post-Cold War Foreign Policy Research Articles

Overlooking nature: the Arctic, climate change, and environmental diplomacy in the study of Canadian foreign policy

ABSTRACT This article examines three prominent concepts in post-Cold War foreign policy in Canada: the Arctic, climate change, and environmental diplomacy. We study the prevalence of articles on these topics in the wider field of Canadian foreign policy studies, who is responsible for their production, and how they relate to each other and to the broader field of Canadian foreign policy studies. Through a quantitative analysis of these concepts in six academic journals between 1989 and 2022, we find that contrary to their importance to Canadian foreign policy practice during that time, the Arctic, climate change, and environmental diplomacy are: (1) marginal to mainstream scholarship on Canadian foreign and security policy; (2) conceptually closely linked together; and (3) shaped by the knowledge production of a relatively small epistemic community of scholars. We outline the methodology of our literature review for the Arctic, climate change, and environmental diplomacy within Canadian foreign policy scholarship, present our findings, and discuss their significance for understanding these topics within the broader field of Canadian foreign policy studies.

İSMAİL CEM: A UNIQUE IMPRINT IN TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY

The 1990s marked a significant turning point in international politics and Turkish foreign policy. İsmail Cem served as Türkiye's longest-serving foreign minister from 1997 to 2002 during this period of great change and transformation. Cem's historical perspective and realistic approach, which was peaceful but also based on interests, stood out from the first day he took office. He aimed to change the static structure of traditional Turkish foreign policy. During this period, İsmail Cem's vision shaped Türkiye's relations with its neighbours and allies, and this multidimensional foreign policy approach became a key motivation for Türkiye's post-Cold War foreign policy. This study will examine the foreign policy dynamics during İsmail Cem's tenure and his intellectual influence on Turkish foreign policy. It is argued that Cem aimed to create a multidimensional and realistic understanding of foreign policy, but his vision of Turkey's post-Cold War geopolitical posture differed from other visions, such as “neo-Ottomanism” or “Eurasianism”, which excluded the West.

Historical Institutionalism and the European Union’s post-Cold War Foreign Policy Development

This paper maintains that Historical Institutionalism – with its emphasis on such concepts as path dependency, time, continuity and change, critical junctures, and unintended consequences – serves as a valuable theoretical tool in explaining the why and how of the European Union developing from a strictly economic union during the first forty years of its existence towards a political union with a global foreign policy agenda in the post-Cold War period. Discussing the EU’s post-1989 foreign policy development and zooming in on the EU’s policy towards Eastern Europe to illustrate its argument, the paper argues that Brussels’ participation in global politics has for long been in the making. More specifically, four elements that have determined – and continue to do so – the EU’s foreign policy portfolio are first, the successful economic integration in the first forty years of the European Union’s existence; second, the logic of integration through institutionalization driving EU integration since 1952; third, the – at first – informal European Political Cooperation witnessing the emergence of tacit norms and rules of conducting foreign policy coordination; and fourth, the rhetoric commitment to the region of Central and Eastern Europe pre-1989.

Actor and Inhibitor: Congress in the Post-Cold War Foreign Policy, 1989-1997

Actor and Inhibitor: Congress in the Post-Cold War Foreign Policy, 1989-1997

Sanctions and tourism: effects, complexities and research

Despite the growing use of sanctions as a post-Cold War foreign policy instrument, there is limited research on sanctions in a tourism context despite their substantial impact on destinations and tourist flows. Although there is significant research on sanctions in political science, international relations, economics, and public policy, very few studies explicitly examine the effect of sanctions on tourism. This study therefore examines the intricate geopolitical relationship between sanctions and tourism via a scoping review of relevant literature. Each of the four main types of sanctions that were identified: financial, sectoral, diplomatic and individual, have different implications for tourism at various scales. The findings show that tourism is profoundly affected by sanctions impacting tourism and hospitality businesses and destination image, severely restricting international travel, and disrupting financial investment and supply chains. More comprehensive sanctions may lead to substantial economic and personal hardship in destinations as well as indirect effects including decline in the value of currency and inflationary pressures. Nevertheless, despite the development of smart and targeted sanctions they rarely affect the coercive capacity of the targeted government and induce political behavioural change. Resistive economies can develop in response to sanctions in which domestic tourism assumes greater significance as a result of reductions in international mobility. Some destinations facing sanctions also focus on specific international markets from non-sanctioning countries as well as a country’s diaspora. Overall, the study of sanctions deepens knowledge of the interrelationships between geopolitics, foreign policy and tourism and its ramifications for destinations. Significant gaps in knowledge for future research include the role of domestic politics in influencing sanctions policy, the selection of tourism as a specific target for sanctions, and the development of destination adaptation strategies to sanctions.

