Suchergebnisse

Introduction : the Council on Foreign Relations Study Group on the Theory of International Relations, 1953-54 -- First meeting : E.H. Carr and the historical approach -- Second meeting : Hans J. Morgenthau and the national interest -- Third meeting : the theory of Harold D. Lasswell -- Fourth meeting : Marxist theory of imperialism -- Fifth meeting : political geography vs. geopolitics -- Sixth meeting : Wilsonian idealism -- Seventh meeting : the problem of theory in the study of international relations.

Between December 1953 and June 1954, the elite think-tank the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) joined prominent figures in International Relations, including Pennsylvania's Robert Strausz-Hupé, Yale's Arnold Wolfers, the Rockefeller Foundation's William Thompson, government adviser Dorothy Fosdick, and nuclear strategist William Kaufmann. They spent seven meetings assessing approaches to world politics—from the "realist" theory of Hans Morgenthau to theories of imperialism of Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin—to discern basic elements of a theory of international relations.
The study group's materials are an indispensable window to the development of IR theory, illuminating the seeds of the theory-practice nexus in Cold War U.S. foreign policy. Historians of International Relations recently revised the standard narrative of the field's origins, showing that IR witnessed a sharp turn to theoretical consideration of international politics beginning around 1950, and remained preoccupied with theory. Taking place in 1953–54, the CFR study group represents a vital snapshot of this shift
This book situates the CFR study group in its historical and historiographical contexts, and offers a biographical analysis of the participants. It includes seven preparatory papers on diverse theoretical approaches, penned by former Berkeley political scientist George A. Lipsky, followed by the digest of discussions from the study group meetings. American Power and International Theory at the Council on Foreign Relations, 1953–54 offers new insights into the early development of IR as well as the thinking of prominent elites in the early years of the Cold War.

"Though Britain's descent from global imperial power began in World War II and continued over the subsequent decades, with decolonization, military withdrawal, and integration into the European Union, its foreign policy has remained that of a Great Power. David M. McCourt maintains that the lack of a fundamental reorientation of Britain's foreign policy cannot be explained only by material or economic factors, or even by an essential British international "identity." Rather, he argues, the persistence of Britain's place in world affairs can best be explained by the prominent international role that Britain assumed and into which it was thrust by other nations, notably France and the U.S., over these years. Using a role-based theory of state action in international politics based on symbolic interactionism and the work of George Herbert Mead, Britain and World Power Since 1945 puts forward a novel interpretation of Britain's engagement in four key international episodes: the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Skybolt Crisis of 1962, Britain's second application to the European Economic Council in 1966-67, and Britain's reinvasion of the Falklands in 1982. McCourt concludes with a discussion of international affairs since the end of the Cold War and the implications for the future of British foreign policy"--

Abstract
Recent years have seen the rapid descent of relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China (prc). Hopes for cooperation in places of common concern like climate change gave way to strains in almost all areas. In place of "engagement," the administration of Donald J. Trump adopted a tougher approach of "strategic competition" that its successor so far has continued. This article explores the relationship between the demise of engagement and opinions coming from the American China expert community. Specifically, it questions the impact on engagement of five secular dynamics that these China authorities have experienced—generational turnover; the field's vast expansion and diversification; increased disciplinary specialization; the enhanced prominence of the generalist in national security discussions in place of China specialists; and changes in the media leading to more skeptical journalistic voices on U.S.-prc relations. Without over-emphasizing either the influence of the expert community on U.S. decision-making, or underplaying the more repressive and authoritarian actions of the Chinese Communist Party, this article suggests that the China expert community has been more of a factor in the end of engagement than current accounts of academics and commentators acknowledge.

