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Chinese President Xi Jinping has shown himself to be a tough and charismatic leader whose vision is to fulfill the "Chinese dream". He has adopted a hardline policy on official extravagance, corruption and online criticism, and is a steadfast reformist in his first year of office. Xi's austerity policy on official extravagance is to placate civil anger over official profligacy in an economic slowdown and consolidate Xi's populist image.

With a contingent of around 1,500 fighters, Morocco is considered one of the main exporters of foreign fighters to Syria. Until 2014, Moroccan authorities, who were content to see their own jihadis leave and add to the pressure on Bashar al-Assad, mostly turned a blind eye to networks of recruitment. Since the dramatic rise of the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, concern over local repercussions and the return of war-hardened radicals has prompted Rabat to adopt a hardline, security-oriented approach instead. Repression, however, is unlikely to uproot these networks. Instead, a comprehensive strategy for de-radicalization should aim to rehabilitate and reintegrate returning fighters, and use their example to dissuade others from violent militancy. (SWP Comments)

With a contingent of around 1,500 fighters, Morocco is considered one of the main exporters of foreign fighters to Syria. Until 2014, Moroccan authorities, who were content to see their own jihadis leave and add to the pressure on Bashar al-Assad, mostly turned a blind eye to networks of recruitment. Since the dramatic rise of the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, concern over local repercussions and the return of war-hardened radicals has prompted Rabat to adopt a hardline, security-oriented approach instead. Repression, however, is unlikely to uproot these networks. Instead, a comprehensive strategy for de-radicalization should aim to rehabilitate and reintegrate returning fighters, and use their example to dissuade others from violent militancy. (author's abstract)

ObjectiveWith an aim of extending the scope of group threat theory from within‐country tensions between racial groups to international economic competition, this study specifically examined the impacts of perceived relative economic status of an in‐group country on attitudes about contentious political issues with a rival out‐group country.MethodsTwo survey experiments were administered, both of which manipulated Japanese participants' perceptions of the relative economic powers of Japan and South Korea.ResultsWhen Japanese perceive that their country's economic power is declining relative to South Korea's economy, they demonstrate more hardline attitudes about territorial and historical issues between the two countries.ConclusionThis study demonstrates the applicability of group threat theory to bilateral international relations. It also suggests that public opinion about international conflicts is a function of the long‐term rebalancing of economic power, which cannot be easily influenced by short‐term policies.

Examines US policy toward the Soviet Union during the 1980s; argues that President Reagan initiated conciliatory policies, rather than reacting to changing Soviet attitudes.

This article examines a particular form of low-level conflict known as international terrorism. The failure in the international arena to cope and curb this form of political violence forced governments to seek out and design various avenues of response. The focus then is on confrontational terrorism that includes instances of hostage takings, kidnappings, and skyjackings. The common denominator to these incidents is the specific and tangible demands that terrorists attempt to extract from the targeted states. On the other hand, the study explores the various policies and approaches adopted by governments in their efforts to thwart acts of international terrorism. Thus, the analysis will be couched in the form of cost and benefit calculations. The data for the analysis is the hostage file included in the ITERATE II data base compiled by Edward Mickolus. The findings of the article point out that governments tend to adopt hardline policies for dealing with terrorists holding hostages. However, we have to distinguish between declared policies and practices. The majority of governments prefer to practice those harsh policies rather than declare them publicly and to apply a "deterrence by denial" approach. Governments are increasingly willing to use force to resolve terrorist incidents and some have adopted harsh authoritarian measures, especially in Latin America. Targeted states have diverted resources to combat terrorism, and have developed an array of counter-measures.