Domestic Protests and Foreign Policy: An Examination of Anti-China Protests in Vietnam and Vietnamese Policy Towards China Regarding the South China Sea

The Sino-Vietnamese relationship is characterized by asymmetry, yet Vietnam’s post-Cold War foreign policy towards China encompasses three paradigms: (a) internal and external balancing against China, (b) greater international integration to prevent political and economic dependence on China and (c) ‘cooperation’ with China on mutual interests while ‘struggling’ against China’s encroachment on Vietnam’s sovereignty. The ongoing dispute in the South China Sea presents a primary security concern for Vietnam as well as a challenge to its bilateral relations with China, particularly as maritime tensions provoke nationalist and anti-China protests among the Vietnamese public. This article presents an analysis of anti-China protests in Vietnam that resulted from South China Sea tensions between 2007 and 2017 in order to examine whether the protests—which are rare in Vietnam—had any effect on Vietnam’s foreign policy towards China. The findings reveal that the protests did not result in a change in Vietnam’s foreign policy towards China both during the maritime crises or in the long term.

Identity and world order in India’s post-Cold War foreign policy discourse

This article examines the dominant conception of world order in India’s post-Cold War foreign policy discourse. Drawing on a poststructuralist, discourse-theoretical framework, I argue that the discourse uses foreign policy and world order as sites for the (re-)production of India’s identity by placing India into a system of differences that constitutes ‘what India is’. The article shows that India’s foreign policy discourse frames world order in accordance with India’s own national experiences and thus seeks to upheave India’s identity to a position from where it can represent the universal: a global political community. This notion of Indian Exceptionalism constitutes the affective dimension of the discourse that obscures the absence of an extra-discursive foundation on which national identities could be grounded by endowing the Self with an imaginary essence and seemingly unique qualities.

Choices: inside the making of India's foreign policy

The collapse of the Soviet Union and India's economic crisis in 1991 led to the opening up of the Indian economy and subsequent changes in India's foreign policy. In Choices, well-known Indian diplomat Shivshankar Menon, who held key positions in the Indian government, including foreign secretary and national security adviser, analyses five key decisions in India's post-Cold War foreign policy. These choices are the decision to sign the 1993 Border Peace and Tranquillity Agreement with China and the Civil Nuclear Treaty with the United States; not using force against Pakistan after the 26/11 Mumbai attack; India's response to the Sri Lankan civil war; and eschewing a first use policy on nuclear weapons. Thus the book is not a diplomatic memoir, as readers might expect, but a keen analysis of Indian foreign policy-making. Chapters are divided in two, where the first part deals with policy choices within a particular crisis setting and the second expands on India's current and future policy options. In the first chapter, Menon discusses India's decision to sign the 1993 Border Peace and Tranquillity Agreement with China. For the author, it seemed impossible to solve the boundary dispute permanently, as right-wing forces on both sides would never have allowed settlement of the dispute. The China–India agreement succeeded in keeping the peace as it opened scope for engagement. Menon has a positive outlook on India–China relations in general and argues that the 1993 agreement has been one of the best examples of cooperation (p. 28).

Colombia frente a las potencias extra-hemisféricas: el caso de las relaciones colombo-rusas

El fin de la Guerra Fría dio inicio a un proceso de cambio con impacto en las relaciones internacionales en todo el mundo. En América Latina, una de las manifestaciones de este proceso es la creciente incidencia de las potencias extra-hemisféricas como China y Rusia. Sin embargo, en Colombia, los esfuerzos de la academia dirigidos a la construcción de un nuevo conocimiento sobre el tema han sido pocos. Una de las razones de esta escasez son las dificultades que surgen a la hora de analizar distintos aspectos de la política exterior colombiana hacia Rusia de la post-Guerra Fría usando las aproximaciones mainstream. Este artículo pretende reducir la brecha a través de la introducción de un marco de análisis que se fundamenta en la teoría del rol y que se usa para examinar el caso de las relaciones colombo-rusas durante el gobierno de Ernesto Samper Pizano (1994-1998). El autor señala que la aplicación de la teoría del rol en el análisis de la política exterior abre nuevas posibilidades de estudios de las relaciones de Colombia con los países desde fuera de las Américas.

