This paper examines the 1958-1959 Berlin crisis as a diplomatic experience, conducted by the U.S. and U.S.S.R as an alternative to war. Both nations had nuclear weapon capabilities that could transform a local conflict into general war. The potential for disaster, plus other limits, made a series of diplomatic encounters the only productive option. The diplomatic course also shielded American and Russian interests indirectly related to the conflict. Each nation and its leader had pragmatic reasons for practicing restraint. These included conservation of assets, political stability, and most importantly, poor chances for sustainable gains. Limited war doctrine was influential in establishing these policies.

Political, military, and economic power alone cannot explain how empires work, for empire-making is also a matter of theories, narratives, ideas and institutions. To sustain themselves, empires both coerce and persuade. Tools of persuasion, however, were seldom the monopoly of those who sought to dominate, for they could also be contested and appropriated by those who sought to resist. This dissertation on Chosŏn Korea’s (1392–1910) interactions with Ming China (1368–1644) offers a cultural history of interstate orders and diplomatic institutions in early modern Korea and East Asia. I illustrate how Chosŏn appropriated the persuasive technologies that sustained Ming empire as a political imaginary to contest Ming imperial claims and ultimately reshape imperial ideology. Chosŏn-Ming relations have long been described in terms of “tributary relations.” This paradigm, as conceived by John K. Fairbank and others, understands these relations as the logical consequence of a shared Confucian ideology and illustrative of Korea’s historical status as China’s model tributary. These approaches privilege a metropole-centered vantage and have failed to account for Korean agency. They treat Korean envoy missions, ritual performances, and literary production as scripted gestures that can only reflect stable ideology. Meanwhile, they miss how these acts were contesting and transforming ideology in the process. I argue that the Chosŏn court in fact exercised enormous agency through these ritualized practices. The discourses of the Ming as moral empire and Korea as a loyal vassal, long held to be emblematic features of the tributary system, were a large part reified products of Chosŏn diplomatic strategy. They did not reflect a pre-existing political order, but constituted its very substance. They were part of the “knowledge of empire” produced by the Chosŏn court for comprehending the Ming and its institutions and influencing imperial ideology. Facilitated by institutional practices at the Chosŏn court, this “knowledge of empire” allowed Chosŏn to manage successfully asymmetrical relations with the Ming and co-construct Ming empire in the process. Chapter 1 examines Korean diplomatic epistles to show how the Korean court used its knowledge of historical precedents, ritual logics, and literary tropes of empire-making to contest symbols of imperial legitimacy. Chapter 2 discusses how Korean emissaries appealed to ideals of moral empire and reified particular understandings of Korea’s relationship with the Ming to achieve their diplomatic ends. Chapter 3 treats Korean envoy missions as a conduit for information on Ming institutions and politics. As a result, the Chosŏn was able to construct a dynamic of knowledge asymmetry where it knew more about the Ming than vice-versa. Once empire was constructed, its symbols and institutions were subject to appropriation. Chapter 4 looks at one such example, where a Korean prince manipulated diplomacy with the Ming to usurp the Chosŏn throne. Chapter 5 shows how the practices of envoy poetry associated with the Brilliant Flowers Anthology (Hwanghwajip) became a site where competing narratives of how Chosŏn’s relationship to empire, civilization, and the imperial past could stand together. Chapter 6 continues the discussion of envoy poetry by turning to its associated spatial practices. Chosŏn court poets invested the city of P’yŏngyang with symbolic resonances that asserted Korean cultural parity with China, legitimized Korean autonomy and denounced historical imperial claims on Korean territory, all without infringing on Ming claims of universal empire.

This thesis rethinks the foundations of US foreign policy determination in the early Cold War period. In opposition to approaches in IR which privilege an ‘external' realm of causation, it focuses on the domestic bases for foreign policy formation. Having started by reviewing historiographical debates on US foreign policy and US foreign economic policy, the thesis moves on to critique some of the existing ways the US foreign policy has been theorised in IR. The thesis then develops a theoretical and conceptual stance, drawing on a range of different literatures. Within IR, it places itself within the tradition of Marxist Historical Sociology. At the level of macro-history, this places the reconstruction of US foreign policy within broader world historical process of the development of capitalism within the political form of the nation-state and state system, and ongoing spatialisation strategies that states form in order to manage capitalist spatial politics. This macro perspective is conjoined to a ‘disjunctive' theory of the state, which is developed successively through different stages of analysis. The goal is to develop a political economy approach to the study of foreign policy formation and especially the conduct of warfare. The next three chapters constitute an historical reconstruction of the path towards the Cold War militarisation of US foreign policy. The thesis begins by fleshing out some of the theoretical issues discussed earlier in relation to the specificity of US state development. It then shows how developments from the 19th century up to World War II were underpinned by societal conflicts which saw the rise of the New Deal as a challenger to the existing prerogatives of business in America. This challenge saw the development of state capacities to intervene in the economy, and set in place the possibilities of a welfare statist form of governance. However, the coming of WWII and the politics of economic mobilisation for the war changed the context within which these developments unfolded. An alliance of industrial and business interests during the war ensured that the New Deal state was converted into a powerful ‘warfare' state. The thesis then moves on to show how after the war, the world-historical moment of US hegemony had its counterpart on the domestic scene in the resurgence of conflict between nationalist and internationalist political and business interests in the US. The period between 1945 and 1950 is then re-read against the background of successive stages of development of this conflict as it affected the development of US policies towards the world. As the US tried to develop a coherent spatial strategy for reconstructing the global capitalist order, this domestic situation determined and shaped things in unexpected ways. Contrary to perspectives which isolate US plans for a multilateral trading order and the geopolitics of the Cold War, I show how the contradictions of the former largely created the latter. Much IR theory takes it for granted that it was Marshall Plan aid that did the work of reconstructing Europe after the war. However, I show that this assumption obscures the failure of the Marshall Plan, and its eventual replacement by forms of economic aid that were channelled through military spending. These forms of aid required substantial military spending programs. Thus the price to be paid for the reconstruction of Europe after the war was the amplification of the World War II military-industrial alliance in the US. This then fed back into US domestic developments, as a powerful self-sustaining and expansionary element of the American political economy changed the institutional parameters under which war-preparations were formed. This altered the bases of US military strategy and overall foreign policy, a development which was starkly revealed in the conduct of the Vietnam War. The thesis concludes with some reflections on how its historical and theoretical approach has ramifications for how we think of US foreign policy in the 20th century.

