Türkiye as a Cusp State: Conceptualization and Implementation

Sri Lanka, with its geostrategic position in the Indian Ocean, sitting at the heart of the Sea Lines of Communications(SLOCs), has been a central discussion theme due to its strong strategic partnership with China, the rising power in Asia. The geographical position of Sri Lanka, with its terrestrial and marine environments, has gained a significant value attracting regional and extraregional powers. The significant investment in two-principle strategies, the Indo-Pacific and OBOR, is unfolding and competing in the Indian Ocean, impacting the Island nation's present and future foreign policy. The infrastructure diplomacy commenced along with the OBOR initiative by Chinese government with its deep-water ports and airports has moved Sri Lankan foreign policy towards a ‘China tilt' during President Mahinda Rajapaksa's tenure. From its past foreign policy of ‘non-aligned' and ‘Indian Ocean zone for peace' initiatives, Sri Lanka today has evolved towards a ‘multi-aligned' foreign policy. There are several significant factors underlying this transition; among them is the India–China–U.S., the ‘triple spheres' influencing the island's foreign policy. Sri Lanka is facing immense geopolitical pressure; a triangular power projection by the U.S., India, and China is taking place in its surrounding ocean sphere. The present government under President Gotabaya Rajapaksa came to power in 2019 November with an ‘equidistant' foreign policy recalibrating former President Sirisena's foreign policy. While Rajapaksa's wish is not to entangle with the global power struggle, will the powers leave Rajapaksa alone, As already cautioned by several analysts of a possible China-centric tilt due to an unmatched volume of assistance from China? It is more likely that the present regime will have a continuation of earlier (2005–2015) Mahinda Rajapaksa foreign policy with a recalibration of Indo-Lanka relationship. The chapter will examine the past, present, and future of Sri Lanka's foreign policy with a special focus on infrastructure diplomacy and contemporary Chinese affairs in Sri Lanka. The analysis will examine China's geopolitical influence over the island through the infrastructure diplomacy carried out by the Chinese in the past two decades, the missed opportunities in better bargaining with China. It will also examine Sri Lankan foreign policy in the realm of Sino-Lanka relations and domestic political shifts.

47 *Kilic Bugra Kanat is a an assistant professor of Political Science at Penn State University, Erie and a non-Resident Fellow at SETA Foundation. He received his PhD degree in Political Science from Syracuse University (Syracuse, NY). He received his MA in International Affairs from Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI) and his undergraduate education in the International Relations and Sociology from the Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey). 1 Charles F. Hermann, “Changing Course: When Governments Choose to Redirect Foreign Policy,” International Studies Quarterly 34 (1990): 3-21; Jerel A. Rosati, Martin W. Sampson III, and Joe D. Hagan, “The Study of Change in Foreign Policy,” in Foreign Policy Restructuring: How Governments Respond to Global Change, ed. Jerel A. Rosati, Joe D. Hagan, and Martin W. Sampson, (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994); Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Jakob Gustavsson, The Politics of Foreign Policy Change: Explaining the Swedish Reorientation on EC Membership, (Lund: Lund University Press, 1998); Jakob Gustavsson, “How Should We Study Foreign Policy Change?” Cooperation and Conflict 34 (1999): 73-95.K. J. Holsti, Why Nations Realign: Foreign Policy Restructuring in the Postwar World, (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982), 2. Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XXXVI, No.2, Winter 2012 Evolution of Turkish-Israeli Relations 1992-2008: Causes, Actors and Reactions Kılıç Buğra Kanat* Introduction Although “the change in foreign policy” of a country is one of the most frequently used phrases in the field of foreign policy, the issue has remained one of the most understudied topics in academia. Despite developments in other fields, including foreign policy analysis, foreign policy decision-making, and comparative foreign policy, foreign policy change has not generated enough scholarship to be considered a separate field of study. In different instances, several scholars raised red flags about the lack of systematic scholarship on this topic in foreign policy literature and asserted the necessity to form a systemic research program to deal with the issue of foreign policy change.1 Although these calls resulted in the 48 formation of certain theoretical models to understand foreign policy change, these models have not been implemented sufficiently through case studies, and thus their efficacy and empirical relevance have still not been researched or discussed properly. Moreover, different studies in this field rarely engage in a dialogue and there is a significant lack of integrative studies in the field, which would bring together the salient aspects of different studies to create a more comprehensive approach toward foreign policy change. As a result, there is deep disagreement among scholars about the definition, causes, process and outcome of foreign policy change in countries. In this study, I aim to contribute to the literature of foreign policy change scholarship by integrating the findings of different foreign policy change studies with empirical findings on Turkish-Israeli relations. The study will take foreign policy change as a process instead of a single breaking point. It will be argued that, other than in the case of major crises and revolutionary changes, the foreign policy transformation of countries takes place in a gradual fashion as a result of the cumulative effect of domestic, regional and international factors. Monocausal explanations will fail to provide an accurate portrait of the changes in foreign policy and will lead to reductionism in this field. Although some of these factors may play a more prominent role in the path to the policy change, at the end of the day there are only a number of major transformations in foreign policy which took place as a result of only a single factor. In addition, in most instances of foreign policy transformation, change necessitates either a consensus among different actors within an authoritative foreign policy decision unit or an effective and strong leadership. The changes in Turkish foreign policy towards Israel throughout a twenty year period will be used to demonstrate this form of multicausal and gradual evolution in foreign policy. In addition to showing the causes and process of foreign policy changes, the study will also take into account the outcome of those changes. Changes in a country’s foreign policy elicit varied reactions from...

