Walls and Cages

The People's Republic of China has a growing trade surplus with the Western World which, with the United States alone, has increased from $23 billion to $29 billion, inspiring fear of another Japan in the making. She is a country with an authoritarian form of government, but in recent decades has pursued an “open door” policy on matters of trade. Many view this as a gradual conversion to a true free market economy. If that comes to pass, she will be the first Communist country to succeed in an apparent contradiction between political and economic philosophies.

There is no capitalist conspiracy and the rich are not all‐powerful

At the center of this work is the analysis of the consequences of implementing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (also known as - the Iran nuclear deal) on divergent foreign policy approaches as the main indicators of the mismatch in relations between the United States and the European Union during the administration of the 45th US President Donald Trump. While the US unilaterally withdrew from this agreement, EU member states remained in it. The United States and the European Union, on the one hand, and Iran, on the other, had completely different definitions of their own national security, insisting on their unilateral security, while failing to redefine the problem in the direction of mutual security. However, in addition, the US and EU member states, although both concerned about their own security due to the possible emergence of a nuclear-armed Iran, instead of a complementary approach to the issue had a mutually competing one. Using the case study method, as well as the analytical-deductive method and the content analysis method, the author explains the difference in this approach through the concept of the strategic culture of the US and the EU and concludes that they are a consequence of the different understanding of international relations, but also due to the different identity characters of these two actors. The main thesis of the paper is that the US administration of Donald Trump, with its more realistic and Hobbesian view of international relations, and a different understanding of the US national interest in the Middle East, adopted a different approach to curbing Iran's nuclear armament ambitions compared to the approach of the European Union, which is conditioned by a more liberal and Kantian nature of its view on international relations. With unilateral foreign policy actions, Trump's administration risked causing damage and shaking its own credibility in relations with the European Union. On the other hand, the European Union remains committed to multilateralism and the preservation of the Iran nuclear deal. The subject of this research is the direction of the foreign policy actions of the United States and the European Union, in the period from the unilateral withdrawal of Trump's cabinet from the Iran nuclear agreement on May 8th, 2018, until the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, a general of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard on January 3rd, 2020 in the Republic of Iraq. The current state and perspective of contemporary transatlantic political relations in the context of unilateral withdrawal will be taken into consideration. In accordance with its new foreign policy agenda and strategy, and more inclined to a realistic view of international relations, the Trump administration risked deeper conflicts and divergence with the European Union over regional security issues. Thus, there was a threat to limit the further deepening and strengthening of the transatlantic partnership with the leading member states of the European Union, especially with the government of the Federal Republic of Germany and the government of the Republic of France. Additionally, the subject of research will be the patterns of behavior, embodied in speeches and foreign policy actions, which are consistent with the different approaches of the US and the EU to the problem of preventing the theocratic regime in Iran from developing its nuclear program. Accordingly, the focus will be on the period of the Trump administration, which, with its political will to break off with the legacy of the Obama administration, began to perceive Iran as a factor causing instability in the Middle East region. The Trump administration did not ratify the Iran nuclear agreement and continued to act under its obligations, solely because of the unfavorable benefits and a large number of shortcomings for the US. Thus, the paper will analyze whether the US administration of Donald Trump had a concrete foreign policy strategy in relations with the European Union and Iran. Also, the paper will try to answer the question of whether a unilateral or multilateral approach to regional security problems is more fruitful, taking into consideration the question of whether the unilateral approach of the only superpower in the world is more effective or, on the other hand, an international coalition of states is needed to suppress the Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

The executive branch of government in Eastern Europe has undergone profound transformation since the fall of Communist regimes in 1989. Changes have affected the process of choosing political executives, or leaders, but they have also included the distribution of power that is vested in the executive branch. Of particular importance in designing the ‘architecture’ of power has been the manner of controlling the actions of leaders and, connected to this, the relationship between executive and legislative branches of government. For as Robert C. Tucker, a long-time analyst of Soviet politics, has hypothesised, ‘we can see the possibility of an authoritarian personality serving as leader in the regime of a constitutional democracy, and, conversely, of a democratic personality serving as the leader in an authoritarian system of rule’ (Tucker, 1981, p. 68). It is ‘the institutionalized difference between democratic and authoritarian forms of government’ which revolves around (i) the possibility or prohibition of active public participation in leadership choice, and (ii) control of or submission to executive prerogatives, that marks the boundary between democratic and undemocratic leadership.