Realist Foreign Policy Analysis with a Twist: The Persian Gulf Security Complex and the Rise and Fall of Dual Containment

Analyses of US post-Cold War foreign policy in the Persian Gulf symbolize realism's new found concern with foreign policy analysis. Prominent realists attribute specific policies to domestic concerns and how they have dominated policymaking in the era of US primacy. Although convincing, this perspective is not comprehensive. By drawing on regional security complex theory, it is possible to map the regional developments that have equally constrained and incentivized the rise and fall of dual containment. This more extensive account produces two important findings regarding realism's neglect of the regional level of analysis. First, realists overstate the domestic determinants of US policy in the Persian Gulf. Second, and more broadly, realist foreign policy analysts underspecify systemic pressures that shape and shove a country's foreign policy.

Afro-Continentalism: Pan-Africanism in Post-Settlement South Africa’s Foreign Policy

In his book In the Twilight of the Revolution (2009), which is also the subject of this review article, Kwandiwe Kondlo argues inter alia that: ‘. . . the Africanist orientation of the PAC [Pan-Africanist Congress] was appropriated in the policies of [South Africa’s] . . . new democratic government(s), especially during the period of former President Thabo Mbeki’ (2009: 282). This author critically examines Kondlo’s assertion in the context of South Africa’s post-apartheid period and argues that successive South African governments played pivotal roles in helping to shape Africa’s evolving inter-state system through diplomacy and the politics of partnership. In that regard, he argues that South Africa’s aim is to promote Continentalism (agreements or policies that favour regionalization or regional co-operation between states, or deep and regulated forms of regional co-operation between nations within a continent), a new post-Cold War foreign policy paradigm on the continent, which will assist in the consolidation of the idea of a union of African states that dawned with the birth of the African Union (AU), created to replace the Organization of Africa Unity (OAU). He insists that, in the context of Kondlo’s assertion, African Continentalism, as opposed to Pan-Africanism, which advocates the amalgamation of existing independent African states into a bloc, represents a process that encourages African states to band together to create new norms, principles, institutions, and political structures, and agree to live by such structures and in harmony with each other. To buttress his argument, the author examines Thabo Mbeki’s African Renaissance project as the corollary of African Continentalism on which South Africa’s Africa policy was anchored during and after his presidency.

India’s Search for a Post-Cold War Foreign Policy

During much of the Cold War, India chose to pursue a non-aligned foreign policy posture. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War forced India to redefine its foreign policy and search for a new place in the emerging international order. However, almost 20 years on, India’s foreign policy still appears to lack a coherent strategic doctrine. This article identifies some of the domestic factors that hampered the development of a post-Cold War ‘grand strategy’. It argues that the emergence of coalition governments at the national level since the early 1990s, the country’s federal structure, weaknesses in India’s foreign policy institutions and the lack of a strategic culture within the country together constrain India’s search for a post-Cold War foreign policy.

Rebels without a conscience: The evolution of the rogue states narrative in US security policy

This article examines how the foundations of the ‘rogue states’ security narrative in the United States developed prior to the declaration of the George W. Bush administration’s ‘Global War on Terror’ and President Bush’s representation of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an ‘axis of evil’. The article argues that the puzzle of how US post-Cold War foreign and defence policy came to be focused on ‘irrational’ — but militarily inferior — adversaries can be understood through analysing how actors within the US defence community discursively constructed discrete international crises as the trigger for a major shift in US threat scenarios. This is developed through an examination of two crucial episodes in the construction of post-Cold War US national security interests: the crisis in the Persian Gulf in 1990–1 and the North Korean nuclear crisis in 1993–4. The article suggests the importance of historicizing contests over the interpretation of international crises in order to both better understand the process through which a country’s national security interests are defined and to gain greater analytical purchase on how security narratives are reconstructed during processes of systemic change.

Consensual Hegemony: Theorizing Brazilian Foreign Policy after the Cold War

Conventional approaches to hegemony emphasize elements of coercion and exclusion, characteristics that do not adequately explain the operation of the growing number of regional projects or the style of emerging-power foreign policy. This article develops the concept of consensual hegemony, explaining how a structure can be articulated, disseminated and maintained without relying on force to recruit the participation of other actors. The central idea is the construction of a structural vision, or hegemony, that specifically includes the nominally subordinate, engaging in a process of dialogue and interaction that causes the subordinate parties to appropriate and absorb the substance and requisites of the hegemony as their own. The utility of consensual hegemony as an analytical device, especially for the study of regionalism and emerging market power foreign policy, is outlined with reference to Brazil's post-Cold War foreign policy, demonstrating both how a consensual hegemony might be pursued and where the limits to its ideas-based nature lie.