Much of the empirical work on the European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy suggests that there is something going on in this field than what we might expect if we rely on traditional realist or more sophisticated rational choice perspectives in our analyses. However, it is not always clear what these empirical observations add up to in terms of how we should conceptualise the EU's foreign policy and the processes that take place within it. This paper specifies two alternative ways of conceptualizing European foreign policy and makes a preliminary assessment of their empirical relevance. The first of these conceptions outlines the EU as primarily identity-based. Here foreign policy would be geared towards ensuring the sustainability of a particular European community. The second conception would depict the EU as a rights-based entity, concerned with promoting certain binding and constraining principles not only inside the EU but also in the international system at large.

The history of the formation of South Africa as a single state is closely intertwined with events of international scale, which have accordingly influenced the definition and development of the main characteristics of the foreign policy of the emerging state. The Anglo-Boer wars and a number of other political and economic events led to the creation of the Union of South Africa under the protectorate of the British Empire in 1910. The political and economic evolution of the Union of South Africa has some specific features arising from specific historical conditions. The colonization of South Africa took place primarily due to the relocation of Dutch and English people who were mainly engaged in business activities (trade, mining, agriculture, etc.). Connected by many economic and financial threads with the elite of the countries from which the settlers left, the local elite began to develop production in the region at an accelerated pace. South Africa’s favorable climate and natural resources have made it a hub for foreign and local capital throughout the African continent. The geostrategic position is of particular importance for foreign policy in South Africa, which in many ways predetermined a great interest and was one of the fundamental factors of international involvement in the development of the region. The role of Jan Smuts, who served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 to 1924 and from 1939 to 1948, was particularly prominent in the implementation of the foreign and domestic policy of the Union of South Africa in the focus period of this study. The main purpose of this article is to study the process of forming the mechanisms of the foreign policy of the Union of South Africa and the development of its diplomatic network in the period from 1910 to 1948.

