Democracy Promotion, National Security and Strategy During the Reagan Administration 1981-1986
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A Revisionist History of Regulatory Capture WILLIAM J
This chapter will appear in: Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest . Influence and How to Limit it. Edited by Daniel Carpenter and David Moss. Copyright © 2013 The Tobin Project. Reproduced with the permission of Cambridge University Press. Please note that the final chapter from the Cambridge University Press volume may differ slightly from this text. A Revisionist History of Regulatory Capture WILLIAM J. NOVAK A Revisionist History of Regulatory Capture WILLIAM J. NOVAK PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SCHOOL OF LAW The idea of regulatory capture has controlled discussions of economic regulation and regulatory reform for more than two generations. Originating soon after World War II, the so-called “capture thesis” was an early harbinger of the more general critique of the American regulatory state that dominated the closing decades of the 20th century. The political ramifications of that broad critique of government continue to be felt today both in the resilient influence of neoliberal policies like deregulation and privatization as well as in the rise of more virulent and populist forms of anti-statism. Indeed, the capture thesis has so pervaded recent assessments of regulation that it has assumed something of the status of a ground norm – a taken-for-granted term of art and an all-purpose social-scientific explanation – that itself frequently escapes critical scrutiny or serious scholarly interrogation. This essay attempts to challenge this state of affairs by taking a critical look at the emergence of regulatory capture theory from the perspective of history. After introducing a brief account of the diverse intellectual roots of the capture idea, this essay makes three interpretive moves. -
Revolution in Afghanistan
Fred Halliday Revolution in Afghanistan On 27 April 1978 the world heard that there had been a successful military coup in Afghanistan. The régime headed by Mohammad Daud, which had itself come to power through a coup in July 1973, had been suddenly overthrown by tanks and jet planes that struck in the Afghan capital, Kabul. At first it seemed as if this was yet another military intervention which, although violent and abrupt, involved no major shift in the policies, social character or international alignment of those in power: a change comparable to Daud’s own coup, or to others in neighbouring Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Arab world. Yet within days it became clear that the announcements of radical change coming over Radio Kabul were more than just the ritual demagogy of military coups: something rather more substantial had occurred. In the first place, the coup, although carried out by the military, reflected much wider political forces. It had been preceded by mass popular demonstrations in Kabul, and as thousands of people flocked to inspect Daud’s conquered palace, 3 now renamed the House of the People, it became evident that it had ousted a hated régime and at least temporarily embodied the hopes of a wide section of the population. At the same time it became clear that the coup was not just the product of a conspiracy within the military, but had been carried out on the instructions of an underground Marxist political organization whose membership was overwhelmingly civilian. This at once distinguished the new rulers from other radical military régimes in the Arab world, South Asia or Ethiopia. -
Was the Cold War Necessary? the Revisionist Challenge to Consensus History Norman M
was the cold war necessary? the revisionist challenge to consensus history norman m. wilensky Nearly ten years ago, seventy-five distinguished students of American history participated in a poll measuring the performance of thirty-one presidents from George Washington to Dwight Eisenhower. Each par ticipant in the poll helped to place the presidents into five general categories: "Great/' "Near Great," "Average," "Below Average," and "Failure." One of the surprise rankings was the "Near Great" mark accorded to Harry Truman, ninth on the list. Only the five "Great" presidents—Lincoln, Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Wilson and Jeffer son—and three "Near Great" executives—Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt and Polk—preceded Truman. John Adams and Grover Cleveland, who immediately followed Truman, completed the "Near Great" group. What qualities and achievements elevated Truman above many other presidents? He was, according to these historians, a strong executive who acted masterfully and farsightedly in foreign affairs. Summarizing the poll for his fellow historians, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. noted that Tru man "discharged impressively the awesome obligations devolving on the United States as the leader of the free world in the cold war with Soviet Imperialism." The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin airlift, the Point Four program and the intervention in Korea "all con stituted landmarks in an assumption of global responsibilities undreamed of only a few years before." Yet, less than a decade after the poll, this estimate is being dramatically challenged by historians of the cold war.1 A recent book sharply critical of cold war policies as well as Truman's role is Rexford G. -
A New Historiography of the Origins of the Cold War