Concerns have been expressed about a worldwide retreat from liberal democracy and a turn toward more authoritarian forms of government. Along with that concern has come surprise: when the cold war ended, it was widely believed that a new historical era was dawning during which alternatives to Western liberalism would wither away. Influential psychological theories also assume that freedom and autonomy are powerful human needs—needs that are thwarted by dictatorships. However, a number of theoretical perspectives and programs of research in psychology lead to the conclusion that in certain circumstances, turns toward authoritarian forms of government and restrictive societies are not only explicable, but also predictable. Fromm's analysis of why people might want to escape from freedom, Baumeister's work on escape-from-self mechanisms, and Schwartz's review of the literature on choice overload all provide ways of understanding why in turbulent times, members of free countries might intentionally seek out—and perhaps even ecstatically embrace—authoritarian forms of government.

Reading Regents and the Political Significance of Law

The world is more literate than ever, but does this literacy lead to a more thoughtful citizenry? The approach to teaching literacy skills governed by the necessity of choosing the “right” answers on multiple choice assessment instruments has the effect of producing literate and competent workers rather than the critical, creative, and ethical citizens required for functioning democratic societies. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 was celebrated as the victory of democratic ideals over authoritarian forms of government in many parts of the globe. However, events in the current century point to a trend towards autocracy. This chapter considers how events in the current century in the United States and Venezuela point to a trend towards autocracy and suggests how strengthening educational practices, especially those for engaging children in thoughtful literacy, can result in a return to democracy.

Since the inception of the open-door policy in 1978, China has progressively become more integrated into the global economy through trade, foreign direct investment, and, more recently, outward direct investment. This economic integration has gained momentum with initiatives like the ‘Go Global’ strategy, China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, and the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013. China’s economic ascent, coupled with its increasing political influence and military power, prompted the United States (US) to initiate a strategy of rebalancing in the Asia Pacific region, starting with the Bush administration and continuing through the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. During the Trump administration, this rebalancing strategy was supported by decoupling strategy, ultimately leading to a trade war with China. Despite its intention to avoid the initiation of a new Cold War and to adopt a more moderate stance towards China, the US-China trade war has evolved further into a tech war under the Biden administration. Given this context, this article aims to outline the primary characteristics of the US economic policy towards China during the Biden administration, comparing it to the Trump administration and assessing its impact on both nations. The central argument of this article is that the primary characteristics of the US economic policy towards China under Biden administration are rebalancing and decoupling, carried over from the policies of the preceding Trump administration, and there are clear signs that these characteristics are deepening. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that the extensive decoupling measures enacted by the US have proven effective in diminishing China’s role in global industrial and supply chains, particularly in industries related to semiconductors and chipmaking equipment.

Issues in Australian Foreign Policy January to June 2022

Since Donald Trump was re-elected to the White House, his 'Make America Great Again' political slogan seems to isolate the United States further from the world stage. This article answers the question of what will Donald Trump's second presidency do to America's relations with those countries that participated in the constituting of the United States of America after World War II. Trump's "America First" policy seeks nationalist foreign policy goals and gives them preference over multilateral agreements. Consequently, Trump's self-serving US foreign policy of Trumped-up American exceptionalism sans partnerships, NATO, and EU, will ultimately reduce US global power and influence. In this case, the statement that America played a substantial role in shifting from global talk to national do constitutes a central idea in the shift of global leadership to a national focus. This could result in weakening the US influence in international affairs. As the region readjusts its geopolitical allies in response to the US, China and Russia will expand their stakes in the region. Furthermore, Western countries in general, and EU countries in particular, will answer to Trump's impetuous foreign policy by making separate economic partnerships, and new security alliances and cutting their dependence on trade with the United States. The isolation of America under Trump presents critical challenges to global security and risks setting back the international order the United States pursued throughout his entire tenure, since the end of World War II.

