Foreign Policy Perspective Research Articles

America as a Model for the World? A Foreign Policy Perspective

I. How the Placement of States Affects Their PoliciesBecause throughout most of the years since the second World War the United States and the Soviet Union were similarly placed by their power, their external behaviors should have shown striking similarities. Did they? Yes, more than has usually been realized. The behavior of states can be compared on many counts. Their armament policies and their interventions abroad are two of the most revealing. On the former count, the United States in the early 1960s undertook the largest strategic and conventional peace-time military build-up the world has yet seen. We did so even as Khrushchev was trying at once to carry through a major reduction in the conventional forces and to follow a strategy of minimum deterrence, and we did so even though the balance of strategic weapons greatly favored the United States. As one should have expected, the Soviet Union soon followed in America's footsteps, thus restoring the symmetry of great-power behavior. And so it was through most of the years of the Cold War. Advances made by one were quickly followed by the other, with the United States almost always leading the way. Allowing for geographic differences, the overall similarity of their forces was apparent. The ground forces of the Soviet Union were stronger than those of the United States, but in naval forces the balance of advantage was reversed. The Soviet Union's largely coastal navy gradually became more of a blue-water fleet, but one of limited reach. Its navy never had more than half the tonnage of ours.

Dealignment: a new foreign policy perspective

Dealignment: a new foreign policy perspective

Foreign policy and international financial negotiations: The external debt and the Cartagena Consensus

The background, development and prospects of the concerted effort being made by the Latin American countries as expressed in the Cartagena Consensus and Mexico’s role in this effort are discussed in this article from a foreign policy perspective. It is neither a quantitative technical analysis of the debt problem nor a systematic review of the renegotiations of recent years and those currently in progress, Instead, an attempt is made to explore those elements of international economic performance, trade and finance which led the Latin American countries to meet at Cartagena. It goes on to analyse the basic content of the proposals made at that meeting and at Mar del Plata and Santo Domingo, to discuss how the other parties to the negotiations (governments of developed countries, international banking authorities and multilateral financial bodies) have reacted to these proposals, and, finally, to describe what the outlook for the overall Cartagena process appears to be as of mid-1985.

Reassessing the Japan-China peace and friendship treaty negotiations: A comparative foreign policy perspective

Reassessing the Japan-China peace and friendship treaty negotiations: A comparative foreign policy perspective

Soviet Politics since Khrushchev

Abstract : Contents: The Soviet Union in the post-revolutionary era: An overview; Reforms in government and administration; Politics and ideology in the post-Khrushchev era; Economic policy and economic trends; Soviet military policy after Khrushchev; Foreign policy perspectives in the sixties; and Soviet perceptions of the United States.

Foreign Policy Perspectives of the Japanese Left: Confrontation or Consensus?

THE IDEA THAT left and right wings in Japanese politics hold to diametrically opposed and irreconcilable positions on foreign policy is an old one which has led some observers to claim that the replacement of a Conservative by a Socialist would result in a cataclysmic change-amounting to a virtual revolution-in Japan's international policies. More recently, however, the dream of a bi-partisan (or multi-partisan) foreign policy, based on a about what Japan should be doing in a world newly receptive to her political as well as economic initiatives, has come to be discussed as a practicable proposition. Significantly enough, the creation of such a national consensus is an oft-stated aim of the Komeitd (the clean government party of the Soka Gakkai) and also clearly accords with the aspirations of many who inhabit the centre, rather than the extremes, of Japanese politics. Outside Japan, this development is encouraged by many, though there is the occasional pessimist who notes that national consensus was last achieved in Japan in the I930s, under the aegis of the militarists. Until i960, the only significant left-wing party in Japan was the Japan Socialist party (JSP), and it was the policies and views espoused by that party which distinguished the foreign policy of the Left so radically from that of the Right. Three main currents of opinion-socialism, pacifism, and nationalism-fused into a policy of unarmed which was bitterly denounced by Prime Minister Ikeda in the i960 election campaign as an illusion. Socialist thinking within the JSP was generally doctrinaire rather than pragmatic and resulted in a basic antipathy towards capitalist countries, especially the United States. Attempts to find an intellectual position midway between capitalism and communism tended to result in an unstable equilibrium, with the pull of socialism often proving stronger than the counter-pull of democracy. Thus, despite the claims of neutralism, criticism of the United States was both more frequent and more harsh than criticism of either the