Columbia International Affairs Online

CIAO DATE: 02/08

International Affairs

Published by Chatham House

July 2007

• Choosing between America and Europe: a new context for British foreign policy

  Robin Niblett

  Power in Britain has changed hands from a prime minister who sought to balance intense UK-US consultation on foreign policy with the ambition to be ‘at the heart of Europe’ to one whose approach towards both the United States and the European Union has yet to be tested. It is an appropriate moment, there fore, to assess how these two contextual poles of British foreign policy-making have changed over recent years and what this might mean for UK foreign policy choices. The premise of this article is that the days are now largely over when the UK can or should start out by trying to build an Anglo-US position on a foreign policy challenge before trying to tie in the European and transatlantic positions. The UK is now a central player in the development of increasingly activist European foreign policies, whether these can later be coordinated effectively with the United States or not. A strong, bilateral relationship continues to serve the interests of both sides on multiple levels, but this relationship does not sit upon the same foundations as during the Cold War. There are now significant underlying factors, especially since the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 in the US and July 7 2005 in the UK, that pull the US away from Europe and the UK, while pushing the UK towards Europe as the first port of call in developing foreign policy strategies. It is also notable that, today, UK positions on most global issues and foreign policy challenges tend to conform more closely to the dominant EU line than to the United States. On balance, the UK might think about European integration more from a US than from a European perspective, but it now thinks about global problems more from a European than from a US or transatlantic perspective.

• Is the United States in decline - again? An essay

  Michael Cox

  After a decade long period during which it was optimistically assumed that under conditions of unipolarity the United States was likely to reign supreme in world affairs for many decades to come, the mood, and with it the debate about the future of the US, has changed dramatically. Hubris has been overtaken by a new mood of intellectual pessimism; the idea of a new American century by the notion of a failing Empire. Though few may wish to call it such, there is no doubting the fact that a new‘decline debate’is now under way in the United States, one that will no doubt be as intense, if not more so, than the one occasioned by the publication in 1987 of Paul Kennedy's hugely influential The rise and fall of the Great Powers. In this article, the sources of the decline debate in the US are traced, as are how and why the debate disappeared following the collapse of the USSR, and why it has now returned to haunt the American landscape.

• Russia and China: converging responses to globalization

  Peter Ferdinand

  This article compares the impact of globalization on the political systems and political economy of Russia and China since the beginning of their respective reform periods. Overall, it argues that both should now be viewed within the paradigm of ‘developmental states’. The article first presents some comparative economic statistics on the changes that have taken place. Second, it looks at the converging attitudes of the two regimes towards industrial restructuring and privatization, highlighting the continued role that they both reserve for state direction. This includes an orientation towards national industrial champions. Third, the evolution of policies of both states towards guided democratization are discussed leading to an assessment of the importance of nationalism in their responses to globalization, particularly in the recent doctrine of ‘sovereign democracy’ of Putin's United Russia party. Finally, the article argues that a greater wariness towards western recipes for political and economic development will frame the efforts of both states to construct a more cooperative bilateral relationship.

• Violence and conflict in the Russian North Caucasus

  Domitilla Sagramoso

  Since 2006 there has been a significant reduction in the level of fighting in the Russian republic of Chechnya between federal troops and Chechen rebels, indicating a substantial weakening of the insurgency. However, violence in the region has not entirely subsided; indeed, it has been spreading to neighbouring regions in the North Caucasus. Today, a loose network of formally autonomous violent groups, or Islamic jamaats, has developed throughout the North Caucasus, primarily in the Muslim republics of Ingushetia, Dagestan, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria. Islamic ideals seem to guide and inspire much of the terrorist violence, although they are intermingled with deep nationalist sentiments, especially among rebel groups in Chechnya. However, the intricacies of the violence in the North Caucasus are much more complex, and are only partially related to the spread of radical Islam and separatist aspirations. Other underlying factors, such as the perpetuation of discredited and corrupt ruling elites, the persistence of severe economic hardship, youth unemployment and social alienation, and the absence of proper and effective channels of political expression are also driving the violence. Although hardly ever reported by the western media, events in the North Caucasus have significant implications for Europe and the wider world. The enlargement of the European Union and the inclusion of Ukraine and the three South Caucasian states into the EU neighbourhood policy have brought these countries and the adjacent areas of the North Caucasus closer to the EU. As a result, events in the North Caucasus are no longer the sole remit of countries in the region. There is a risk that instability and violence in the North Caucasus may spread into areas that are of growing significance not only to Europe, but also to the United States and the Atlantic alliance.

• Global social justice at the WTO? The role of NGOs in constructing global social contracts

  Baogang He and Hannah Murphy

  Over the past decade, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been contesting the neo-liberal economic order in international politics by campaigning for normative conditions to bring about what Richard Falk calls ‘humane governance’. However, the degree to which NGOs have contributed to the formation of global social contracts remains controversial. While NGO activists and various scholars advocate the establishment of such contracts, empirical testing of this normative argument is underdeveloped. Drawing upon this lack of empirical support, critics dismiss the global social contract concept and question the roles played by NGOs in international politics. This article addresses the controversy through a review, refinement and application of global social contract theory and an empirical study of two prominent international NGO campaigns directed at the World Trade Organization (WTO), an institution that represents a ‘hard test case’. It explores the ways in which NGOs and their networks are challenging the neo-liberal basis of WTO agreements and contributing to the emergence of global social contracts. The article concludes that in some circumstances, NGOs have the capacity to inject social justice into international economic contracts and there is some basis for optimism regarding the formation of global social contracts involving NGOs, nation-states and international organizations.

