Postwar Strategy Research Articles

Another Seat at the Board

Created 1944 as part of the postwar strategy to prevent another great depression, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was ideally meant to coordinate financing and technical advice to member countries experiencing economic imbalances. Today, however, the IMF is frequently criticized for its failure to be accountable and legitimate the eyes of its own members. Recently, many prominent policymakers across the world have argued that the IMF's legitimacy crisis can only be resolved by reallocating the 24 seats on its executive board a way that gives greater voice to countries that are seen to be underrepresented. Specific proposals involve decreasing and consolidating European representation and making the executive directors of Russia, Saudi Arabia, and China-which do not represent any other members and therefore have sole constituency-free seats-absorb other fund members their constituencies. Ideally, this could free up seats at the executive board and allow quota increases for those deemed underrepresented or unheard, namely emerging market economies and less developed countries.1While policymakers have been discussing how to recompose the executive board, little academic attention has been devoted to this important organ of international monetary decision-making. Moreover, we have a rich political science literature on the study of international organizations that has not been applied to analyze how seats at the IMF executive board might be acquired. Three theoretical schools studying decision-making international organizations are led by bureaucratic organization theories, realist theories, and, bridging the two, delegation theories. Are IMF executive board seats determined by bureaucratic considerations, as organizational theorists would argue, or by strategic power politics, as realists would contend, or by a combination of external constraints and internal accommodation, as delegation theorists would purport? The theoretical debate on this issue is lively, with hypothesizing taking place on every front.Bureaucratic organization theorists, inspired by constructivism, have argued that IMF staff have intellectual dominance the institution. IMF staff play a key role shaping IMF policies, programs, and ultimately decision-making. The fusion of constructivism and organizational theories, spearheaded by the multi-case study by Barnett and Finnemore, has given stronger ontological and purposive value to international organizations. International organizations are viewed as social contexts that have their own culture, norms, and idiosyncrasies, all of which need to be considered when trying to explain IMF decision-making. There are unintended consequences of IMF staff behaviour that produce mission creep or dysfunctional behaviour-policies and decisions that are not necessarily sanctioned by the IMF executive board. The IMF staff can often push forward their own agendas because they have respected economic expertise. They are effect in authority because the executive board has entrusted them with key functions; the staff are also an authority because they create economic knowledge and ideas to which member countries are receptive.2Building on the importance constructivists attach to the role of norms and shared beliefs, this bureaucratic approach focuses on the IMF staff's shared ideas or norm convergence. Bureaucratic organization theorists would assume that the IMF staff, deemed technocratic, would have a strong sway internal IMF decision-making and would resist attempts to politicize the organization; ideational forces would outweigh material ones. This reinforces the IMF's claim that its day-to-day functions are carried out by the technically oriented staff, composed mainly of internationally recruited macroeconomists that are separated from the potentially politicized-and relatively small-executive board. In one study, the author found the IMF staff resisting and usurping both the managing director and the executive board's attempts to limit the staff's scope of conditionality. …

Proximity and Distance: Vietnamese Memories of the War with the USA

By employing an intergenerational perspective, this article examines the ways in which memories about the war between Vietnam and the USA are engraved in the social and individual body in a northern Vietnamese rural community. Throughout the 1990s, Vietnam and the USA attempted to improve their postwar relationship. The current atmosphere of coming to terms with a past of war through coexistence and reconciliation fosters ambivalences and ambiguities in young postwar generations. On the one hand, they have to reconcile themselves to the pain and bitterness caused by the war. On the other, they have to bridge the gap between themselves and their parents and grandparents concerning the extent to which they are able to ‘forget the past and look toward the future’, as one national postwar strategy recommends. The article thus highlights the complex ways in which war and postwar generations in local Vietnam attempt to remember and/or forget brutality, sorrow and anger, in order to come to terms with what in Vietnam is referred to as the American War.

Veterans Administration physician compensation: past, present, future

Well before the War of Independence, the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony ruled that soldiers disabled in the battles with the Pequot Indians would be supported by the Colony [ [1] History and Evolution of the Department of Veteran Affairs—VA 75th Anniversary. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC2005 Google Scholar ]. Over 100 years later, the Continental Congress of 1776 offered pensions to disabled soldiers as a means of encouraging enlistment in the Revolutionary War [ [1] History and Evolution of the Department of Veteran Affairs—VA 75th Anniversary. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC2005 Google Scholar ]. Since the Continental Congress had neither the authority nor the funds to make these payments, the pensions were left up to the individual states, perhaps representing one of Congress’ first “unfunded mandates”! Forty years later, the first domiciliary and medical facility for veterans (the US Naval Asylum in Philadelphia) was authorized by the Federal Government [ 1 History and Evolution of the Department of Veteran Affairs—VA 75th Anniversary. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC2005 Google Scholar , 2 Gronvall J.A. The VA’s affiliation with academic medicine: an emergency post-war strategy becomes a permanent partnership. Acad Med. 1989; 64: 61-66 Crossref PubMed Scopus (27) Google Scholar ].

