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This book analyzes the origins and the impacts of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on diplomacy, economy (trade, investment, finance), and security among selected host countries and regions in Asia, Africa, and the European Union. By examining the geopolitical economy of BRI activities, it concisely describes the impact of the rise of China and its BRI policy strategy on the reshaping of world order and global governance. This volume explores the BRI by addressing several key questions including: Why did the Chinese leadership set up the BRI? What are the activities of BRI projects in the participating countries and related regions? What are the challenges to the successful implementation of the BRI in the various countries and regions? Moreover, through its analysis of the abovementioned questions, it provides novel contributions to the ongoing scholarly debates between Chinese and non-Chinese scholars – among others, the debate surrounding the "rise of China" and its impact on global governance. Featuring an extensive variety of expert contributors, this study will be an essential reading for students and scholars of International Relations and Global Political Economy as well as Chinese politics and those with an interest in the Belt and Road Initiative more broadly.

"This book analyzes the origins and the impacts of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on diplomacy, economy (trade, investment, finance), and security among selected host countries and regions in Asia, Africa, and the European Union. By examining the geopolitical economy of BRI activities, it concisely describes the impact of the rise of China and its BRI policy strategy on the reshaping world order and global governance. This volume explores the BRI by addressing several key questions including: Why did the Chinese leadership set up the BRI? What are the activities of BRI projects in the participating countries and related regions? What are the challenges to the successful implementation of the BRI in the various countries and regions? Moreover, through its analysis of the abovementioned questions, it provides novel contributions to the ongoing scholarly debates between Chinese and non-Chinese scholars - among others, the debate surrounding the "rise of China" and its impact on global governance. Featuring an extensive variety of expert contributors, this study will be an essential reading for students and scholars of International Relations and Global Political Economy as well as Chinese politics and those with an interest in the Belt and Road Initiative more broadly"--

State, Society and International Relations in Asia brings together studies of selected modern Asian postcolonial states and societies. This part of the world is in transition towards becoming the heartland of global politics and economy. The rising Asia is slowly closing the productivity power-gap with the early-industrialized societies of Western Europe, the United States and Japan, pushing the global system towards a critical point. Successful industrialization does not only bring power and welfare, but can also create the condition for confrontation and conflict on the global and local level. Specific case studies address major global political themes: nationalism, democratization and corruption, ethno-religious tensions, state and religion, geopolitics and regionalization. --Book Jacket

Introduction : theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of the Greater Middle East / Mehdi Parvizi Amineh -- Foreign intervention and social transformation in the Greater Middle East. IR-Theory and transformations in the Greater Middle East : the role of the United States / Mehdi Parvizi Amineh and Henk Houweling -- Connecting Central Eurasia to the Middle East in American Foreign Policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan : 1979-Present / Simon Bromley -- US-Russian strategic relations and the structuration of Central Asia / Robert M. Cutler -- State, society, and economy in the Greater Middle East. The Iranian Revolution : the multiple contexts of the Iranian Revolution / Mehdi Parvizi Amineh and S.N. Eisenstadt -- The Iranian foreign policy since the Iranian Islamic Revolution : 1979-2006 / Eva Patricia Rakel -- The Middle East's democracy decit in comparative perspective / Mehran Kamrava -- The challenges of modernity : the case of political Islam / Mehdi Parvizi Amineh -- The Turkish political economy : globalization and regionalism / Nilgun Onder -- The Maghreb : social, political, and economic developments / Louisa Dris-Ait-Hamadouche and Yahia Zoubir -- From Soviet Republics to independent countries : challenges of transition in Central Asia / Mirzohid Rahimov -- Central Asia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union : economic reforms and their impact on state-society relations / Richard Pomfret -- New twists, more intricate congurations : the changing Israel-Palestinian regional security complex / Fred Lawson -- The politics of oil and major power rivalry in the post-cold war Greater Middle East. Global energy security and its geopolitical impediments : the case of the Caspian Region / Mehdi Parvizi Amineh and Henk Houweling -- China and the Greater Middle East : globalization no longer equals westernization / Kurt W. Radtke -- Indian power projection in the Greater Middle East : tools and objectives / Prithvi Ram Mudiam -- The changing face of the Russian Far East : cooperation and resource competition between Japan, Korea, and China in Northeast Asia / Roger Kangas -- India-Pakistan engagement with the Greater Middle East : implications and options / B.M. Jain -- The EU's policies of security of energy supply towards the Middle East and Caspian Region : major power politics? / Femke Hogeveen and Wilbur Perlot