• The governance bank

  M A Thomas

  While the cancellation of a number of high-profile loans because of corruption concerns has made headline news, the World Bank's principal approach to poorly governed countries is lending in order to support reforms. Although designed to be an apolitical technocratic development financier, increasingly the Bank has focused its attention and resources on promoting good governance in its borrowers. Bank lawyers and presidents have attempted to hive of apolitical aspects of governance by arguing a distinction between the rule of law and the political character of government, but this distinction is illusory. The Bank's inability to address the political embeddedness of poor governance in neo-patrimonial governments skews risk assessments and impedes the formation of effective strategies. Reform of the charter would not eliminate the Bank's bureaucratic and political constraints.

• International nuclear order: a rejoinder

  William Walker

  The article‘Nuclear enlightenment and counter-enlightenment by William Walker opened the special issue of International Affairs which was published in May 2007. In it, he claimed that the United States departed in the late 1990s and early 2000s, at the height of its hegemonic influence, from a conception of international nuclear order that it had held to, with few interruptions, over several decades. By so doing, it contributed substantially to the order's currently perceived demise. In responding to criticisms from other participants in the special issue, William Walker defends his arguments while acknowledging the enlightenment trope's fragility; reemphasizes the essential contractual nature of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which some critics denied; stresses the order's reliance on a judicious balancing (which has temporarily been lost) of realist and constitutional strategies; rejects assertions that the NPT is not a disarmament treaty; argues that the‘muddling through’advocated by some authors cannot suffice; and offers reasons why the despondency of several among them may have been overplayed, and why a new phase of consolidation of order might (just might) lie ahead, not least because of the reconsideration of US international strategies that has begun and the widely perceived urgency of preventing further proliferation and avoiding a resumption of arms racing.

• Review Article - Crescent concerns

  Shereen El Feki

  France is home to approximately five million people of Muslim origin, giving it western Europe's largest Muslim population. Three-quarters of French Muslims trace their origins to just three countries—Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia—but half of today's French Muslim population was born in France. Muslims face considerable difficulties, including poor housing, unemployment and discrimination. Some of these issues are the problems of immigrants in general, not Muslims in particular. But Islam does challenge traditional French notions of citizenship and secularism. However, for all the controversy over headscarves and riots in poor suburbs, there are encouraging signs of a better future for Muslims in France.

• Review Article - Nixon, Kissinger and the rapprochement with China 1969–1972

  Geoffrey Warner

  Few would have predicted in 1969 that the new Republican administration of Richard Nixon would initiate a rapprochement between the United States and communist China during his first term as president. That he succeeded in doing so was helped by the severity of the Sino-Soviet dispute, which erupted into armed clashes in the spring and summer of 1969. By the end of 1970 China made it clear that it would not only be willing to receive a presidential envoy, but also the president himself. Two missions to Beijing by Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger—one secret in July 1971 and the other public in the following October—paved the way for a presidential visit in February 1972. The talks in July and October 1971 and February 1972 covered a whole range of issues including the war in Indochina, the potential threat from Japan and relations with the Soviet Union. The most dif cult problem, however, proved to be that of Taiwan, where the American-backed Nationalist government not only laid claim to be the legitimate government of the whole of China, but occupied the Chinese seat in the United Nations. A modus vivendi was eventually reached in February 1972, helped perhaps by the United Nations General Assembly vote in October 1971 which unseated the Taiwan regime in favour of mainland China. The US negotiating position was not made any easier by the intense rivalry between Kissinger and the State Department and the latter's exclusion from much of the negotiation process led to a last-minute crisis which threatened the success of the entire project. While neither the United States nor China achieved all that they had hoped, Nixon's visit to China had an enormous symbolic impact and contributed to a reconfiguration of the global balance of power.

• Review Article - The international political thought of Martin Wight

  Brian Porter

  The different responses in Great Britain and the United States to Martin Wight as a thinker of international relations reveal something about the contrasting academic cultures of the two countries. Wight was pre-eminently an ‘arts’ man, regarding history and philosophy as essential prerequisites for understanding the world. Above all he was concerned with the moral dimension in politics, whether domestic or international. His pacifism in the Second World War, curiously linked to his profound sense of realism, reflected deep religious convictions; indeed theology, and particularly eschatology, underlay much of his thinking. His career centres upon first Chatham House and Nuffield College, Oxford, then the London School of Economics and Political Science, and finally the University of Sussex. His lectures at the LSE on international theory achieved legendary fame, but he did not publish much in his lifetime. The appearance since 1977 of four notable posthumous works has enhanced his already high reputation, as has the increasing scholarly interest in the ‘English School’, of which he is now seen as a founding father. Ian Hall's book is a brilliant piece of analysis in which Wight's theological world view—which was not obtrusive in his teaching and writing—is investigated with a sureness that is probably rare among scholars in the international relations field.