SOSHUM Jurnal Sosial dan Humaniora [Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities] Volume 9, Number 2, 2019 p-ISSN. 2088-2262 e-ISSN. 2580-5622 ojs.pnb.ac.id/index.php/SOSHUM/ A New Historiography of the Origins of the Cold War Adewunmi J. Falode 1 and Moses J. Yakubu 2 1 Department of History & International Studies, Lagos State University, Nigeria 2 Department of History & International Studies, University of Benin, Edo, Nigeria Lasu, Ojo Campus Ojo Local Government, 102101, Lagos, Nigeria E-mail: [email protected] Article Info ABSTRACT ________________ ___________________________________________________________________ History Articles The Cold War that occurred between 1945 and 1991 was both an Received: international political and historical event. As an international political event, Jan 2019 the Cold War laid bare the fissures, animosities, mistrusts, misconceptions Accepted: June 2019 and the high-stakes brinksmanship that has been part of the international Published: political system since the birth of the modern nation-state in 1648. As a July 2019 historical event, the Cold War and its end marked an important epoch in ________________ human social, economic and political development. The beginning of the Keywords: Cold War marked the introduction of a new form of social and political Cold War, Historiography, experiment in human relations with the international arena as its laboratory. Structuralist School, Its end signalled the end of a potent social and political force that is still Revisionist School, st Orthodox School shaping the course of the political relations among states in the 21 century. ____________________ The historiography of the Cold War has been shrouded in controversy. -
U.S.-Japan Approaches to Democracy Promotion
U.S. JAPAN APPROACHES TO DEMOCRACY PROMOTION U.S. JAPAN Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA 1819 L St NW #300 Washington, DC 20036 [email protected] U.S.-JAPAN APPROACHES TO DEMOCRACY SASAKAWA USA SASAKAWA PROMOTION Edited by Michael R. Auslin and Daniel E. Bob ISBN 9780996656764 51000 > 9 780996 656764 U.S.-JAPAN APPROACHES TO DEMOCRACY PROMOTION Edited by Michael R. Auslin Daniel E. Bob Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA is an independent, American non-profit and non- partisan institution devoted to research, analysis and better understanding of the U.S.-Japan relationship. Sasakawa USA accomplishes its mission through programs that benefit both nations and the broader Asia Pacific region. Our research programs focus on security, diplomacy, economics, trade and technology, and our education programs facilitate people-to-people exchange and discussion among American and Japanese policymakers, influential citizens and the broader public in both countries. ISBN: 978-0-9966567-6-4 Printed in the United States of America. © 2017 by Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA LCCN Number applied for Sasakawa USA does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views expressed herein are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sasakawa USA, its staff or its board. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by and means without permission in writing from Sasakawa USA. Please direct inquiries to: Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA Research Department 1819 L Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20036 P: +1 202-296-6694 This publication can be downloaded at no cost at http://spfusa.org/ Cover photo: © EPA/Barbara Walton Contents Preface .............................................................................................................................v Dennis Blair and Yasushi Akashi INTRODUCTION U.S.-Japan Approaches to Democracy Promotion ............................................ -
U.S. Democracy Promotion from Bush to Obama
Working Paper N. 1 US DEMOCRACY PROMOTION FROM BUSH TO OBAMA (EUSPRING) April 2015 WORKING PAPER NO. 1 U.S. Democracy Promotion from Bush to Obama Emiliano Alessandri, Oz Hassan, Ted Reinerti The German Marshall Fund of the United States; the University of Warwick, UK. EUSPRING – WORKING PAPER N. 1 INTRODUCTION Throughout the twenty-first century the United States (U.S.) has attempted to balance its traditional national security interests, whilst also seeking to promote the long-term transformation of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) towards democracy based on liberal values. With the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks providing a catalyst for policy change, the U.S. has moved away from its twentieth-century policy of pursuing a regional status quo and instinctively balking at political change. Yet, the U.S. has not abandoned its reliance on autocratic regimes that cooperate on more immediate national security interests such as counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation, and the free-flow energy sources into the global market. Rather, U.S. democracy promotion in the MENA has become incremental by design and is characterized by its gradualist and often- collaborative nature. U.S. foreign policy in the MENA is, therefore, depicted by a cautious evolutionary stance rather than supporting revolutionary shifts in power. Whilst the 2003 invasion of Iraq has tarnished public perceptions of “democracy promotion” and the legitimacy of the U.S. projecting its values beyond its shores, there is more substance to democracy promotion than “regime change” and the soaring rhetoric of the G.W. Bush administration’s Freedom Agenda. As a matter of fact, the G.W. -
