Washington Administrative Research Articles

A Resource History of US-China Rapprochement

Abstract Facing the prospect of dual crises in domestic production and international supply of oil in the 1970s, Washington looked to an unlikely new source: The People’s Republic of China. Reputable American analysts at the time assessed that China’s near offshore contained reserves on par with the Persian Gulf region. Three consecutive administrations in Washington seriously considered China one geoeconomic “fix” to pressing concerns about concentrated resource dependency, first for oil then later for metals and minerals. During the Nixon Administration, fears of overdependency on producer nations encouraged this turn. By Carter’s time, officials maintained a more expansive view of China’s mineral potential and were committed to transcending oil dependencies partly via a program of investment in Chinese minerals. Though China now represents Washington’s gravest point of dependency, rather than its soundest escape, the fulcrum of the US-China economic relationship today remains the same as in the 1970s: foreign resource dependency.

Federal focus on education initiatives wins broad public support Findings from the 56th annual PDK Poll

Preparing students to enter the workforce and attracting and retaining good teachers are Americans’ top educational priorities for the next administration in Washington, regardless of who wins the upcoming presidential election, the 2024 PDK Poll finds. While eight in 10 or more Americans pick those two items as priorities, other policy priorities also win broad support. Seven in 10 — or more — favor an increased focus on addressing student mental health, helping students who have fallen behind academically, and college affordability. The survey was produced by Langer Research Associates for PDK International, with data collected June 21 to July 1, 2024, in English and Spanish, among a representative, random national sample of 1,009 adults.

Paine's Yellow Fever": Opposition Politics and Pandemic Disease in the Early Republic

Abstract: This article examines the disruptive impact of Philadelphia's 1793 yellow fever outbreak on the Democratic-Republican societies that opposed the Washington administration. It demonstrates how the outbreak abruptly suspended the celebrations of the French Revolution as well as the organizing and publishing activities of the emerging opposition. People's energies were directed towards physical survival rather than political mobilization during the outbreak. Philadelphia's democratic movement lost some key leaders to the fever and it also lost momentum in building a Philadelphia-centered national opposition. After the outbreak, Democratic-Republicans regrouped, but the organizational energy had dissipated and circumstances had shifted. However, Federalists, who already had seen opposition as a diseased faction, mobilized the language of disease to denounce their political foes with a new intensity, as yellow fever became linked to transatlantic radicalism and political subversion amid the ongoing threat of yellow fever outbreaks in the 1790s and beyond.

A two-front revolution: Helping our cities and schools help each other

MIT Science Policy Review spoke with Kate Burns about kicking off a two-front science policy revolution: how academics can make their research politically actionable and how local officials can center academic research to run their cities. Burns is the Executive Director of MetroLab, a nonprofit organization that nurtures transformational collaborations between cities and universities [1]. Burns had her start in mayoral administrations in Seattle, Washington and Kansas City, Missouri, thinking deeply about innovation and drafting new regulatory schemes for transportation and data privacy. We spoke with Burns about the gulf between the research that comes out of the modern university and what happens on the ground in American cities, and the concrete steps we can take to narrow it. Our conversation is expansive, optimistic, and highlights how research inside university walls can dramatically impact people’s quality of life on the outside.

Still Separate, Still Not Equal: An Ecological Examination of Redlining and Racial Segregation with COVID-19 Vaccination Administration in Washington D.C.

