Foreign Policy Problems Research Articles

Problems of Australian Foreign Policy: January‐June, 1955

Problems of Australian Foreign Policy: January‐June, 1955

The Changing Relations of Canada and the United States Since the Second World War

IN HIS SURVEY of The New Deal in World Affairs, which Allan Nevins conducted with his customary skill and suavity, author commented tersely during a discussion of Good Neighbor policy that the problem of with Canada was unique in character and pleasantly easy.' Almost at time that Nevins' book appeared minister of external addressed a meeting in Toronto on Canadian foreign policy. He warned that Canadian-American in this two-power world of conflict was one of most difficult and delicate problems of foreign policy that has yet faced Canadian people, their Parliament and their Government.2 He thought that days of relatively easy and automatic political relations were over. The fact that by an unfortunate coincidence Pearson spoke on same day that General MacArthur was dismissed brought speech into greater prominence than usual and provoked an unexpected amount of correspondence. Most of it came from south of border and ranged from admonition of an angry Texan to keep your nose out of our affairs to jaunty comment of New York Mirror, Hey, Canada, what gives?' Nevertheless Pearson's speech drew attention to a change in circumstances which has not received consideration which it deserves in either Canada or

American Policy: Europe and Asia

Professor Raymond Aron is equally distinguished as political analyst, philosopher, and sociologist. In addition to important works on the philosophy of history, contemporary European society, and the deeper trends of French political life, Professor Aron writes with great perspicacity several times weekly in “Figaro.” In November and December he was in the United States on the invitation of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and on his return to France he wrote a series of articles on the background and problems of American foreign policy. Extensive extrads are reproduced here by courtesy of the “Manchester Guardian” and M. Aron.

Australian Attitudes Towards Pacific Problems

THE Australian Federal elections in December i949 brought into power a Liberal-Country Party coalition in place of the Labour Party administration which had been in office since 194I. On most domestic issues the attitudes of the Liberal and Country parties had been clearly defined prior to polling day, but scant attention had been paid to the no less vital and pressing problems of foreign policy. What will this change of Government imply in the field of foreign affairs? For neighbouring peoples, and to a lesser extent for Australians themselves, the advent of a non-Labour Government introduced a degree of uncertainty into all problems in which Australia was an interested party. There were good reasons why this should be so. Labour's lengthy tenure of office, the dominance of the former Minister for External Affairs, Dr. Evatt, in the shaping of policy, together with the impact made by his personality abroad, and, above all, the fact that Labour had had to take decisions in the formative period following the war, had caused the Australian attitude to become largely identified with Labour's and Evatt's outlook. The Opposition parties, on the other hand, not only had had small opportunity of influencing policy but, on becoming the Government, were confronted with a world so profoundly different from that in which they had previously held office that old familiar approaches were often meaningless. The Government parties have therefore been forced to the unusual discipline of largely rethinking their attitudes toward the underlying issues of foreign policy-national security and the defence of the country's national ideals and interests. Signs have not been wanting in recent weeks that the Liberals in particular have achieved a considerable measure of success in the by no means easy task of remoulding their external policy to meet the changed circumstances of Australia's postwar situation. On many issues the lines of government policy are becoming clear, though on others considerable uncertainty remains, but in

Anthropology, Political Behavior, and International Relations

HESE two books, published in the past year, are general statements of the contemporary anthropological credo. They reject the earlier conception of anthropology as the study of prehistoric and primitive culture, and assert strong claims to its relevance in the solution of crucial problems of modern politics. Clyde Kluckhohn is a psychoanalytically trained anthropologist. Alexander Leighton is an anthropologically trained psychiatrist. Both have had distinguished academic and governmental careers. Leighton was chief and Kluckhohn cochief of the Foreign Morale Analysis Division of the Office of War Information, an organization which pioneered in the application of psycho-anthropological insights and methods to problems of government policy. Leighton's general views are based on a detailed analysis of his experiences during the war in the Office of War Information and the United States Strategic Bombing Survey in Japan. Kluckhohn's book is a general statement of the nature and significance of modern anthropology directed at an informed lay audience. Special interest for students of international relations attaches to propositions advanced by these writers about the usefulness of the modern anthropological approach in the study of problems of foreign policy and international order. While there is some difference in the treatment of these themes in the two books, there is such substantial agreement between them that there is no need for our purposes for a separate statement of individual views. We review these propositions in brief form. 1. Cultural-psychological differences are largely unconscious in character. The peculiar sentiments, values, and attitudes of

Problems of Foreign Policy. Liberal National Inquiry into Post-War Problems

Problems of Foreign Policy. Liberal National Inquiry into Post-War Problems Problems of Foreign Policy. Liberal National Inquiry into Post-War Problems. With a Foreword by Lieutenant-Colonel The Right Honourable The Lord Teviot, D.S.O., M.C. 1944. (London: The Liberal National Council. Britain After the War, No. 7. 8½″ × 5½″.24 pp. 6d.) R. S. R. S. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 21, Issue 3, July 1945, Page 394, https://doi.org/10.2307/3018819 Published: 01 July 1945

Geography and Foreign Policy, II

In the first part of this article, we analyzed the effect of size and world location on the international relations of states and the problems of foreign policy. But more immediate in its conditioning effect is regional location—location viewed with reference to the immediate vicinity.Like world location, regional location is a question of facts plus the significance of those facts at any given historical period. Just as it was found necessary to consider world location in relation to two systems of reference, the geographic and the historical, so the full meaning of regional location becomes apparent only after considering both the geography and the historical and political significance of a state's immediate surroundings.Regional location determines whether neighbors will be many or few, strong or weak, and the topography of the region conditions the direction and nature of contact with those neighbors. The man who once formulated the foreign policy of Manchuria had to do so with one eye on Japan and the other on Russia; every international gesture of Belgium is conditioned by the fact that she lies between France and Germany and across the Channel from Great Britain; and the states of Central America can never for a moment forget that the territory north of them is occupied by one large power and not by several whom they might play off one against the other as their European counterparts, the Balkan states, have been able to do from time to time with their northern neighbors.