Optimism about China's rise has in recent years given way to deep concern in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. Drawing on an original set of interviews with China experts from each country, and an array of primary and secondary sources, I show that shifting framings of China's rise reflect the dynamics of the US, Australian and UK national security fields. The article highlights three features specifically: first, the US field features a belief that China's rise can be arrested or prevented, absent in Australia and the UK. I root this dynamic in the system of professional appointments and the intense US 'marketplace of ideas', which gives rise to intense framing contestation and occasional sharp frame change. I then identify the key positions produced by each field, from which key actors have shaped the differing interpretations of China and its meaning. The election of Donald Trump, a strong China-critic, to the US presidency empowered key individuals across government who shifted the predominant framing of China from potential challenger to current threat. The smaller and more centralized fields in Australia and Britain feature fewer and less intense China-sceptical voices; responses have thereby remained largely pragmatic, despite worsening diplomatic relations in each case.

Foreign policy role theorists have recently placed domestic role contestation central to their accounts of foreign policy continuity and change. Yet, contestation over national role conceptions is only one aspect of domestic competition over political power that can impact the roles states play in world politics. Frequently, foreign policies are an outgrowth of political struggle over matters only indirectly related to a state's international role. In this article, I draw role theorists' attention to cases where non-role-based political competition affects role performance, urging them to trace empirically the connections between role contestation, non-role-based political competition with role implications, and role performance. To make this case, I develop three plausibility probes: America's embrace of the hegemon role after 1945, Britain's 2016 Brexit vote, and the United States' recent turn towards a more transactional foreign policy. Highlighting non-role political competition with role implications offers a productive challenge that promises to enrich role theory in foreign policy analysis (FPA) by bringing it a step closer to domestic political competition.

AbstractThis paper casts American influence over the Schuman Plan of May 1950 as a hegemonic field effect, pushing forward recent attempts to develop more dynamic models of hegemonic ordering in world politics. Far from an automatic enactment of US preferences for European unification by French policy-makers, as prevailing macro-level theories imply, the Schuman Plan—French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman's proposal to pool French and German coal and steel—was the product of a "structural homology" that developed between the French and American political fields after 1945. American officials in Paris, empowered by their control of Marshall Aid, fostered an alignment of the French and American political fields, empowering centrist coalitions and technocratic planners in France, who favored pro-capitalist, pro-European integration policies, of which the Schuman Plan was a signature artifact. The paper explores the implications of this historical case for the further development of relational meso-level theories of hegemony.

Combining the tools of political, social, cultural, and intellectual history, Consumption and Violence: Radical Protest in Cold-War West Germany explores strategies of legitimization developed by advocates of militant resistance to certain manifestations of consumer capitalism. The book contributes to a more sober evaluation of West German protest movements, not just terrorism, as it refrains from emotional and moral judgments, but takes the protesters' approaches seriously, which, regarding consumer society, had a rational core. Political violence is not presented as the result of individual shortcomings, but emerges in relation to major societal changes, i.e., the unprecedented growth of consumption. This new perspective sheds important light on violence and radical protest in post-war Germany, as previous books have failed to examine to what extent these forms of resistance should be regarded as reactions to changing regimes of provision. Continuing the recently growing interest in the interdependence of countercultures and consumer society, the focus on violence gives the argument a unique twist, making the book thought-provoking and engaging.

The centenary approaches of the establishment of the first chair in International Relations (IR) at Aberystwyth in 1919. In this paper, I argue that while revisionist historians are correct to claim that IR did not emerge in a "Big Bang", 1917–19 was nevertheless an important moment in the history of IR — particularly in the US — which should be appreciated a century later. 1917 saw the creation of "The Inquiry", a secret organization composed of academics set up by President Woodrow Wilson tasked with preparing the American delegation to the Paris peace negotiations. Continuing in the revisionists' spirit, through the lens of the Inquiry, I suggest that early IR should be viewed as a social formation at the intersection of government, civil society, and academia, not as an academic specialty only. Rather than disbanding after Paris, crucially, the Inquiry was incorporated into the fledgling Council on Foreign Relations. Such a perspective prompts comparisons between 1917 and today. Empirically, how influential are the think tanks and research institutes that try to shape US foreign policy? Normatively, we might ask whether the limited yet elitist network represented by the Inquiry was better or worse than the expansive world of policy‐making of today? Drawing on diverse sources, including original research at the Inquiry's archive, I revisit the Inquiry and pose these questions to contemporary IR scholars.