Much Ado about Something: The Tiran and Sanafir Islands in International, Regional and Domestic Politics (1841–2023)

Previous articleNext article No AccessPolity Forum: The Intertwining of Domestic Politics and International RelationsThe Intertwining of International and Domestic PoliticsDavid LumsdaineDavid Lumsdaine Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Polity Volume 29, Number 2Winter 1996 The Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/3235305 Views: 41Total views on this site Copyright 1996 Northeastern Political Science AssociationPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The analytical framework underpinning this study is the view that international and domestic politics are intertwined, impact upon each other, and, in some cases, draw strength from each other. As Gourevitch puts it, ‘International relations and domestic politics are … so interrelated that they should be analyzed simultaneously, as wholes.’1 Thus, events such as the Marshall Plan can be most profitably understood with reference to both domestic and international relations and politics. The Marshall Plan is often presented in terms of establishing US hegemony at the international level and determining the internal politics of the recipient states at the domestic level. However, the relationship between domestic and international politics and the Marshall Plan is more complex than this, for the recipient governments mediated the impact of the Marshall Plan and in turn had some influence over the nature of US hegemony. One of the main theoretical currents flowing through this book is that there are limits to external influence because of the impact of domestic institutions and the resources available to domestic political actors. Recipients of American aid were not passive, but active political agents in their own right, and were able to draw on the strength of the US to consolidate their own position.

What role do third parties play in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and to what extent do domestic political constraints shape this role? Answering these questions has important ramifications for understanding the interplay between domestic and international politics. One useful tool to conduct this research is the two-stage decision-making framework, Poliheuristic (Ph) Decision Theory, which eliminates options from the choice set that do not meet domestic political requirements. This paper applies Ph theory to a case study from the conflict's infancy, the British decision in 1922 to affirm the policy of a Jewish national home (based on the Balfour Declaration 1917) despite violent Arab opposition. It argues that the decision was based solely on domestic political needs and did not attempt to address tensions in Palestine. It concludes that Ph theory provides a highly effective theory of decision-making for assessing motivations and policy decisions of third parties in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Since late in the Ottoman Empire until after the end of the Cold War, Turkey’s foreign policy was essentially defensive, seeking to maintain the status quo. Particularly during the Cold War, this manifested itself in a strong Western orientation, with considerable neglect of relations with the developing world. Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Turkey’s interests diversified, although pursuit of membership in the European Union (EU) stood out as a key goal. Indeed, compliance with EU criteria was behind liberal domestic reform. However, Turkey’s non-interventionist and liberal stance has been gradually abandoned with a rise in Islamic references in both domestic and international politics, and a drift away from the EU is apparent. Turkey’s leaders have vocally supported those that the government feels are wrongly treated in the international arena. This emphasis on morality reflects the views of domestic religious conservative groups, which form the new centres of power in Turkey. However, an increasingly sectarian approach and repeated statements stressing Turkey’s independence from the West reduce its effectiveness in the region and globally, contrary to Turkey’s professed foreign policy objectives.

The Genesis of Turkish Views on Partition and Conciliation

From the beginning of the West German state, a lot of public opinion polling was done on the German question. The findings have been scrutinized carefully from the 1950s onward, but polls have always been taken at face value, as a mirror of society. In this analysis, polls are treated rather as an observation technique of empirical social research that composes a certain image of society and its public opinion. The entanglement of domestic and international politics is analyzed with respect to the use of surveys that were done around the two topics of Western integration and reunification that pinpoint the “functional entanglement” of domestic and international politics. The net of polling questions spun around these two terms constituted a complex setting for political actors. During the 1950s, surveys probed and ranked the fears and anxieties that characterized West Germans and helped to construct a certain kind of atmosphere that can be described as “Cold War angst.” These findings were taken as the basis for dealing with the dilemma of Germany caught between reunification and Western integration. The data and interpretations were converted into “security” as the overarching frame for international and domestic politics by the conservative government that lasted until the early 1960s.