<p>This thesis is an in-depth study into the New Zealand-Australian relationship and the two nations' divergence in International Relations, with particular reference to the disparate foreign and security policies implemented under the Howard and Clark Governments from 1996/1999 respectively until the present time in 2007. The purpose of this study is to provide an accurate and up-to-date overview of the New Zealand-Australian relationship as it stands today, and to define the main areas of difference between the two countries which are driving trans-Tasman divergence in the international sphere. In pursuit of this goal, the subject-area is explored in the following ways. Chapter One provides a general overview of the trans-Tasman relationship, reflecting specifically on three abiding dynamics which together have contributed to the 'strangeness' of the trans-Tasman rapport from the mid-1800s until today. Chapter Two, defines in fuller detail the greatest areas of divergence between the two countries in their foreign and security policies, and then additionally outlines three important issues in the international sphere on which the Tasman pair have diverged most strikingly in recent years. Chapters Three to Five explore three areas of fundamental difference between the Tasman pair in their International Relations, considered here to be driving factors behind the trans-Tasman divide - namely, different beliefs and approaches towards multilateralism, the use of force and relations with the United States. Finally, Chapters Six and Seven explore three contemporary theories attempting to explain New Zealand and Australia's divergence in International Relations today. There are three main arguments throughout this thesis: first, that New Zealand and Australia are becoming increasingly divergent in their foreign affairs; second, that this divergence is primarily due to the fact that the two countries are fundamentally different in their views and approaches towards three crucial areas within international politics - multilateralism, the use of force and relations with the United States; and thirdly, that these differences in view and approach, and the divergent policies they produce, in turn arise chiefly from completely disparate senses of national identity in the two Tasman countries, which motivate differing - and sometimes conflicting - foreign policy behaviour. These three arguments are explored and expounded in the following ways. With regard to the first argument, Chapter Two provides an in-depth overview of the most important areas of divergence between New Zealand and Australia since 1999. As to the second argument, Chapters Three to Five employ a case study based on discourse analysis into New Zealand and Australian governmental speeches on the 2002-2003 Iraq Crisis - an issue that inherently involved these three fundamental areas of difference - in order to specify how precisely New Zealand and Australia diverge in their view and approach to these three matters based on the two Governments' own self-proffered statements and explanations. These disparate beliefs are then shown to translate into divergent actions and foreign policy behaviour on the world stage, by substantiating such rhetorical statements with evidence taken from the Howard and Clark Governments' foreign policy record, as documented in governmental documents as well as in political and academic literature. Finally, with regard to third argument, Chapters Six and Seven involve a discussion and critique of two rather convincing orthodox explanations for trans-Tasman divergence, Hugh White's 'Strategic Perception' and David McCraw's 'Divergent Political Ideologies', as well as a summary and broad application of one new theoretical explanation called 'Identity Theory' to New Zealand and Australia's foreign policy record, in order to show that it is indeed identity-based explanations, when combined with other strategic and political factors, that in fact provide the most accurate, comprehensive and insightful explanation for New Zealand and Australia's divergent behaviour in the international sphere from the time of Federation in 1901 until today in 2007. This thesis makes the following conclusions: first, that it is fundamentally different beliefs in regard to multilateralism, the use of force and relations with the United States which are driving the 'continental drift' between New Zealand and Australia, through motivating disparate policies and conflicting behaviour by the Tasman pair in their international affairs, as shown during the 2003 Iraq Crisis; secondly, that these dissimilar beliefs regarding the three matters stem in turn from deeply-rooted foreign policy traditions within New Zealand and Australia's own core national identity, namely traditions of independence, idealism and multilateralism in New Zealand, and independence, realism and alliances in Australia; and thirdly, that it is in fact national identity - encompassing national beliefs, traditions and ideas of what the nation stands for and is destined to become - that can best explain nation-state behaviour and action on the world stage today. In my own view, I believe that it is identity theory, when combined with aspects of disparate strategic perception and predominant governmental political ideology advocated by White and McCraw, which together present the best and most wide-ranging means of understanding the complex realities of International Relations today. It is hoped that the research undertaken in this thesis will not only contribute to the new wave of academic literature attempting to describe and explain the differences between New Zealand and Australia in our foreign affairs today in 2007, but also add to the growing consensus in the constructvist academic world that identity-based explanations are crucial for understanding foreign affairs.</p>