• Book reviews

  • International Relations theory
    • Neo-liberalism as exception: mutations in citizenship and sovereignty. By Aihwa Ong.
  • Foreign policy
    • China and Iran: ancient partners in a post-imperial world. By John W. Garver.
  • Conflict, security and armed forces
  • Countering terrorism. By Michael Chandler and Rohan Gunaratna.
  • The ideological War on Terror: worldwide strategies for counterterrorism. Edited by Anne Aldis and Graeme Herd.
  • Pre-emption: a knife that cuts both ways. By Alan Dershowitz.
  • Insurgents, terrorists and militias: the warriors of contemporary combat. By Richard H. Shultz Jr and Andrea J. Dew.
  • Root causes of suicide terrorism: the globalization of martyrdom. Edited by Ami Pedahzur.
  • Politics, democracy and social affairs
  • Politics without sovereignty: a critique of contemporary international relations. Edited by Christopher J. Bickerton, Philip Cunliffe and Alexander Gourevitch.
  • Political economy, economics and development
  • The WTO in the twenty-first century: dispute settlement, negotiations and regionalism in Asia. Edited by Yasuhei Taniguchi, Alan Yanovich and Jan Bohanes.
  • Global issues for global citizens: an introduction to key development challenges. Edited by Vinay Bhargava.
  • Emergent economies, divergent paths: economic organization and international trade in South Korea and Taiwan. By Robert C. Feenstra and Gary G. Hamilton.
  • Ethnicity and cultural politics
  • Peacemakers in action: profiles of religion in conflict resolution. Edited by David Little.
  • Energy and environment
    • Oil wars. Edited by Mary Kaldor, Terry Lynn Karl and Yahia Said.
    • Fairness in adaptation to climate change. Edited by W. Neil Adger, Jouni Paavola, Saleemul Haq and M. J. Mace.
    • Global environmental institutions. By Elizabeth R. DeSombre.
  • History
    • Dean Acheson: a life in the Cold War. By Robert L. Beisner.
    • War plans and alliances in the Cold War: threat perceptions in the east and west. Edited by Vojtech Mastny, Sven G. Holtsmark and Andreas Wenger.
  • Europe
    • Testimony. By Nicolas Sarkozy. Translated by Robert Harneis.
    • Maintenant: 200 mots pour changer la France. By Ségolène Royal and Marie-Françoise Colombani.
    • Europe in the global age. By Anthony Giddens.
    • Five Germanys I have known. By Fritz Stern.
    • Zuneuen Ufern? Die deutsche Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik in einer Welt des Wandels 1990–2000. By Franz-Josef Meiers.
    • The European economy since 1945: coordinated capitalism and beyond. By Barry Eichengreen.
  • Russia and Eurasia
    • Russia's oil barons and metal magnates: oligarchs and the state in transition. By Stephen Fortescue.
    • Russia in the Middle East: friend or foe? By Andrej Kreutz.
    • The Kremlin and the high command: presidential impact on the Russian military from Gorbachev to Putin. By Dale R. Herspring.
    • Russia transformed: developing popular support for a new regime. By Richard Rose, William Mishler and Neil Munro.
    • Resisting the state: reform and retrenchment in post-Soviet Russia. By Kathryn Stoner-Weiss.
    • Russia's Islamic threat. By Gordon M. Hahn.
    • Middle East and North Africa
    • Iraq: people, history, politics. By Gareth Stansfi eld.
    • Iran's nuclear ambitions. By Shahram Chubin.
    • Hidden Iran: paradox and power in the Islamic republic. By Ray Takeyh.
    • Analysing Middle East foreign policies: the relationship with Europe. Edited by Gerd Nonneman.
  • Sub-Saharan Africa
    • Mandela: a critical life. By Tom Lodge.
    • A culture of corruption: everyday deception and popular discontent in Nigeria. By Daniel Jordan Smith.
    • Darfur: the long road to disaster. By J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins.
  • Asia and Pacific
    • Frontline Pakistan: the struggle with militant Islam. By Zahid Hussain.
    • Kashmir: new voices, new approaches. Edited by Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, Bushra Asif and Cyrus Samii.
    • The writing on the wall: China and the West in the twenty-first century. By Will Hutton.
    • The coming China wars: where they will be fought and how they can be won. By Peter Navarro.
    • A troubled peace: US policy and the two Koreas. By Chae-Jin Lee.
  • North America
    • Containment: rebuilding a strategy against global terror. By Ian Shapiro.
    • American fascists: the Christian right and the war on America. By Christopher Hedges.
    • Second chance: three presidents and the crisis of American superpower. By Zbigniew Brzezinski.
    • Liberal order and imperial ambition: essays on American power and world politics. By G. John Ikenberry.
  • Latin America and the Caribbean
    • Anti-Americanism in Latin America and the Caribbean. Edited by Alan McPherson.

• Other books received

• Index of books reviewed