Relations between Turkey and Russia have taken significant turns for the better in the past several years, culminating in the visit of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Moscow in December 2004, and followed by Russian President Vladimir Putin's reciprocal trip to Ankara in January 2005. This was the first time a Russian chief of state had paid an official visit to Turkey.1 The latter meeting was timed, perhaps not coincidentally, to occur just before the European Union summit meeting in Brussels, which included the perennial matter of membership on its agenda. Although those visits are significant in their own right, they are emblematic of a larger significant shift in each country's disposition to the other, and in some respects are symptomatic of shifting political orientations in their domestic and international politics. As Shireen T. Hunter asserts, Turkish and Russian officials increasingly refer to their respective countries as two great Eurasian powers, indicating that the and Russian versions of Eurasianism need not be competitive. Rather, they can be complementary.2 This article explores the contours of this changing landscape with an eye toward identifying and critically analyzing alternative interpretations of the reasons for the emergence of a more cooperative set of relations between Turkey and Russia. It also does so from the perspective of the implications for democracy in each of these countries and the region more generally.This remarkable turn toward greater cooperation between Russia and Turkey calls for commentary on several grounds, not least of which is the long history of suspicion, studied alienation, and overt military conflict between the two countries. As Lesser notes, [djespite the fact that Turkey no longer shares a border with Russia, Ankara still continues to view Russia with concern. A long tradition of Russo-Turkish competition contributes to unease, and reinforces more modern worries about Moscow as a geopolitical competitor and a source of regional risk.3 That unease, however, appears to be giving way to substantial change. Improved relations between these two significant powers will certainly shape the contours of domestic and foreign politics in Eurasia well beyond each country's current regime.4 This is already evident in terms of rapidly expanding trade (from an estimated $4 billion in 2002 to approximately $10 billion in 2004, and projections of $25 billion by 2007),5 something akin to a military detente (if not rapprochement), an increasing measure of regional cooperation in attempted conflict resolution, and perhaps most demonstrably, diplomatic exchange. The last is perhaps most significant in that it may set the stage for expanded cooperation in economic and military domains as well as open doors in other aspects of bilateral and multilateral regional cooperation.Historically, relations between the Ottoman and Russian empires were never particularly good or close, and were punctuated by armed conflict.6 Chronic conflict between the Ottoman Empire and a continually expanding Muscovy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was capped by Peter the Great's victory in capturing the fortress of Azov in 1696.In 1715, Peter renamed Muscovy the Russian Empire, but with that redesignation came no change in long-term relations with the Ottoman neighbor to the south. There were wars fought in 1710, 1736, 1768-74, 1787, 1806-12,1828-29, 1854-56, and 1877-78. During World I, Russian imperial forces occupied eastern portions of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. This, along with the postwar occupation of western Anatolia by Allied forces, led the founders of the modern Republic to dub the confusing mass of conflicts during and after World I as Turkey's War of Independence (Kurtulus Savas). Although the early regime of Mustafa Kemal Atatiirk has been interpreted as having sought to base its principles on the ideals of both the American and Russian Bolshevik revolutions,7 Turkey took a decisively pro-Western and anti-Soviet orientation after World II. …

Following the November 1995 earthquake in the Gulf of Aqaba that affected countries in the area including northwest Saudi Arabia, a study was made to identify the youngest geological faults in the area. These faults have been termed Cenozoic faults, although most are Neogene in age, being younger than 23 Ma. A number of previously unknown structures have been identified. These include a zone of shattered and intensely faulted rocks 25 km wide that extends inland into Saudi Arabia from the coast of the Gulf of Aqaba. In this zone, shattered granite intrusions are eroded in a similar manner to sandstone and produce deep, vertical walled, narrow gorges, such as Tayyib al Ism. Faults parallel to the Gulf of Aqaba occur as deep wadis where the geological contacts are offset by sinistral displacements of up to 9 km, and show systematic shoulder uplift away from the gulf. Another major Cenozoic structure contained within the Saudi Arabian side of the Gulf of Aqaba is a major fold that extends 50 km inland from the coast. In this fold the Precambrian lithologic units, dikes and faults are rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise with the appearance of a drag fold due to the approximately 115 km sinistral offset of the Gulf of Aqaba. This structure is not repeated in Sinai and occurs only on the Arabian side of the Gulf. It is interpreted not as a drag fold but as a fold that probably resulted from the initial displacement along the Arabian Plate from Sinai. Later faults isolated the structure within Saudi Arabia. Reactivated Precambrian faults within the structure are also curved. Aeromagnetic anomalies show that the traces of major Tertiary gabbro dikes that parallel the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia are also curved within the fold, but their curvature of about 45 degrees anticlockwise is less than that of the Precambrian rocks and dikes, which suggests dike emplacement occurred after folding commenced. Maps that cover an area 550 km east-west by 360 km north-south and include the Gulf of Aqaba and adjacent areas show the whole area to be cut by thousands of Cenozoic faults (about two and a half thousand of the larger faults are shown here). The oldest faults occur in a 250-km wide belt of pre-rift structures that include graben structures that lie to the east of the Gulf of Aqaba fault system. These faults are oriented north-northwest in the north and curve to the northwest in the south of the study area, and are named Ribbon faults because they divide the country rocks into long thin strips from 100 to 500 m wide. These faults mainly occur within Paleozoic sandstone where they are preserved as walls cemented by iron oxides/hydroxides. Where the Ribbon faults occur within Precambrian Shield and Tertiary sediments the oxide/hydroxide fills are absent. The Ribbon faults result from crustal extension as they form horst-graben structures with topography of a few metres. In some areas open fissures occur without apparent displacement. The aeromagnetic maps show that some of the major graben structures are underlain by large Tertiary gabbro dikes. The system is mainly seismically inactive today with a few local exceptions, such as a cluster of earthquake activity about 75 km southeast of Tabuk city. Most active are the north-south to north-northeast-trending Gulf of Aqaba system of faults that include those of the floor of the Gulf of Aqaba. Other notable fault systems in the area are a prominent set of pre-rift east–west faults, some of which contain traces of Tertiary gabbro dikes and some of which become curved toward the Gulf of Aqaba like the reactivated Precambrian faults. The map area preserves a record of about 25 million years of faulting that commenced in pre-Red Sea rift time, and also records the initiation of separation of the Arabian Plate from Sinai by fold deformation prior to faulting. Some minor folding occurs from drag and compression of a belt of Tertiary sedimentary rocks originally continuous with the Gulf of Suez which were transported 115 km into the Gulf of Aqaba. The Gulf of Aqaba region remains the most active seismic area in Saudi Arabia and is the site of three large earthquakes in 1983, 1993 and 1995.