This book examines the implications of counterinsurgency wars for U.S. defense policy and makes the compelling argument that the United States' default position on counterinsurgency wars should be to avoid them. In this compelling study, Eland questions the core assumptions of the American foreign policy and defense establishments that call for military interventions around the world and high and increasing defense budgets at home. He outlines a security policy more appropriate to the sober realities of the post-Cold War era. This is an approach that calls for military restraint overseas, taking advantage of the already secure U.S. geostrategic position, while safeguarding vital national interests. Eland details the military force structure needed for this new role and calculates the reduced defense budget required to pay for these forces. This book is a timely wake-up call to those who make American foreign and defense policies. It demands a badly needed re-thinking of America's national interests. In the author's view, America's natural geostrategic position places it at a natural advantage, rendering unnecessary a forward defense posture. A non-interventionist foreign policy would save money by requiring lower defense budgets. An America less willing to get involved in complex overseas disputes unrelated to U.S vital interests would also be less likely to make enemies around the world.

This article critically engages with recent scholarship that casts Russian foreign policy either in terms of a gradual evolution towards neo-imperialism, or alternatively as an episodic series of shifts on issues such as terrorism, energy, relations with great powers, and Russia's geostrategic position in contemporary international politics. It argues that since the end of the Cold War what has been striking about Russian foreign policy has been its continuity. To do this it examines several key policy arenas, including Russia's attempts to construct regional architecture to embed its hegemonic position; its recent preference for resource diplomacy, and its use of military force. It finds that while Russia has struggled to maintain hegemony in the former Soviet space due to the ongoing problem of weak material capabilities, the ‘assertive’ form of realism that characterizes its foreign policy has not altered significantly since shortly after the collapse of the USSR.

Australia occupies an exceptional geo-strategic position in the Indo-Pacific region; a large political, economic and defence potential, as well as the possession of the South Pacific as its sphere of influence. However, Australia's foreign policy vector increasingly depends on the degree of development of the Sino-US confrontation. As is well known, the United States has been Australia's main strategic and ideological partner, while China has come to be its main trade destination. While the competition between the two great powers (China and the U.S.) has increased, this has made regional environment in the Indo-Pacific multifaceted and complex creating new challenges or opportunities for Canberra. In order to reduce its geo-strategic risks, Australia has increasingly turned to multilateral arrangements in the Indo-Pacific region engaging ASEAN, India, and Japan. This requires the ability to quickly respond to changes in the balance of power between the United States and China. To understand its likely trajectories, this chapter first dwells with the evolution of multilateralism in Australia's defence and foreign policy documents and how it engages with the rise of the China factor in its commitment to multilateral cooperation to gauge Australia’s Fifth Continent's approaches to mitigate the escalating trend of the anarchic situation in the region. First section deals with the definition of Australia as a middle power and its commitment to multilateral foreign policy. The second section elucidates the features and tendencies of multilateralism in Australia's defence and foreign policy vision. The third and fourth sections highlight the connection between multilateralism and the middle powers’ foreign policy strategies. The last section examines selective and balanced frames of multilateralism in the context of rapidly transforming regional alignments in the Indo-Pacific. Finally, it contends how future trends on Australia's foreign policy at the present still remain largely hostages to the degree of the Sino-US confrontation.KeywordsAustraliaForeign policyMultilateralismBig powers

This article provides a detailed study of the British public and foreign policy issues in the context of electoral politics in the 1960s, a time when the country had to adjust to the shifting geopolitical realities and economic constraints affecting its international role. It analyses several key areas of electoral politics: the general and electoral salience of external and domestic issues; valence evaluations of the parties’ competence on international affairs; and the bivariate and multivariate associations between foreign policy attitudes and voting behaviour in 1964 and 1966. Undertaking detailed analyses of data from quantitative sources relating to public opinion and electoral behaviour, it shows that positional and valence considerations relating to foreign and defence policy were associated with voting for or against Labour at these general elections, even though more generally foreign policy issues were of lower salience than domestic issues during this period of flux and uncertainty in Britain’s international role. The findings contribute to psephological debates concerning the nature of the electoral landscape in the 1960s and the role of external issues at post-war elections. It also extends the scope of scholarly research on the foreign policies and related party politics of the 1964–70 Labour governments.