The politics of order building? Reviewing western policy in Kosovo and Southeast Europe

The Kosovo conflict revived Southeast Europe's traditional reputation as a region of intractable ethnic conflicts, failing states and reform deficits. The post‐war challenge is to speed up the consolidation of security and stability in a region that has known little of either in the last decade. This article examines the policy failures of the West in the Kosovo crisis; the impact on and the reactions of the Southeast European states to the Western strategies and the economic and political aspects of the EU's postwar strategy in the region. Also, the necessary preconditions as well as the impediments to the development and successful implementation of a working regional approach to the problems in the Balkans are discussed.

The Power of Ideas: How Bundesbank Ideas Have Influenced the Reconstruction of the National Bank of Poland

This article is concerned with the qualitative rise of German influence in an enlarged European Union (EU). The point of departure is the assumption that eastward enlargement facilitates the further expansion and manifestation of German power in Europe via the institutionalisation of parts of the Modell Deutschland in the candidate countries prior to their accession. This article examines the power tools that have facilitated the transfer of Bundesbank ideas into the institutional structure of Poland's national central bank, Narodowy Bank Polski (NBP). The analysis demonstrates that the relationship between Germany and its eastern neighbours is not only determined by the former's physical capacities but, in reflection of post-war Germany's foreign policy strategy, relies on the persuasiveness of Germany's ideational lead.

‘Strategic Theoretical Parasitism’ Reconsidered

The introduction and subsequent deployment of nuclear weapons is the most significant military development of the post-World War II era. The assumption in Canada has consistently been that Canadians are passive consumers of the nuclear doctrines and strategies of their allies. This assumption, in turn, is linked to the larger failure of Canadians to identify national strategic interests during the cold war (which Colin Gray labelled 'strategic theoretical parasitism').(1) This article argues, on the contrary, that the Canadian conceptual understanding and approach to deterrence theory and strategic stability, two of the critical concepts in post-war nuclear strategy, was distinct from the appreciation reached in the United States. Several recently declassified studies prepared by officials in the Canadian Department of National Defence (DND) in the 1950s and early 1960s are compared with some of the principal contributions in American strategic thought from the same period to reveal a community of defence officials determined to reach independent judgments on issues of crucial importance. The conclusion reached is that the perception of a strategically disinterested and detached country requires revision, and indicates a need for more research in the field.Before examining the documents, the historical context should be established. Nuclear weapons were recognized in 1945 as immensely destructive, but military orthodoxy and a reluctance to question convention led to conservative findings among defence observers/strategists in the immediate post-war period. For example, both P.M.S. Blackett in Britain and Vannevar Bush in the United States predicted that nuclear weapons would have little impact on the outcome of war for the foreseeable future.(2) Although those findings were strongly challenged by Bernard Brodie and Liddell Hart,(3) there was no initial postwar consensus that strategy had been fundamentally altered by the discovery of the power of the atom.Inevitably, however, the nuclear (and thermonuclear) revolution(s) spurred new thinking, as strategists struggled to make sense of weapons that offered unimaginable destructive power and that seemed to turn conventional military wisdom upside down. By the early-to-mid 1950s, the gestation period of a new generation of strategists came to an end, and the modern arms debate was born. In the United States, this change was induced by the rapid growth in nuclear weapons stocks, the introduction of both tactical nuclear weapons and hydrogen bombs, the anticipated arrival of ballistic missiles, and the articulation of the strategy of 'massive retaliation.'(4)The difference between much of the literature that emerged at this time and previous contributions to strategy, however, was the emphasis on deterrence. In the nuclear age, any use of force could have disastrous consequences. Thus, it was widely believed (particularly in the West) that the most sensible military posture was to threaten an opponent with such enormous devastation that it would never be so foolish as to risk a military challenge. If confronted, however, the only response that was considered was annihilation on a scale never before seen in human history (an approach that was believed to make deterrence more 'credible'). Literature on deterrence, then, represented a reformulation of what strategy was and what could be effectively studied under its name.In the cold war environment of the 1950s, most of the major (American) studies attempted to address an essentially political question: how could the United States most effectively acquire, deploy, and employ its military forces to further American global interests but avoid large-scale military challenges? Dissatisfaction with the manner in which the United States-Soviet relationship was unfolding meant that early post-war American strategy was aimed at improving the quality of policy for dealing with the Soviet Union. It was not meant to be applicable in all (or even most) situations, which helps explain its essential irrelevance in much of the world during this period. …

Spectacular Narratives: Twister, Independence Day, and Frontier Mythology in Contemporary Hollywood