Racial residential segregation has been deemed a fundamental cause of health inequities. It is a result of historical and contemporary policies such as redlining that have created a geographic separation of races and corresponds with an inequitable distribution of health-promoting resources. Redlining and racial residential segregation may have contributed to racial inequities in COVID-19 vaccine administration in the early stages of public accessibility. We use data from theNational Archives(historical redlining), Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (contemporary redlining), American Community Survey from 1940 (historical racial residential segregation) and 2015-2019 (contemporary racial residential segregation), and Washington D.C. government (COVID-19 vaccination administration) to assess the relationships between redlining, racial residential segregation, and COVID-19 vaccine administration during the early stages of vaccine distribution when a tiered system was in place due to limited supply. Pearson correlation was used to assess whether redlining and racial segregation, measured both historically and contemporarily, were correlated with each other in Washington D.C. Subsequently, linear regression was used to assess whether each of these measures associate with COVID-19 vaccine administration. In both historical and contemporary analyses, there was a positive correlation between redlining and racial residential segregation. Further, redlining and racial residential segregation were each positively associated with administration of the novel COVID-19 vaccine. This study highlights the ongoing ways in which redlining and segregation contribute to racial health inequities. Eliminating racial health inequities in American society requires addressing the root causes that affect access to health-promoting resources.

Justice Samuel Nelson and the Seneca Indians

Justice Samuel Nelson and the Seneca Indians Laurence M. Hauptman (bio) Scholars examining the career of Justice Samuel Nelson, who served on the Supreme Court from 1845 to 1872, have considered the jurist's record on the bench to be mediocre.1 According to historian Frank Otto Gatell, Justice Nelson "did not leave a deep impression on the history of the court."2 Political scientist Carl B. Swisher concluded that Nelson was a "stable, sound, and unspectactular judge"; that he "was not a man of deeply philosophical bent or soaring imagination"; and that he exhibited an "unwillingness to stretch the law to make it conform to local moral sentiment."3 Indeed, Nelson has largely been viewed through the lens of his concurring opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857).4 Consequently, scholars have labeled him a "doughface justice," castigating him, along with Justice Robert Grier of Pennsylvania, for being the only two Northern jurists on the bench who voted with the majority in the case.5 In assessing Nelson's overall importance, scholars examining the justice's service on the Taney-led and Chase-led Courts have failed to analyze or even mention two of his most important opinions: Fellows v. Blacksmith (1857) and The New York Indians (1866). In the first of these cases, Nelson favored the Tonawanda Senecas; a decade later, the justice favored the treaty rights of the Seneca Nation of Indians.6 The cases permanently affected the Tonawanda Senecas and the Seneca Nation of Indians, two separate, federally recognized governments that today occupy four reservations in western New York State: Allegany, Cattaraugus, Oil Spring, and Tonawanda. After the Revolution, the Senecas, original members of the Iroquois Confederacy, occupied approximately six million acres of lands. Their vast territory was attractive to land speculators, promoters of canals and turnpikes, New York politicians pushing for Empire State development, and Americans seeking access to the Great Lakes and Ohio Country. As a result, from the time of the federal Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1784 onward, [End Page 7] the Senecas faced unrelenting pressures to cede all or select parcels of their land. Despite specific assurances made by the Washington administration in the federal Treaty of Canandaigua in1794 to guarantee the Seneca land base, dispossession continued. In the federal Treaty of Big Tree in 1797, federal officials recognized ten, later eleven, Seneca reservations totaling 202,000 acres. However, because of the nefarious actions of state and federal politicians in collusion with the Holland and later Ogden Land Companies, the Senecas continued to be dispossessed and threatened with removal to the Indian Territory well into the 1850s.7 The question arises about why Nelson favored the Senecas' position in his opinions in 1857 and 1866. After all, Nelson had been a loyal member of Martin Van Buren's Albany Regency, the fledgling Democratic political machine that dominated New York politics in the 1820s, and which in the 1830s had pushed for Indian removal from New York State. Even Nelson's appointment to the United States Supreme Court in 1845 was tied to Jacksonian politics after three Whigs had been rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate.8 However, Nelson was to write the Court's opinion in Fellows v. Blacksmith. and convince all of his fellow jurists, including five appointed by Presidents Jackson and Van Buren, to vote with him. He even persuaded Justice James Moore Wayne, a Georgian who had actively been a proponent Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. Seneca Land Losses in Treaties During Justice Nelson's Lifetime* [End Page 8] Click for larger view View full resolution Scholars mostly remember Samuel Nelson as a "dough-face" for his concurring opinion in Dred Scott v. Sand-ford (1857) and have failed to consider two of his seminal opinions favoring the Tonawanda Senecas and the Seneca Nation of Indians. of removal of Creeks and Cherokees, to support his opinion.9 Justice Nelson's favorable response to the crises facing the Senecas was conditioned by a myriad of factors. He selectively drew inspiration and ideas from four separate sources. First, Nelson's residence in Cooperstown, New York, and his connections there to the family of James Fenimore Cooper...