The ascent of Mikhail Gorbachev as leader of the USSR was hailed as the end of hardline policies from the Politburo Polish economist Jacek Rostowski questions Gorbachev's relative 'liberalism' and examines communist disagreement on the admission of market forces to economic policy

"Whenever and however Russia's invasion of Ukraine ultimately ends, the U.S.-Russia relationship is likely to remain hostile in its aftermath. Over the long term, however, the United States will have incentives to reduce the risks and costs of its relationship with Russia in order to focus on other challenges, such as China. Future U.S. policymakers might therefore wish to again consider a limited less-hardline approach toward Russia. Supporters of such approaches contend that limited less-hardline approaches can reduce an adversary's insecurity, moderate its behavior, and reduce the costs and risks associated with competition between the two countries. Critics are reluctant to make concessions to U.S. rivals and worry that softening the U.S. stance could embolden a rival to become more demanding and aggressive. The authors used four historical case studies of limited less-hardline approaches with strategic similarities to the U.S.-Russia relationship before the war in Ukraine to evaluate these competing claims. These cases were (1) negotiations between Britain and Russia over Central Asia from 1899 to 1914 (2) U.S.-Soviet negotiations on the post-World War II order from 1945 to 1946, (3) the U.S.-Soviet détente from 1969 to 1975, and (4) the U.S.-Russia reset from 2009-2013. The authors found that such approaches have led to durable but narrow gains without emboldening the rival to be more demanding or aggressive. These limited policies also have limited effects. They only reduce a rival's threat perceptions modestly and do not prevent future deterioration of the relationship over outstanding conflicts of interest."

Existential threat lies at the heart of intergroup conflict, but the literature on existential concerns lacks clear conceptualization and integration. To address this problem, we offer a new conceptualization and measurement of existential threat. We establish the reliability and validity of our measure, and to illustrate its utility, we examine whether different existential threats underlie the association between political ideology and support for specific political policies. Study 1 (N = 798) established the construct validity of the scale, and revealed four distinct existential threats: personal death (PD), physical collective annihilation (PA), symbolic collective annihilation (SA), and past victimization (PV). Study 2 (N = 424) confirmed the 4-factor structure, and the convergent and discriminant validity of the scale. Study 3 (N = 170) revealed that the association between a hawkish political ideology and support for hardline policies was mediated by PV, whereas the association between a dovish political ideology and conciliatory policies was mediated by concerns over collective symbolic annihilation. Study 4 (N = 503) conceptually replicated the pattern of findings found in Study 3, and showed that at times of conflict, PA concerns also mediate the relationship between hawkish ideologies and support for hardline policies. In both Studies 3 and 4, when controlling for other threats, PD did not play a significant role. These results underscore the need to consider the multidimensional nature of existential threat, especially in the context of political conflict.

This article discusses the international environment for China, Russia and the US, which can range from permissive to restrictive for each state. It develops a domestic political economy model and argues that a great power can use concessions or hardline policies to concentrate benefits or losses on particular constituencies and thereby affect the domestic balance of political and economic power in great powers abroad. The final section discusses how between 1969 and 1979, Washington, Beijing and Moscow sought to win friends and influence enemies in the other two states. Adapted from the source document.

Case studies of the 1828-9 and 1877-8 Russian interventions in Turkey-in-Europe and of the 1947-8 and 1965 Pakistani interventions in Kashmir show that revisionist states which intervene in communal strife across nation-bisecting borders do so at considerable cost to their power/security interests despite minimal opportunity for offsetting or lasting gains at the expense of the target state. These interventions cannot be attributed to miscalculation, as revisionist state leaders are aware of external constraints that limit the possible gains while heightening the risks of intervention. This is contrary to both traditional realist and neorealist theory. The finding is important because it explicitly demonstrates that nationalism and domestic politics are of causal importance in some classes of war that realist theory does not explain. Nationalism influences intervention via a three-stage process in which communal/ethnic strife in the target state diffuses across the bisecting border, then mobilizes public opinion and non-state actors in the revisionist state; finally, it pressures state leaders to adopt hardline policies at odds with their own past policies towards the target state. This process model reveals a more complex nexus between domestic and international politics than conventional second-image models allow for.