THE EU, NATO and the European System of Liberal-Democratic Security Communities
Research project funded by the NATO Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council Individual Research Fellowships – 2000-2002 Programme FINAL REPORT PEACE AND DEMOCRACY: THE REDISCOVERED LINK THE EU, NATO and the European System of Liberal-Democratic Security Communities Sonia Lucarelli Author’s addresses: Sonia Lucarelli, PhD Jean Monnet Fellow Forum on the Problems of Peace and War Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies Via G.P.Orsini 44 European University Institute I-50126 Firenze - Italy Via dei Roccettini 9 tel. (+39)055.6800165 I -50016 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI) - Italy Tel. (+39)055.4685.828; Fax (+39)055.4685.804 e-mail: [email protected] FINAL REPORT PEACE AND DEMOCRACY: THE REDISCOVERED LINK THE EU, NATO and the European System of Liberal-Democratic Security Communities Sonia Lucarelli ABSTRACT Since the beginning of the last decade, the major actors of the Western European security community have been putting increasing or new emphasis on the need to develop liberal democracy as a form of foreign and/or security policy in the post-bipolar era. Apparently rediscovering the theory of democratic peace of Kantian memory, all institutions of the so- called European security architecture, plus the US, have dedicated a substantial part of their redefined (external) role to democratisation. This (re)discovered emphasis has clearly been a response to post-bipolar security (lack of clearly defined) challenges but has had implications that have gone beyond the specific interests of each actor involved. The discourse and practice of democracy-export has in fact contributed to creating the conditions for the definition of a system of democratic security communities characterised by different degrees of maturity and tightness (Adler & Barnett 1998), but with a common sense of “us”: liberal democracy. -
MORE COLD W AR 50 Rather, the System Evolved As a Result Preservation of Good Relations with the of Unilateral Actions Taken by Each of the Soviet Union
FEATURE 3 AIO R E Are we facing a new Cold War? The blusterings and sabre rattlings of the Reagan Administration COLD together with its sinister activities in the Central America would indicate that we are already in one. But what about the WAR Russians? Do they also have their nuclear hawkes and their worst-case theorists? The balance of the world’s forces has substantially altered since the ig50s. The People’s election of Ronald Reagan that the West will let them have the marked the culmination of a concerted world without a fight."1 Nitze and his Republic of China, a wild campaign by those on the extreme Right colleagues believe that mos_t of the card in the world power of American politics to refreeze their world's ailments are attributable to the game, is now a major nation's relations with its principal Soviet Union: "For example, it appears adversary, the Soviet Union, and to probable that the Red Brigades in Italy, nuclear power. The non- return the world to the Cold War the assault on the Mosque in Mecca, and aligned movement has atmosphere of the nineteen forties, fifties the seizure of the American hostages in developed and expanded and sixties. And despite the monumental Iran were supported and perhaps changes which have taken place irf the instigated by agents of the Soviet bloc."2 its influence and the anti world since the Cold War was at its The fact that there is no hard evidence for war movement seems to height, the campaign has met with such allegations is irrelevant,3 for the spectacular, if temporary, success — at a hawks base their case largely on recent be riding the crest of a governmental level at least. -
The Chimera of the 'International University'
The chimera of the ‘International University’ FRED HALLIDAY No one who teaches in a British university can be unaware of the pressure to become more ‘internationally’ aware: encouragement to admit more overseas (i.e. non-EU) students is accompanied by calls for increased international competitiveness and assessment, and by the announcement of new courses, on a range of topics, that have ‘international’ in their title. The term ‘international’ covers, however, a variety of issues and meanings. It is at once a spur and a sales gimmick, an appeal that issues as easily from the mouth of the financial manager as from the lips of the cosmopolitan scholar. It may be time to question this fetish, not least for fear that an unconsidered pursuit of the international can lead to a less, rather than a more, effective international contribution. Exchange of ideas, and academic cultures, rests more on specialization, a division of labour, than on a pursuit of modish homogeneities. An internationalized crisis The debate on the international character of universities has been transformed in the s by a set of changes in context and direction. Anyone reading the education press will be familiar with the term: ‘world-class’ status, ‘global’ campuses, plans for worldwide distance learning and so forth. The Economist has speculated on the university of the future, with a restricted physical campus and a network of computer-linked outlets and students—a ‘virtual’ or ‘cyber-university’ or, as it engagingly entitled it, ‘core-and-cloud’. Other universities are exploring the implications of technology for this new, internationalized, teaching. -
“The Infrastructure of American Democracy Promotion”