A New Cold War? The Consequences of China Rising

Rising Star: China's New Security Diplomacy. By Gill Bates. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007. 267 pp., $28.95 (ISBN: 0-8157-3146-9). On September 15, 1999, the United Nations Security Council, with China voting in favor, authorized the establishment of a multinational force, the Australia-led International Force in East Timor (INTERFET), to restore peace and security in East Timor, to protect and support the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), and to facilitate humanitarian assistance operations. The resolution authorized the multinational, non-UN force “to take all necessary measures to fulfil this mandate” (p. 119). The incident, which is alluded to by Bates Gill in Rising Star , exemplifies China's efforts to reassure the international community about its role as an emerging and responsible power with a proactive approach to multilateral security diplomacy. Gill's book is part of a growing body of literature that focuses on China's post-Cold War foreign policy dilemma, namely, how to reconcile its desire for increased influence on international security arrangements given its growing economic, military, and political power and its need to devote more resources to its mounting domestic social, economic, environmental, and political challenges (other works include Deng 2004; Goldstein 2005; and Shambaugh 2005). Indeed, in recent years, Chinese diplomacy has attracted enormous attention on the part of academics, policymakers, and the general public alike, as the world seeks to understand the likely consequences of China's growing international assertiveness. Rising Star looks into the contents and causes of China's new security diplomacy. It also asks whether …

Bill Clinton’s “new partnership” anecdote

This essay explores the composition of United States post-Cold War foreign policy rhetoric under President Bill Clinton. We contend that Bill Clinton offered a coherent and comprehensive foreign policy narrative for the direction of U.S. foreign policy discourse in the post-Cold War world. Specifically, we analyze the “new partnership” narrative that Clinton articulated in his 1998 trip to Africa as a representative anecdote for the larger body of his foreign policy discourse. This “new partnership” narrative was structured by three narrative themes: (1) America’s role as world leader; (2) reconstituting the threat environment; (3) democracy promotion as the strategy for American foreign policy. These three themes can be found throughout Clinton’s foreign policy rhetoric and serve as the basis for a foreign policy narrative used by Clinton, and perhaps, future administrations.

Islam between Jihadi Threats and Islamist Insecurities? Evidence from Belgium and Morocco

Debates on security stand central within academia and policy concerns since 9/11. These debates have redefined the boundaries of post-cold war foreign policy. This article focuses on the Belgian and Moroccan cases to show how security and jihadi ‘threats’ are constitutive of debates that encompass much larger issues including the identity of the state, redefinitions of citizenship and power hierarchies in a changing world. More specifically, it will show how, in the Belgian case, the construction of the jihadi threat has led to a securitization of the policy towards Muslim communities; while, in the Moroccan case, the threat was used to securitize the ongoing political process of liberalization (alternance). In both cases however, these mechanisms of securitization have been doubled by official policies supporting and advocating multiculturalism, tolerance and freedom. The ambivalence between these different policies makes it all the more difficult to devise a clear and effective policy towards the ‘jihad threat’.

China's Foreign Policy Challenges and Evolving Strategy

The end of the Cold War, the September 11 terrorists' attacks, preponderance of US power and globalisation have shaped the present world order and posed new opportunities and challenges for China. China's need to fulfill its grand strategy of acquiring comprehensive national power within this external environment and overcome the existing challenges has given rise to its post-Cold War foreign policy strategy. Given the challenges it faces, its primary need is to ensure continuance of a peaceful environment to sustain its reform and modernisation programme. This calls for a foreign policy, which conforms to rather than challenges the existing international order. Yet its policies to advance national interests are already leading to a series of complex responses in both Asia and the Pacific regions.

Ubiquity of ‘Power’ and the Advantage of Terminological Pluralism: Japan's Foreign Policy Discourse

This article demonstrates that ubiquitous references to ‘power’ in English-language foreign policy discourse can be understood in the light of the inclination in international relations theory to place power on a par with capability. It makes two claims: that such a concept of power is ill-fitted for foreign policy analysis; and that much clarity would be gained by following the Japanese example of terminological pluralism and thus abandoning ‘power’ as a catch-all term. Foreign policy analysis would benefit from adopting a concept that takes power to reside in specific relationships. Its adoption would moreover dissolve a power paradox associated with the analysis of Japan's post-Cold War foreign policy.

Republican Realism

Finnish post-Cold War foreign policy has usually been approached as a change from a policy of cautious neutrality to one of enthusiastic integration within the core of Europe. This article suggests that instead of looking at Finnish post-Cold War grand strategy as evidence of a change, we could think about it as a sign of continuity. By tracing the evolution of Finnish strategic culture over the centuries, the article shows that there is a powerful element of continuity in Finnish strategic thinking. This continuity is interpreted through a revised version of Martin Wight's vocabulary, and suggests that Finnish strategic culture has always been based on a republican understanding of Finland’s role in defending an anti-hegemonic security order in Europe.