Washington's Government: Charting the Origins of the Federal Administration

Washington's Government: Charting the Origins of the Federal Administration

Washington's Government: Charting the Origins of the Federal Administration ed. by Max M. Edling and Peter J. Kastor

Washington's Government: Charting the Origins of the Federal Administration ed. by Max M. Edling and Peter J. Kastor

ІРАНСЬКИЙ ВЕКТОР В ЗОВНІШНЬОПОЛІТИЧНІЙ СТРАТЕГІЇ США У ПЕРІОД 1960-Х РР.

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of the formation of the US foreign policy strategy in the Near and Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s. The authors consider the key aspects of the study to be the peculiarities of the cooperation between the United States of America and Iran in the period of the 1950s and 1960s. 20th century. The policy of the USA in the given period is defined as that which was aimed at maintaining stability and supporting the independence of the countries of the above-mentioned area. In addition, the American leadership predicted the possibility of an "Islamic problem". The production of minerals in the region, as well as the need to prevent interference in the plans of the USA by the USSR, caused the United States to make efforts to maintain the role of the main suppliers of weapons, since it was impossible to allow a weakening of the influence on strategic interests, on the course of Iran's domestic and foreign policy. Despite the transitional period of the 1960s, intensive cooperation between Washington and Tehran continued. The USA was provided with assistance in the economic sphere, there were changes in the provision of military support from subsidies to the possibility of selling on credit. The aggressive reform program called the "White Revolution" of the early 1960s was an attempt to westernize Iran and strengthen its global status, which was also carried out with the active support of the United States. The authors identify nuclear programs as another direction of direct interaction between Tehran and Washington, the development course of which in Iran began in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Iran has cooperated with a number of allies of the Washington administration and has successfully developed its nuclear program within existing international restrictions. In 1963, Iran joined the Convention on the Prohibition of Nuclear Tests in Air, Space and Submarines, and in 1968 signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. All this contributed to the country's integration into global world processes.

A Tale of Two Cities Revisited

This article examines the Philadelphia Mayoral Election of 2003, which was a re-match of the 1999 contest. The author contends that while Philadelphia remained a divided city, partisanship rather than race best explains the election’s outcome. By “nationalizing” the election, Democratic Mayor John Street tied his moderate Republican challenger, Sam Katz, to the unpopular Republican administration in Washington, D.C. The revelation of a recording device in Mayor Street’s office, rather than damaging Street, galvanized his African-American base while bringing a number of white Democrats back into the Street camp. These factors, along with a massive voter registration drive by Democratic Party operatives, transformed the party’s narrow victory of 1999 into a landslide four years later.

1794년 서부 펜실베이니아 위스키 반란과 워싱턴 행정부의 군사적 강경대응의 배경

This study explains how War Secretary Knox and northwest Governor Arther St. Clare insisted on strengthening regular troops to Congress during the war against the Indians in the Northwest territories from 1790 to 1794. A military act passed in 1792 and 1794 gave the president the power to operate the U.S. military and laid the basis for criminalizing the military activities of civilians. The bill allowed the president of Washington to lead a large army inside the United States to suppress the whiskey rebellion in Western Pennsylvania in 1794. This meant that the Washington administration had the right to make decisions against domestic and foreign enemies. The whiskey rebellion is a very important event that has been in the process of strengthening the authority of the federal government since the enactment of the Federal Constitution.