This chapter addresses issues of Greek-Cypriot domestic politics and the search for a solution of the Cyprus problem. Because of its geographic location and consequent strategic importance, Cyprus has had the unfortunate distinction of being a classic example of the interplay of domestic and international politics,1 in what in essence is a domestic problem involving the political aspirations and the power-sharing conceptions of two ethnic communities. The international factor remains an important element in the search for a just and viable solution of the Cyprus problem.

In light of contemporary technological advancements in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, coupled with significant investment in AI research and development by a range of state actors, scholars have begun considering the impact that this technology will have on international and domestic politics. While scholars express divergent views regarding the consequences of AI proliferation, this technology is likely to have a broad range of applications for international politics, from military and defense to trade and diplomacy. Recognizing the increasingly prominent role of AI in global politics, this chapter aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the opportunities and risks that the proliferation of AI technology holds for international politics by examining the factors motivating the global pursuit of this technology and evaluating its effects on authoritarianism and liberal democracy, the global balance of power, and warfare. This chapter argues that AI is best understood as an accelerating and enabling force that is less likely to produce drastic, unforeseen transformations in domestic and international politics as it is to accelerate and exacerbate trends that were already underway. As an increasingly critical tool of contemporary governance, AI is going to play a central role in future relations between international actors; it is therefore incumbent upon scholars, states, and the global community more broadly to begin preparing for international politics in the era of AI.

Dangerous Gifts: Imperialism, Security, and Civil Wars in the Levant, 1798–1864

Occupiers, Allies, and the Long Postwar Adam R. Seipp (bio) Susan L. Carruthers. The Good Occupation: American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. 386 pp. Notes, index. $29.95. Steven P. Remy. The Malmedy Massacre: The War Crimes Trial Controversy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. x + 342 pp. Maps, notes, index. $29.95. In 1954, the German journalist and Nazi-era exile Norbert Mühlen wrote an essay for the American Academy of Political and Social Science in which he sardonically described the evolution of America's postwar occupation armies from triumphant victors to "an uneasy and implausible mixture of conquistador and social worker." The apparent moral and strategic clarity of defeating German and Japan had, by the early 1950s, devolved into the complex trade-offs of political and economic reconstruction. The fundamental messiness of this transition makes it particularly fascinating for historians. Susan Carruthers and Steven Remy have written compelling accounts that highlight the frustrations, dead ends, and difficult choices that Americans faced during the decade after World War II. The two books under review here reflect important trends in the historiography of America's role in the world after 1945. First, there has been a tremendous interest in the political, cultural, and military aspects of postwar occupation. This has stemmed, not unreasonably, from more than fifteen years of American engagement with occupation and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global military realignment after 2001. Given the life cycle of academic books, it seems appropriate that the past few years have seen a number of excellent titles that situate the American military presence overseas during the Cold War within the context of international, domestic, and regional politics. This effort has been remarkably interdisciplinary, with important contributions by historians, sociologists, and political scientists. The sociologist Amy Austin Holmes's recent book on American "protection regimes" and domestic politics in Germany and Turkey stands out as an excellent example of where comparative studies can take us. Likewise, Maria Höhn and Seungsook Moon's edited [End Page 300] volume, "Over There": Living with the US Military Empire from World War Two to the Present (2010) highlights the global dimensions of America's Cold War and post-Cold War development of overseas bases. Second, the period immediately following the end of the Second World War has experienced a substantial resurgence of scholarly interest. The postwar period is no longer defined by the growing tensions of the early Cold War and is now widely seen as a dynamic historical period on its own terms. As historians move away from a view of these years that privileges the behavior and attitudes of the superpowers, a much more nuanced and multi-polar story emerges. One example of many is the florescence of scholarly treatments of the return of German and Japanese soldiers from imprisonment after the end of the war. Frank Biess (2009) and Yoshikuni Igarashi (2016) have both written outstanding studies of the domestic contexts of returning soldiers, a parallel made even more explicit by the fact that both books are titled Homecomings. Historians have not lost sight of the critical role of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry, but are much more willing to look for less teleological narratives. Newer literature on the postwar period emphasizes the plural visions of reconstruction and renewal, the contingencies of national and sub-national politics, and the long shadow of the war years. Tony Judt's magisterial 2005 study of Europe after World War II has helped to inspire a more expansive view of the entire notion of a "postwar," one that in the case of Europe may reasonably extend to 1989, if not beyond. At the beginning of Susan Carruthers's highly readable and engaging study, she takes up these challenges directly. "While we've come to know a good deal about how citizens of the former Axis powers 'embraced defeat,' we know considerably less about the awkward and hesitant way in which Americans—in and out of uniform—embraced supremacy in the postwar world" (p. 14). Readers familiar with Carruthers's earlier work on American anxieties about captivity in the early Cold War will recognize the threads that...