This study aims to shift the focus of scholarship on ideas and foreign policy from its overwhelming concern with domestic structures and institutional setup toward a greater awareness of the importance of changing national identity conceptions. I argue that Turkey's foreign policy toward the post-Soviet Turkic Eurasia has been influenced by an ideational factor—the idea of the "Turkic World." Advocated by nonstate actors, "Turkic World" was rapidly internalized by a wide range of political actors in Turkey in the 1990s. Despite the eventual fading of the geopolitical importance of the region for Turkey and the rise to power of a political party with Islamist roots, the idea has gained a "taken for granted" status in Turkey's foreign policy interests and practices. I argue that idea entrepreneurs can influence foreign policy when two conditions are met: first, when a critical juncture prompts decision makers to search for a new foreign policy framework and second, when the evolving national identity conceptions of the ruling elite overlap with the general premise of the idea entrepreneurs' proposals. In this case, "Turkic World" has not only provided Turkish decision makers with a pragmatic foreign policy course but also spoken to their changing "worldviews."

The author notes that there are two "worlds" of foreign policy analysis: the quantitative world of comparative foreign policy and the qualitative world of largely non-cumulative and single-case foreign policy studies. A major division concerns the inclusion of "intangibles", of which the "cultural factors" behind a nation's foreign policy may be considered at the core. The article points to the need for theoretically focused comprehensive studies with few cases as a way of bridging these two "worlds", and as a fruitful approach to theory-construction. With American foreign policy as one case, the author demonstrates how cultural sources should be considered a major source component of foreign policy. He then reviews how cultural/societal sources, broadly speaking, have been treated in the comparative foreign policy field and notes that while the "foreign policy events" school largely ignores cultural sources, the theorizing of James N. Rosenau, over a twenty-year period, has come to recognize such sources as fundamental. This, the article notes, seems to be linked to the definition of the dependent variable: foreign policy defined as "behavior" or discrete acts versus "orientation" (cf. K. J. Holsti). Rosenau's "adaptation model" as reformulated by Nicolaj Petersen is subsequently used to demonstrate how cultural/societal sources are of paramount importance when analyzing foreign policy defined as "orientation". The author concludes by proposing a three-level hierarchical definition of foreign policy as (1) foreign policy orientation, (2) sectorial foreign policies/programs of action, and (3) foreign policy behavior. A model is set up which hypothesizes a strong causal relationship between cultural/societal forces and foreign policy orientation and between situational/contextual factors and foreign policy behavior respectively. This fits in with a probabilistic relationship between policy as a "standard used in the making of decisions" and foreign policy behavior as discrete acts, and provides a perspective which helps explain issues related to consistency.

The crisis in Ukraine of 2014 produced considerable change in the EU international environment, which not only tested its capabilities to react very quickly and adequately but also actually destroyed previous subtle balance of its Member States in relations with Russia. The EU Member States were not able to continue to maintain in these relations the disunity pattern, which was successfully described in the European Council on Foreign study A Power Audit of EU – Russia Relations already in 2007. New turbulence pushed EU member states closer together, re-introduced old geopolitical constraints and concerns about national and international security and limited the room for diplomatic maneuver and finally produce new unity pattern. However nature of that new pattern remains not yet fully investigated from academic point of view. The aim of the article is to present results of analysis of this shift in foreign policy preferences of the EU and its Member States. The research is targeted to identify the nature of this change, which happened through process of adjustment to new reality, in the hierarchy of foreign policy preferences of Member States and finally of the European Union in general. The aim of the paper will be achieved by implementation of analysis of collected empirical data on foreign policy preferences of the EU Member States. The analysis will be based on typical methods of foreign policy analysis. Those include analysis of legal acts, statements of politicians, analytical literature and interviews with experts from the EU Member States. The conclusion of the article is supposed to answer to the main research question and to explain nature of new choices in the EU Members States foreign policies and its effect to the EU foreign policy towards Russia in general. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eis.0.9.12792