Navigating Neutrality: Early American Governance in the Turbulent Atlantic by Sandra Moats

Reviewed by: Navigating Neutrality: Early American Governance in the Turbulent Atlantic by Sandra Moats Aaron Chin (bio) Keywords Early U.S. republic, Neutrality, Foreign relations, George Washington, Law of nations, State-building Navigating Neutrality: Early American Governance in the Turbulent Atlantic. By Sandra Moats. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2021. Pp. 212. Paper, $29.50.) Although the United States won its independence, the young nation remained deeply—at times dangerously—intertwined with European empires. [End Page 456] The nation's first major foreign policy crisis erupted in 1793 when the United States had to decide whether to support the French Republic as its revolution took a radical turn and warred with much of Europe. In April of that year, George Washington and his Cabinet issued the Neutrality Proclamation, which stated that the United States would be "impartial" in its relations with all parties. But this was easier said than done. Americans, French, and British regularly violated this policy. Washington's administration would have to take proactive steps to implement this neutrality. As Sandra Moats convincingly argues in Navigating Neutrality: Early American Governance in the Turbulent Atlantic, the government's implementation of the Neutrality Proclamation marked a critical period in American state-building. As Moats shows throughout this brief but informative book, "enforcing neutrality contributed to America's transformation from a paper republic into an autonomous nation fully embracing its constitutional responsibilities" (1). In Moats's view, Washington himself played a crucial role in steering the nation through this delicate international situation. The first half of the book explores the American experience with neutrality before and during the Revolution, as well as why Washington's administration adopted this position in 1793. While still part of the British Empire, American sailors enjoyed trade during peace and privateering during war. Once the United States declared its independence, however, it learned the hard way that navigating neutrality as an in de pen dent nation presented new challenges. As president, Washington drew from his own experiences to address these problems. As a veteran of the Seven Years' War and a regular correspondent with French observers passing on news of their own revolution, Washington decided neutrality was the best approach. The second half of the book explores how the United States implemented neutrality. By soliciting input from the entire Cabinet and issuing a single statement, Washington set the precedents of taking initiative and speaking with a unified voice regarding foreign policy. In the following months, the executive branch issued several statements and implemented policies to enforce neutrality amid rampant violations by all parties. When Congress returned to session, both chambers supported Washington and passed legislation to back neutrality. In addition, the Supreme Court ruled that only American courts—not foreign ones—could rule on admiralty cases in the United States. Finally, the U.S. sent diplomatic personnel to promote its neutral interests across the world. By the end of 1794, the federal government had created a series of enforcement [End Page 457] mechanisms that gave neutrality teeth and contributed to the growth and consolidation of the American state. Moats's work primarily contributes to studies of American state-building in the early republic. These works focus on the steps the federal government took to consolidate the nation during its early years. Some scholars have focused on the international dimensions of this state-building process, emphasizing things like America's "treaty worthiness" and its adherence to the "law of nations" and "law of merchants" that moderated the interactions between powers. Other scholars have focused on the domestic aspects of this process, emphasizing the standardization of America's currency regime and the consolidation of the nation's debt. Moats's work cuts across both the international and domestic, making a convincing case for how the federal government strengthened the American state by carefully managing developments at home and abroad. The text, as the author notes, also engages with the New Diplomatic History. Moats draws from an impressive array of sources to make a strong argument. Writings by Washington, his Cabinet, and their foreign interlocutors make up the core of the source base. Letters, Cabinet Notes, and government reports appear frequently in the endnotes. Moats also shows a command...