There are many shared historical experiences and similarities between Iran and China. Both are legacies of the long-lasting empires and civilisations in West and East Asia, respectively. Like other great Asian empires, Iran and China were confronted with the expansion of the European imperial powers in the early-nineteenth century which ultimately led to the dislocation of these ancient empires. Both countries had resisted pressures towards peripheralization in the global economy by the creation of nationalist popular revolutions and by building modern nation states and identities in the first half of the twentieth century, despite different political systems, cultures, and external relations. Both Iran and China have been trying to escape from the external pressures and internal socio-economic backwardness by the modernization of their states, societies, and economies via a state-led catch-up development strategy. These efforts led to the rise of China in the late-20th century and the emergence of post-Islamic revolutionary Iran 1978/79 as a 'contender state' to the hegemony of the United States (US) in West Asia. This development raises two key questions: why did China succeed in rising as an industrialised regional and global power, and has Iran's development strategy failed so far? I argue that the main reason for post-revolutionary Iran failure to become the regional hegemon comes from two interconnected issues: (i) the failure of its economic development strategy, which was mainly caused by (ii) the 'offensive' external involvement in its own region before a successful catch-up process. Iran's catch-up development strategy, which is the main material basis for the country's rise, was hampered after the revolution by its 'offensive, revolutionary and military oriented foreign policy'. This strategy blocked Iran from access to capital, information and technology concentrated in the core area of the global economy dominated by the US. Unlike Iran, China's successful catch-up industrialisation was driven, in part, through rapprochement and consensus between Chinese leaders and the US and its allies in 1970s. This strategy led China to distance itself from Mao's revolutionary offensive foreign relations and replace it with 'defensive' and peaceful foreign relations in the era of its catch-up industrialisation (1980-2000s). (Asian Aff/GIGA)

AbstractSince the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century in England, all traditional cultures at one point in history have been challenged by modernity. This happened first in Europe and later in the rest of the world as a result of the late nineteenth century expansion of European capitalism and civilization. When confronted with modernity, individual traditional cultures conflict with the increasing plurality of lifestyles and values. There are two ways to solve this conflict: either remain in the past or innovate. In the first case, tradition prevails. In the second case, the challenges of modernity are embraced by adapting to the new circumstances. This will eventually lead to the renewal of one's own culture. Since the late nineteenth century, the challenges of modernity have resulted in a variety of often contradictory Islamic political ideologies and practices. In contrast to the cultural-essentialist and a-historical assumptions of some scholars, such as Samuel Huntington, who see the phenomenon of political Islam as a characteristic of an inevitable "clash of civilizations"—according to which conflicts and threats to world peace and security in the twenty-first century will be carried out along "civilizational fault lines"—this article argues that the actual fault-lines are socio-economic, not geo-cultural, and that conflicts in today's world do not take place between cultures but within them. Those societies that are more successful in adapting to the challenges of modernity show a relatively stronger capacity to cope with the growing complexity of political and cultural pluralism.

Dieser Artikel diskutiert die Dynamik des Machtkampfes zwischen den drei wichtigsten Gruppen im Machtblock der Islamischen Republik Iran. Insbesondere beschäftigt er sich mit den Faktoren, die für die Legitimitätskrise des sogenannten theokratischen Regimes in Iran verantwortlich sind: das Aufkommen der Reformbewegung, die Zusammensetzung der verschiedenen Gruppen im Machtblock sowie die politischen Entwicklungen der letzten Jahre. Des Weiteren werden der mögliche Verlauf des Machkampfes und die Aussichten für umfassende Reformen in den kommenden Jahren skizziert. (Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte / SWP)