After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran did not change its policy towards Japan, which was not only perceived separately from the West, but was also a major customer of its raw resources and a potential economic donor. In turn, Japan had to pursue the policy of unstable balancing towards Iran, by coordinating its Middle Eastern policy with its strategic ally, the United States, and simultaneously trying to preserve close ties with Iran, which were important from the point of view of maintaining energy security. The article shows how Japan tried to maneuver between these two countries: it took steps to realize large-scale economic projects in Iran’s energy sector, to limit sanctions, which were minimal on its side, etc., and simultaneously participated in the anti-Iran campaign pursued by Western countries under the pressure of the US, or under the influence of major crises in the region (for example, the Iran-Iraq War). Japan continues to face this “Middle Eastern dilemma” in present times as well. It could partly have been solved by the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iranian nuclear program in 2015, were it not for the fact that, two years later, under the US administration of Donald Trump, the US-Iran relations worsened significantly. Nevertheless, in this period, Japan successfully tried its mediatory potential, making use of its good relations with both parties of the conflict: on the one hand, it refused to participate in the US operation in the Strait of Hormuz, on the other, it halted the unfreezing of Iran’s funds in its banks, which had been blocked after the introduction of sanctions by the US administration of Donald Trump. Recently, the activization of China in the region has become a factor of risk for Japan’s Middle Eastern policy, as China tries to use the weaking positions of the US and to occupy the vacuum that was left in its wake, which is illustrated by the signing of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement between Beijing and Tehran in March 2021. This forces Japan to deliberately strengthen its positions and expand its presence in Iran. It appears that Japan’s approaches to solving the “Middle Eastern dilemma” deserve special attention in the future as well.

Negotiating tactics can often appear harsh, but when the United States Trade Representative (USTR) placed Canada on its Priority Watch List (PWL), the move went beyond the standard give-and-take of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. Canada – a nation that believes in the rule of law – joins China, Algeria, Kuwait and Venezuela, to name just a few, on the PWL list for its alleged “worst” record in intellectual property standards. Granted, Canada has room for improvement in this area, but for the USTR’s annual Special 301 report to place it on the PWL is hardly credible. It is no coincidence that Canada, the only G7 country—and virtually the only western country-- to make either the PWL and the USTR’s lesser Watch List (WL), is also in the midst of renegotiating NAFTA with the United States and Mexico. The 301 process has always been political to some degree, but using it as a negotiating hammer with which to hit Canada over the head risks devaluing its importance in identifying genuine shortcomings in the IP realm that affect U.S. and Canadian businesses. The report is on target in identifying several IP areas requiring more rigorous attention from Canada, including counterfeit goods in transit and copyright issues. However, the U.S. is also unhappy with changes to Canadian pharmaceutical patent regulations and protectionist matters arising from the Canada-EU Trade Agreement that have to do with European geographical indications. Still, although Canada is not alone in the latter area, no European country is on the WL. Ironically, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s own ranking of 50 world economies on their IP standards shows that Canada improved in four out of six categories, coming in 18th among the 50. Venezuela, with whom Canada shares the notoriety of being on the PWL, was 50th out of 50. Clearly, Canada’s new ranking does not reflect reality and is a blatant negotiating tool, but the USTR appears less interested in the collateral damage it may cause as long as the U.S. can get the concessions it wants at the table. This is a game that two can play, however, and Canada’s turn at hardball may come if the U.S. decides one day that it wants to rejoin the latest incarnation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, from which it so hastily withdrew when Donald Trump was elected president.

This paper discusses the bilateral relationship between Indonesia–United States due to immigration policies during the Donald Trump administration in the period 2017-2021 and the immigrant community in the United States and the relationship between the two. The formulation of the problem is what motivates the United States to decide its immigration policy and second is how Indonesia responds to the United States' policy, especially the problem of immigrants from Indonesia. The immigration policy discussed in this paper is the Executive Order signed by Donald Trump in 2017 regarding the ban on people from seven Muslim countries who, according to the United States, are supporting countries. The writing method uses literature study and data presentation or literature review. This paper shows that Donald Trump's immigration policy has an impact on immigrants from seven existing Muslim countries and prospective immigrants who will go to the United States. The impact on the main target, in terms of bilateral relations with Indonesia, did not show a significant effect, although there was a decrease in the number of students studying in the United States of around 17% due to this policy. However, the Indonesian government considers Donald Trump's policy only to maintain security in the United States. Indonesia and the United States after Donald Trump's Immigration policy The US Ambassador asked the Indonesian government that the policy was not aimed at Muslims but for US security to limit immigrants from Indonesia who would receive protection from the Indonesian Embassy in the United States.