Bernard Bailyn's Eulogy for Pauline Maier (1938–2013) October 29, 2013

Bernard Bailyn's Eulogy for Pauline Maier (1938–2013) October 29, 2013

European land settlement and development in Latin America: the evolution of an idea from Interwar to the early Post-WWII years

This article examines the birth and evolution of the idea of land settlement as a way to combine and resolve two issues diachronically considered problematic: on the one hand, the underdevelopment in Latin America due to a certain extent to the lack of labour force that could exploit the immense lands available; on the other hand, the overpopulation in Europe accompanied by volatile problems such as unemployment, particularly in critical times such as between and after the two World Wars. Based on archival material retrieved from the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington D.C., the Archives of the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in New York, the Archives of the IOM Office in Athens and the São Paulo State Archive, we attempt to provide a genealogy of this idea since the Interwar period and the ways in which it has materialised by governments and international organisations, namely the ILO and the ICEM.

Russian-Japanese relations after Abe: A new stress test?

The article addresses qualitative changes in Russian-Japanese relations that occurred after the resignation of Shinzō Abe from the position of Prime Minister in 2020 due to the transformation of the international environment and domestic political developments in both countries. Among the international factors contributing to the deterioration of bilateral relations, the author particularly mentions confrontation between the Kremlin and the U.S after the change of administration in Washington in 2021, as well as a new aggravation of the situation around Ukraine in 2022. Continuing formation of a new system of geopolitical coordinates in Asia, in which only China can be considered by Russia an actual ally, while Japan, along with many of Russia’s Asian partners linked to the U.S., found themselves in the opposing camp, also played a role.The author focuses on the change in the Russian position on the issue of the peace treaty with Japan. The course was taken to demonstrate to Japan the futility of its stance on the issue of border demarcation with Russia. There has also been a transformation of the place and role of Japan in the internal ideological and propaganda discourse of Russia, where the focus on the «crimes of Japanese militarism» in East Asian countries is becoming increasingly evident. At the same time, the author considers Moscow’s critical attitude towards Japan not the result of a conscious ideological campaign directed specifically against Japan, but rather a reflection of the general atmosphere in the socio-political life of Russia.The author believes that the acquisition of a new «unfriendly» state in the face of Japan on the Far Eastern borders will become a military and political risk factor for Russia and will inevitably damage its security. Meanwhile, Russia should rethink its position given that, geostrategically, it is important for it to have strong partnership relations with Japan.

Washington's Government: Charting the Origins of the Federal Administration ed. by Max M. Edling and Peter J. Kastor

Washington's Government: Charting the Origins of the Federal Administration ed. by Max M. Edling and Peter J. Kastor

Strains in the US–Mexico relationship

Mexico and the United States are at an impasse over an attempt by Mexico’s president to re-nationalise some parts of the country’s energy sector. Mexico’s government has also taken more combative stances on foreign-policy issues in the last year, joining Latin America’s populist left. While these conflicts will probably not have a major effect on US-Mexico cooperation on critical issues such as bilateral goods trade and immigration, they suggest that a degree of mutual suspicion remains at the heart of the relationship despite the arrival of a new administration in Washington in 2021.