Big-screen spectacle has become increasingly important to Hollywood in recent decades. It formed a central part of a post-war strategy aimed at tempting lost audiences back to the cinema in the face of demographic changes and the development of television and other domestic leisure activities. More recently, in an age in which the big Hollywood studios have become parts of giant conglomerates, the prevalence of spectacle and special effects has been boosted by a demand to engineer products that can be further exploited in multimedia forms such as computer games and theme-park rides, secondary outlets that can sometimes generate more profits than the films on which they are based. These and other developments have led some commentators to announce, or predict, the imminent demise of narrative as a central component of Hollywood cinema. But the case has been considerably overstated. Narrative is far from being eclipsed, even in the most spectacular and effects-oriented of today's blockbuster attractions. These films still tend to tell reasonably coherent stories, even if they may sometimes be looser and less well integrated than models. More important for my argument, contemporary spectaculars also continue to manifest the kinds of underlying thematic oppositions and reconciliations associated with a broadly structuralist analysis of narrative. This very important dimension of narrative has been largely ignored by those who identify, celebrate or more often bemoan a weakening of plot or character development in many spectacular features. Strong evidence for the continued existence of such underlying narrative structures is found in the continued saliency of elements of the myth or ideology of the American frontier to many contemporary Hollywood films. Arguably the archetypal American narrative, the myth of the frontier offers a series of thematic oppositions that continue to underpin films, or even entire genres, whatever the state of their surface plots. The traditional generic Western may be in a state of near-terminal decline, but the mythic or ideological narrative that animated it remains alive and well in Hollywood. Focusing on two of the summer blockbusters of 1996, Twister and Independence Day, this essay will aim to demonstrate the part it plays in structuring many films, particularly in terms of an opposition between the frontier-or its contemporary analogues-and a version of technological modernity. To assert the importance of narrative structures such as these need not be to disregard the role of spectacle. Narrative and spectacle can work together in a variety of changing relationships and there is no single, all-embracing answer to the question of how the two are related. One of the reasons for the hasty dismissal of the importance of narrative in contemporary Hollywood may be the overstatement by influential theorists such as David Bordwell of the degree of its coherence in, and dominance of, the classical Hollywood of the studio era. Narrative coherence was important to classical Hollywood, but only as one of a number of competing dynamics. Other attractions-such as distracting star performances or other spectacles-might be thrown in at almost any time.' The connotations of the term classical are part of the problem, including as it does in Bordwell's account an emphasis on decorum, proportion, formal harmony (4)--characteristics that were not always given priority. Numerous commentators on contemporary, New or post-classical Hollywood seem to rely at least in part on such implicit assumptions about the cinema that went before.z The point is not to doubt that there have been changes in the precise relations between narrative and spectacle from one period to another, but to question any suggestion that there was a point of departure at which classical narrative existed in anything like a pure state, uncontaminated by various kinds of evasions and distractions. From the very start, throughout the classical era, and today, narrative and spectacle have existed in a series of shifting relationships in which neither has ever been entirely absent. …

Finance and Empire: Sir Charles Addis, 1861-1945.

Part 1 The development of a man and his career: the young Charles Addis, 1861-95 widening horizons from eastern banker to financial diplomat, 1904-14 - playing the game in China becoming a central banker, 1914-19. Part 2 Attempts at Anglo-American co-operation: overview - British postwar strategy competition vs co-operation, 1919-22 monetary policy and European reconstruction, 1920-8 an end to reparations and the Gold Standard, 1929-31. Part 3 A return to sterling: overview - a sterling strategy towards a sterling bloc, 1931-4 Addis and British China Policy, 1923-9 - the resumption of Anglo-American competition Japan vs China 1929-34 a new British initiative in China, 1935-41 conclusion - final years and an assessment. Appendix: the speeches and writings of Sir Charles Addis.

Mexican Painting: Adapting To Capitalism

Mexican Painting: Adapting To Capitalism

Socialist Economic Integration.

First published in 1980, this book offers an account of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), the regional institution overseeing East European economic integration at the time. The author pursues three main themes in analyzing the sluggish pace of East European integration on trade, the role of East–West relations in the integration process, and the future of integration in the 1980s. Firstly he maintains that the integration process was delayed because of the confused postwar situation and disagreement among leaders of the region over a common economic programme for reconstruction and sustained growth. Secondly, he argues that the postwar development strategy and central planning of the economies inhibited regional cooperation. Finally the author contends that the organization and policy guidelines of the CMEA fell far short of what would seem to be needed to further integration.

The Postwar Strategy of Religion. Joseph M. M. Gray

<i>The Postwar Strategy of Religion</i>. Joseph M. M. Gray

Book Review: The Postwar Strategy of Religion

Book Review: The Postwar Strategy of Religion