Introduction: Wendy Cheng (bio) and Chih-Ming Wang (bio) This forum originated as a roundtable at the 2019 ASA conference in Honolulu, Hawai'i. At a moment in which US–Taiwan relations had seemed to reach a new historic height under Donald Trump's right-wing, nationalist presidency,1 it felt important to name and articulate Taiwan's long and troubled relationship with the United States. Further, the conference's location in Hawai'i, touted since the Cold War by the US state as a crossroads and amalgam of "East and West" (a narrative that erases Hawai'i as an Indigenous place and Kanaka 'Ōiwi as a people), served as an apt setting for our discussion of Taiwan as an instructive yet neglected lens through which to view US Empire, militarism, multiple colonialisms, and knowledge formation. The islands of Hawai'i, moreover, articulate an archipelagic history across the Pacific against dominant narratives of continental expansion and civilization as colonization. Our forum follows on Funie Hsu, Brian Hioe, and Wen Liu's "Collective Statement on Taiwan Independence: Building Global Solidarity and Rejecting US Military Empire," published in American Quarterly in September 2017, which cautioned supporters of Taiwan independence to be wary of an alliance with then president Donald Trump. Instead of pinning the hope of independence on the US military empire, the statement encouraged supporters to build solidarity instead with "groups marginalized by American Empire and with other global movements for decolonization."2 As some Asian Americans—including many Taiwanese Americans afraid of a belligerent China—assert right-wing politics increasingly loudly and the risk of war in the Taiwan Strait increases,3 it is both pressing and timely to think about how Taiwan matters, if at all, in the US political imagination, and how Taiwan might navigate itself out of the treacherous waters of US–PRC contention that turns islands into frontiers of empire and reduces them to emblems of betrayal and threat. We seek to place Taiwan in the US political imaginary past and present and to imagine transformative politics out of contradiction and ambiguity, as we engage in the material and ideological politics of the US–PRC–Taiwan triangle [End Page 335] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. "Conference notes" was created by Angel Trazo at the site of 2019 ASA Conference in Honolulu. We are grateful for Trazo's permission to reproduce the image here. and its implications for coalition politics in the larger Asian and Pacific island worlds. Individually and collectively, we consider how Taiwan's conditions of being have been overdetermined by the US military empire, and how understanding Taiwan as a frontier of empire can inform discussions in American studies about resistance and revolution, settler colonialism, Indigenous sovereignty, and coalition politics. By locating Taiwan in the US political imagination, we also reflect on American studies' origin in Cold War politics as it pertains to US imperialism in shaping political ideology and changing the world order—or, as Judy Tzu-Chun Wu puts it in her commentary on this forum, "how American studies and orientalism are two sides of the transpacific flow of knowledge"—a condition that badly needs dismantling now. The forum opens with two essays that locate both Hawai'i and Taiwan in transpacific Cold War intellectual and political history. Wendy Cheng discusses the 1960s–1970s case of Chen Yu-hsi, a Taiwanese student at the University of Hawai'i's East-West Center, whose arrest and imprisonment in Taiwan inspired [End Page 336] a broad liberal, left, and internationalist coalition of supporters; Yukari Yoshihara delves into the imperial origin of American studies in postwar Japan via the career of George Kerr (also a University of Hawai'i alum), whose sojourn in Okinawa and Taiwan was seminal to his vision of American studies. We then move into the present with essays by Funie Hsu and Anita Wen-Shin Chang: Hsu critiques bilingual policy in Taiwan as a sign of in/dependence where a form of benevolent imperialism harnessed Taiwan's imagination of the United States, and Chang considers the feminist and popular democratic praxis and potential of the Taiwanese state today, as expressed by Digital Minister Audrey Tang, to demand...

An article is an attempt to study «special relationships» between the United States and Great Britain. The author mentioned that the presidential elections in the USA and the fact that Donald Trump became a new president reflected on the relationships between the United States and Great Britain. The attention is given to the role of personality in states’ relationships. The article illustrates that Donald Trump`s populism in his speeches played a negative role for making stable relationships with the UK. More specifically, Donald Trump's criticism of London's mayor Sadiq Khan, Scotland Yard evocated a negative social reaction in Great Britain. As shown in the article, the citizens of the United Kingdom were shocked by Donald Trump`s islamophobia and his Facebook post of the far-right organization «Britain first». Indeed, it was the reason for massive protests during Donald Trump's official visit to the United Kingdom in 2018. The reference should be made to the fact that in 2016 the UK citizens decided to leave European Union. Despite the fact that Donald Trump approved this decision he criticized British prime-minister Theresa May for soft Brexit. As shown in the article contrary to the strong criticism of the British government Donald Trump visited Great Britain three times during his presidential term. These official trips were directed on normalization of Anglo-American relationships. Queen Elizabeth twice met Donald Trump and they both mentioned that special relationships are important for their countries. Research has shown that during Boris Johnson’s premiership US-UK relations became stronger. This factor is due to close Trump`s and Johnson's political views. The article illustrates that the United States and Great Britain still have special relationships. Countries have strong intelligence, military and nuclear cooperation. Both the US and the UK are still key economical partners and they are interested in safety relationships.