Liberty and Insanity in the Age of the American Revolution by Sarah L. Swedberg

Reviewed by: Liberty and Insanity in the Age of the American Revolution by Sarah L. Swedberg David Thomas (bio) Liberty, Madness, Mental illness, Rationality, Political culture Liberty and Insanity in the Age of the American Revolution. By Sarah L. Swedberg. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021. Pp. 267. Cloth, $110.00.) [End Page 118] In the opening sentence of Sarah L. Swedberg's incisive new book, we read that Revolutionary-era Americans "saw madness everywhere" (1). They suspected it in the halls of government and felt it in action out-of-doors; they read of it in their newspapers and discerned it in the wartime economy; they suffered it on the battlefield and strained against it within their homes. The story of this ubiquitous madness that most interests the author is not, however, the well-studied rise of the asylum in the early republic. This book, instead, investigates how the upheavals of the Revolution prompted Americans to articulate "their concerns about the world around them through the medical language of mental illness" (2). Liberty, of course, was one of those concerns, and Swedberg convincingly argues that Americans living through the Revolution considered liberty and insanity as inherently intertwined. Swedberg charts the intersections of liberty and insanity in political and medical discourse along three trajectories: the common assumption that social conflict spurred madness, the widespread agreement that government should be rational, and the differentiation of friends and enemies via the language of insanity. These uses all relied on a conceptual overlapping of the political body and the human body. Chapter 1, which lays much of the theoretical foundation, uses stories of forced institutionalization to elucidate the tensions between liberty and tyranny throughout the Anglo-American world. Alongside expected considerations of the power inherent to medical diagnosis and the case of James Otis, Swedberg offers some provocative surprises. For example, she reads accounts from institutionalized patients alongside political protest pamphlets and captivity narratives and tells the lesser-known story of war hero John Macpherson who was confined in Philadelphia through the machinations of his wife and John Dickinson. Chapters 2 through 8 then unfold chronologically from the Revolution's earliest protests through the Washington presidency. Each chapter offers a different thematic focus as well. For example, Chapter 8, which, along with the first chapter, might be the book's best, centers foreign policy and attitudes toward the French Revolution. Two specific strengths of the book are worth noting. First, Swedberg insists on holding the dual concepts of the title together with an "and" rather than simply opposing them with an "or." It is astounding how much Revolutionary thinkers fretted about madness arising from good government and the enjoyment of liberty even as they decried a loss of liberty to tyrannical government. Too much liberty, or even, too much [End Page 119] enthusiasm about liberty, had produced what Benjamin Rush called Anarchia, a new "species of insanity" (8). Even more worrisome, republics were especially prone to the malady, being a form of government that demanded constant attention to freedom and extreme exertions that taxed the minds and bodies composing the body politic. Additionally, to sober Revolutionaries, excessive love of liberty urged some Americans to embrace the "madness of democracy" (187) whether in the form of the "mad zeal" (83) of the mob or the "party rage" (186) of early elections. Second, from a formal array of Parliamentary speeches, political pamphlets, and medical treatises to the daily world of letters, newspapers, and anecdotes, Swedberg has uncovered seemingly every lurid, medico-political diagnosis of "American Fever" (214) in the archives. Each account bolsters her point that no one was immune in early America. Even America's beloved, well-mannered George Washington appeared mad to the Democratic-Republicans. One writer denounced his farewell address as replete with "political diseases" and the "loathings of a sick mind" (229). The arresting quotes, however, also accentuate the moments when it remains unclear if early Americans really did see the madness everywhere. On occasion, the line between rhetorical analysis and empirical description blurs. For instance, Swedberg's militiamen at Lexington were, in her own words, "certainly crazed from too little sleep and too much adrenaline" (109). Additionally, sheer volume ensures some...

India’s Grand Strategy in East Asia in the Era of COVID-19

Since the election of Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in May 2014, India’s approach to East Asia has changed, principally in response to pressures exerted by China. The Modi government inherited an East Asia strategy that combined a push for greater diplomatic and economic linkages with the region, an effort to improve Sino-Indian relations through a mix of engagement and deterrence, and a strengthening of security ties with the United States (US) and its allies. During its first three years in office, this paper argues that the Modi government stuck with this approach but attempted to pursue it more energetically as well as to assert India’s interests more clearly and forcefully in interactions with Beijing. After the Doklam standoff in 2017, however, India was pushed to assume a more clearly competitive stance, despite concerns about the reliability of Donald J. Trump’s new administration in Washington, China’s growing belligerence towards India and the rest of the region, and the impact of COVID-19. This stance entails both internal and external balancing, and a push for greater economic self-reliance that implies some decoupling from China, but which also has implications for India’s relations with other countries in East Asia.

Redemption from Tyranny: Herman Husband’s American Revolution

Redemption from Tyranny: Herman Husband’s American Revolution