The Democracy Bureaucracy The Infrastructure of American Democracy Promotion A discussion paper prepared for the Princeton Project on National Security Working Group on Global Institutions and Foreign Policy Infrastructure by Thomas O. Melia Institute for the Study of Diplomacy Walsh School of Foreign Service Georgetown University September 2005 Comments and corrections are welcome. Contact author with comments at: [email protected] I come from a country where, as late as mid-1989, while all around us totalitarian icebergs were cracking and thawing, the stupid, repressive regime remained strong. Together with other people of a similar mindset, I was in prison. Yet by the end of that same year, I was elected the president of a free Czechoslovakia. Seemingly unshakable totalitarian monoliths are in fact sometimes as cohesive as proverbial houses of cards, and fall just as quickly. Vaclav Havel, Washington Post, June 15, 2005 Introduction George W. Bush has elevated the long-standing American interest in the spread of democracy worldwide to an urgent national security objective by integrating it with the fight against terrorism. President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other senior U.S. officials have spoken with increasing frequency and conviction since September 11, 2001 of democracy promotion as critical to rooting out one of the major sources of anti-American terrorism – by ridding the world of the dictators who either support terrorism or provoke it by their repression. Indeed, with his Second Inaugural Address, Bush effectively altered the meaning of the bureaucratic short-hand “GWOT” from a Global War on Terrorism to a more encompassing Global War on Tyranny. -
1. G6ran Therborn, the Rule of Capital and the Rise of Democracy
Notes 1 Introduction: Revolutions and the International 1. G6ran Therborn, The Rule of Capital and the Rise of Democracy', New Left Review, 103, May-June 1977; Barrington Moore, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Harmondsworth: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1967). 2. 'The Civil War in France', in Karl Marx, The First International and After, edited by David Fernbach (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974) pp.232-3. 3. For an example of a specific national study that is silent on the international, Albert Soboul, The French Revolution, 1789-1799 (Lon don: NLB, 1974); a comparative study of the sociological literature illustrates the same point: Stan Taylor, Social Science and Revolutions (London: Macmillan, 1984). 4. I have gone into this in greater detail in Fred Halliday, Rethinking International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1994). 5. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China (Cambridge: CUP, 1979) chapter 1. For an argument challenging the applicability of Skocpol to Latin Amer ican cases see Alan Knight, 'Social Revolution: A Latin American Perspective', Bulletin of Latin American Research, vol. 9, no. 2, 1990. 6. Engels to Zasulich, 23 April 1885, in Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, c. 1956) p. 460. 7. E. J. Hobsbawm, 'Revolution' in Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich (eds), Revolution in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) p.12. 8. Albert Sorel, L 'Europe et la Revolution franj:aise (Paris: Le Pion, 8 vols, 1893-1908). 9. Anthony Giddens, Sociology (Cambridge: Polity, 1989) pp. 702-5. 10. On the earthquake analogy see Jack Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (Oxford: University of California Press, 1991) pp. -
PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY PROMOTION What We Can Learn from History for Securing the Future of Democracy DEN JEWEILIGEN KAPITELNAMEN HIER EINSETZEN
ANALYSIS Democracy promotion should become more political, more historically aware and capable DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS of dealing with conflict, and in doing so should reflect more strongly the wealth of historical experiences accumulated by PROGRESSIVE democratisation processes. DEMOCRACY Democracy promotion must devote more attention to the relationship between PROMOTION democracy and capitalism. What We Can Learn from History for Securing the Future of Democracy ,Embedded’ democracy pro- motion is needed in order to Matthias Jobelius, Jochen Steinhilber better understand the dynamic September 2020 of social conflicts. Democracy is a story. Successful democracy movements require powerful narratives. DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY PROMOTION What We Can Learn from History for Securing the Future of Democracy DEN JEWEILIGEN KAPITELNAMEN HIER EINSETZEN Contents 1. IS WINTER COMING? EXTERNAL DEMOCRACY PROMOTION FACES NEW QUESTIONS 3 2. SIX LESSONS FROM HISTORY 6 2.1 ‘Too early to tell’: Democratisation still has a long way to go 6 2.2 ‘Circumstances transmitted from the past’: Every democratisation follows a different course 7 2.3 Distribution conflicts and power resources: Democratisation is never conflict-free 8 2.4 Democracy requires strong democratic institutions – and people who protect them 8 2.5 ‘Disembedded’: Capitalism is not democratic 10 2.6 The power of ideas: Democracy requires a narrative 11 3. SIX GUIDELINES FOR PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY PROMOTION 14 3.1 From democratic interventionism to embedded democracy promotion 14 3.2 Identify and promote change agents 15 3.3 Strengthen the effective power of democratic forces 16 3.4 Establish transformative institutions 18 3.5 Dare to promote economic democracy 18 3.6 Develop narratives for democracy promotion for our time 19 4.