This dissertation is about a group of influential British publicists on the left-wing of the Liberal Party known as Radicals. The focus is on the year 1917 during the First World War and the Radical publicist’s belief in the necessity of a negotiated settlement as an essential ingredient to achieving a just and lasting peace. These publicists also believed that the United States could play a unique role in mediating an end to the war and reforming the international system. Radical publicists tirelessly campaigned for a revision of Allied war aims and were convinced that alliances, the arms race, secret diplomacy, imperialism and militarism, played a large part in the outbreak of war and its prolongation. They believed that when the peace settlement came, it should not be a peace of vengeance but a just peace that addressed these flaws in the international system. The Radical publicists looked increasingly to the American President Wilson for leadership, while Wilson was drawn to the Radical publicist’s progressive internationalist ideas, particularly the concept of a league of nations. The Conclusion examines the reason for the failure of the Wilsonian strategy to achieve a just and lasting peace in 1919, but points to the enduring legacy of the Radical publicist’s ideas about creating a stable world order. This dissertation finishes by looking at contemporary commentators who advocate an approach to world order in the tradition of the Radical publicists of the First World War / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

In a broad way, the main intention of this study is an attempt to analyze the changes the diplomatic competition between China and Taiwan in Latin America has brought to all the involved parties. How this competition have concentrated in just a few countries serving as Taiwan last stand hold against Chinese attempts to isolate it in the international community during the last three decades. The aim is to understand the whole evolution and dynamics of this great Asian issue elucidated in Latin America, and the way both China and Taiwan have behave to attract the favor of those small Latin American countries while those Latin American countries have also came to profit from this situation. Both, China and Taiwan have an almost symbiotic relationship with Latin America, relationship to become more and more important if current geopolitical and economic conditions were to continue. One side, Both China and Taiwan demand a great amount of Latin American natural resources to fuel their global industry. On the other side, Latin America demands more and more of the finished goods produced in China and Taiwan. The main research question the author will attempt to solve here is: ¡§Why are Latin American states shifting or considering shifting to China?¡¨ complementary questions intended to shed some light on the author¡¦s original assumptions are that Chinese economic growth is not the only explanation for Latin America¡¦s support of China. These questions are as follow: ¡§Does Latin American States perceive China as a threat? Has US double standard contributed to Taiwan losing its Latin American partners? Has Taiwanese implementation of Dollar diplomacy methods in some Latin American states something to do with its losing of supporters? A throughout analysis of both, the Chinese economic and geopolitical reach as well as Latin American¡¦s own search for economic, political and ideological independence from US are the main explanatory for the changes observed in this triangular relationship. Nevertheless, a series of unorthodox foreign policy methods such as ¡¥Dollar Diplomacy¡¦ conditioned foreign aid, have also contributed to these changes.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-193).

Inaug.-diss.--Göttingen. / Lebenslauf. "Literatur": p. 9-10. "Nachtrag zum literaturverzeichnis": p. 250-251.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--RAND Graduate School, 2002. / Title from web page (viewed Oct. 27, 2003). "RGSD-169." "RAND Graduate School." Includes bibliographical references (p. 154-159).

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The United States emerged from the destruction of World War II a superpower with burgeoning global interests. Nowhere was this more evident than in Iraq. US policymakers greatly expanded their relationship with the pro-Western regime in Baghdad during the 1950s. To examine these trends more closely, this dissertation analyzes the American relationship with Iraq during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953 to 1961). This study discusses how American oil concessions, military aid programs, collective defense arrangements, and modernization initiatives shaped the US-Iraqi bilateral relationship of the 1950s. It also looks intensively at American intelligence assessments and covert action programs in Iraq in this period. An in-depth examination of the Eisenhower administration’s policies vis-à-vis Baghdad offers important lessons about the ways US officials understood and navigated complex political developments in the Middle East. In addition, this dissertation considers US strategies in Iraq in the context of ongoing developments in Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Iran, and elsewhere in the region. This transnational lens yields fascinating insights into how American interests throughout the Middle East influenced US policies in Iraq. As with their partners in the Iraqi government, American officials privileged the pursuit of “order” and “stability” in Baghdad. When confronted with the prospect of “unrest” in Iraq, the Eisenhower administration decisively supported its Iraqi allies’ moves to clamp down on political dissent. The United States worked energetically to control Iraqi developments in channels favourable to US interests. However, the regime led by Abdel Karim Qasim fundamentally transformed the patterns of the US-Iraqi relationship following the July 1958 Iraqi Revolution. Qasim’s program calling for the “Iraqification” of national economic resources collided with larger American understandings of Washington’s power in Baghdad. The Eisenhower administration proved unable to control the disorderly nature of revolutionary rule in Iraq, suggesting (as with the pre-revolutionary period) the tangible limits to American power in Iraq and the Middle East in this critical period of the Cold War.