Purpose This paper aims to contend that populism is damaging to both domestic and international politics; not only does it erode liberal democracy in established democracies but also fuels authoritarianism in despotic regimes and aggravates conflicts and crises in international system. Design/methodology/approach The research is divided into two main sections. First, it examines how populist mobilization affects liberal democracy, and refutes the claims that populism is beneficial and reinforcing to democracy. Second, it attempts to demonstrate how populism is damaging to domestic politics (by undermining liberal democracy and supporting authoritarianism) as well as international relations (by making interstate conflicts more likely to materialize). Theoretically, populism is assumed to be a strategy used by politicians to maximize their interest. Hence, populism is a strategy used by politicians to mobilize constituents using the main features of populist discourse. Findings The research argues that populism has detrimental consequences on both domestic and international politics; it undermines liberal democracy in democratic countries, upsurges authoritarianism in autocratic regimes and heightens the level of conflict and crises in international politics. Populism can lead to authoritarianism. There is one major undemocratic trait shared by all populist waves around the world, particularly democracies; that is anti-pluralism/anti-institutions. Populist leaders perceive foreign policy as the continuation of domestic politics, because they consider themselves as the only true representatives of the people. Therefore, populist actors abandon any political opposition as necessarily illegitimate, with repercussions on foreign policy. Originality/value Some scholars argue that populism reinforces democracy by underpinning its ability to include marginalized sectors of the society and to decrease voter apathy, the research refuted these arguments. Populism is destructive to world democracy; populists are reluctant to embrace the idea of full integration with other nations. Populists reject the idea of open borders, and reckon it an apparent threat to their national security. The research concludes that populists consider maximizing their national interests on the international level by following confrontational policies instead of cooperative ones.

Much of the scholarly literature in IR couches explanation of Taiwan’s territorial claims in the South China Sea (SCS) in terms of economic and strategic interests. We argue, however, that more attention should be paid to the ‘ontological security’ of Taiwan – the need to maintain a stable and continuous sense of self against threats to this identity. Claims about Taiwan’s sovereign rights in the SCS are as much efforts to maintain the coherence of competing stories about Taiwan’s identity as they are expressions of material interest, and reflect a wider crisis of ontological security faced by successive governments in Taiwan. The claims on the SCS under Chiang Kai-shek’s regime were initially driven by the ontological need to gain the legitimacy associated with the Republic of China (ROC)’s identity in its fight against communist China. Since the 1990s, Taiwan’s narratives have diverged. Those who wish to maintain the legitimacy of the ROC claim that all waters within the U-shaped line published in 1947 are under Taiwan’s sovereignty. On the other hand, those who wish to jettison ‘ROC’ believe that the narrative in which the historic waters of the SCS come under the sovereignty of Taiwan on account of its historical ties with China adversely and paradoxically undermines the ‘sovereignty’ of Taiwan. Analysis of the controversies surrounding the SCS from the Taiwanese perspective must reckon not only with the material interests at stake, but also with the broader concerns about ontological security at play in regional and domestic politics, and the narratives of identity through which these concerns are expressed in domestic and international politics.

Putin’s War in Syria: Russian Foreign Policy and the Price of America’s Absence