Nepal faces a severe geopolitical threat because of the geostrategic position between India and China. This geographical positioning and the constantly changing geopolitical trends seriously impact the country. A comprehensive and coherent foreign and security policy is needed by Nepal to address the risks and threats. Realizing the evolving geopolitical effects on Nepal and the country needs to be ready with the foreign policy and security policy harmonize and coordinate the two to promote and protect the national interest. The study aims to point out the geopolitical threats for the country and recommends the fundamentals for developing a coherent and integrated foreign policy. To justify this necessity, the study explores the relationship between foreign policy and security policy and establishes an interdependent connection between the two. The article also traces the historiography of the harmonious and integrated foreign and security policy of Nepal from the nation-building phase. It identifies the situations in which the country had deviated from the core fundamentals of the foreign and security policies. Methodologically, the article has adhered to the secondary resources and has adopted a qualitative approach to collate and analyze the information thematically.

Recently the Islamic Republic of Iran has been under attack, internationally and particulary in the Western media because of its nuclear program, which has triggered fears in Europe and America of Iran as a nuclear power. Beyond this focus of criticism, Iran‟s foreign policy is characterized by a great diversity of other aspects seldom mentioned in the Western media. Since the US invasion in neighboring Iraq, the country‟s regional importance has visibly increased. Politicians will have to take the position of Iran into consideration when thinking about future peace talks and perspectives for the entire region. There are, however, some significant features of Iranian foreign policy under the presidency of Mahmud Ahmadi-Nezhad, the first signs of which were outlined timidly in the time of his predecessor Khatami. These tendencies in the concept of Iran‟s foreign policy are mirrored by the growing interest in Central Asia and its eastern neighbors. Thereby the Iranian government accentuates a strategy aimed at embedding itself within a broad regional network. Afghanistan, its neighbor to the east and hitherto a rather marginal element within the overarching framework of Iran‟s foreign policy, due to its geostrategic position now plays a crucial role in the plans for the establishment of this regional network. From the Afghan point of view, Iran is one of Afghanistan‟s important neighbors; the two countries share a nine hundred kilometer-long border. In addition, since the outbreak of the Afghanistan conflict, millions of refugees have crossed this border, and there are currently more than 1.5 million Afghans living in Iran. However, the actual number of Afghan refugees and migrant workers could be much higher than this estimated figure despite repatriation efforts carried out by Iranian officials. This essay aims at analyzing structural patterns inherent in the Iranian policy towards Afghanistan and the development of this policy during the last century. The main emphasis is on the following questions: How has the Iranian government conceptualized its new Afghanistan policy since the fall

A country's foreign policy is characterised by continuity and change. A stark divergence, however, between stated foreign policy objectives and practically implemented foreign policy behaviours cannot be convincingly vindicated as a routine transformation. Nepal's foreign policy objectives and principles are laid down in the Constitution and various foreign policy documents, particularly in the integrated foreign policy of 2020. A series of perceptible deviations from those guiding principles, without any justifiable reason, may label Nepal's foreign policy behaviour as an adventurist project. Today, while the residue of Cold War politics has enveloped the Russia-Ukraine crisis, Nepal has divulged traceable foreign policy responses over the same. Taking the case study of Nepal's foreign policy responses to the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the study aims to map Nepal's foreign policy behaviour toward great power politics. Surveying Nepal's foreign policy behaviour towards the United Nations and the great powers, particularly the United States and Russia, this study, firstly, identifies the sources of key changes and detectible transformations in Nepal's foreign policy behaviour. Secondly, drawing a critical analysis of Nepal's responses to the great power politics to understand the foreign policy behaviour of Nepal that has been ambiguous, ambivalent, and uncertain. Methodologically, this qualitative study has employed the framework of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) along with inductive as well as deductive methods of reasoning per the nature of non-numerical data.