anticipate will fail. This approach can be a risky one, however, because an opponent might accept a nation's demands, accede to its conditions, or offer counterproposals in the hope of diffusing support for more confrontational measures.