Triangular Diplomacy Research Articles

India’s stance on Ukraine-Russia conflict

Untangling the social, historical, and political factors that led to this war, this article looks at a different interpretation of Russia's motivations. Additionally, it examined triangular diplomacy, which focuses on the various interpretations among the European Union, the United States, and considering how the US and EU responded to crises that were ostensibly similar, it is explicitly cooperative. It also adopts a

Correction to “A Wide Anticommunist Arc”: Britain, ASEAN, and Nixon’s Triangular Diplomacy

Correction to “A Wide Anticommunist Arc”: Britain, ASEAN, and Nixon’s Triangular Diplomacy

“A Wide Anticommunist Arc”: Britain, ASEAN, and Nixon’s Triangular Diplomacy*

“A Wide Anticommunist Arc”: Britain, ASEAN, and Nixon’s Triangular Diplomacy*

The China Question in Italian Foreign Policy

AbstractRelying on evidence from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and on the private archives of both Aldo Moro and Pietro Nenni, this article shows that from the mid-1950s onwards, important politicians—Socialist Pietro Nenni, Christian Democrat Giovanni Gronchi and Liberal Gaetano Martino—worked to encourage economic exchanges between Italy and China, and were linked with the concurrent initiatives of economic actors like Dino Gentili and Enrico Mattei. It also reveals that this gradual but steady process placed the China question firmly on the agenda of Italian parliamentary debates and government programmes as early as 1964. Finally, it shows that, while American diplomacy was still dominated by the Vietnam War and opposed any initiative towards Chinese recognition, in 1969–1970 the long process of rapprochement between Rome and Beijing came to an end. Thanks to Nenni's and Moro's diplomatic action, Italy recognized the People's Republic of China (PRC) before the Americans decided to inaugurate triangular diplomacy and reach out to China.

The controversy over fiscal multipliers as a case of triangular diplomacy: the limits of co-regulation in the management of the eurozone

The argument about the role of fiscal multipliers on growth forecast errors found in Troika's macroeconomic adjustment programmes has multiple implications. The paper on fiscal multipliers published by IMF staff, which ignited this debate, can be linked to the effort of the USA to initiate a triangular diplomatic pressure on the Eurozone's core. This assumption is also verified by European Parliament resolutions published in March 2014. This paper discusses the hypothesis of triangular diplomacy and its application in the Eurozone crisis management.

The Sino-US-Soviet Triangular Diplomacy and the Vietnam Peace Negotiations, 1971–1973: Between “Peace with Honor” and “Decent Interval”

The Sino-US-Soviet Triangular Diplomacy and the Vietnam Peace Negotiations, 1971–1973: Between “Peace with Honor” and “Decent Interval”

From the Grass Roots to the Summit: The Impact of US Suburban Protest on US Missile-Defence Policy, 1968–72

Whilst most historians have focused on the importance of the nuclear balance and triangular diplomacy in shaping the progress of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), this paper argues that the Nixon administration was also significantly constrained by strong suburban opposition to the emplacement of anti-ballistic missile (ABM) batteries on the periphery of US cities such as Boston, Chicago, and Seattle. This groundswell of opposition increased resistance to the system in the Senate and presented an issue that could be used by liberal Democrats against Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election. The Nixon administration moved expeditiously to remove the ABM from cities. This was successful in quieting immediate opposition to one of the United States’ key bargaining chips at SALT. However, the administration was less adept at integrating this domestic constraint into its opening position for the talks. The Americans offered to limit ABMs to defence of national capitals, a domestically untenable offer given the strong suburban and congressional opposition to the ABM. In recovering from this error, the Americans lost much of the leverage the technological superiority of their ABM afforded them, adversely affecting the form of the final SALT accords.

Precluded or Precedent-Setting? The “NATO Enlargement Question” in the Triangular Bonn-Washington-Moscow Diplomacy of 1990–1991

Controversy arose in the mid-1990s when Russian officials accused Western governments of reneging on binding pledges made to Moscow in 1990 during German unification diplomacy. According to the allegations, Western leaders had solemnly promised that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would never expand beyond Germany into Central and Eastern Europe. Were such pledges ever made? Was the Soviet Union betrayed, and if so, by whom, how, and when? Or have various tactical comments been misinterpreted in hindsight? This article seeks to offer new answers to these questions by exploring not simply U.S.-Soviet-West German triangular diplomacy in 1990 but also the evolution of different approaches, ideas, and visions regarding Germany's security arrangements and the wider European security architecture. These ideas were floated publicly and privately, at home and abroad, by Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and other senior West German officials. In showing how ultimately a “unified Germany in NATO” came about after months of intense diplomacy in 1990 to resolve the “German question,” this article refutes the recently made claim that the extension of full membership to the whole of Germany was a precedent-setting expansion of NATO.

The Sino-Japanese-Russian triangle

This paper attempts to understand the relations between three important actors in Northeast Asia — China, Russia, and Japan — since the end of the Cold War. Whereas the political changes attending the collapse of the communist bloc have opened new foreign policy opportunities to all three actors, only China and Russia have been quick to move on them. Japan’s relative inflexibility, attributable to its alliance with the US on the one hand and its territorial dispute with Russia on the other, has had the effect of impeding the application of triangular diplomacy.

The Vietnam War files: uncovering the secret history of Nixon-era strategy

How Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger pursued their public vow to end the Vietnam War and win the peace has long been entangled in bitter controversy and obscured by political spin. Recent classifications of archival documents, on both sides of the former Iron and Bamboo Curtains, have at last made it possible to uncover the truth behind and Kissinger's management of the war and to better understand the policies and strategies of the Vietnamese, Soviets and Chinese. Drawing from this treasure trove of formerly secret files, Jeffrey Kimball has excerpted more than 140 print documents and taped White House conversations bearing on Nixon era strategy. Most of these have never before been published and many provide smoking-gun evidence on such long-standing controversies such as the theory and the decent-interval option. They reveal that by 1970 and Kissinger's madman and detente strategies had fallen far short of frightening the North Vietnamese into making concessions. By 1971, as Kissinger notes in one key document, the administration had decided to withdraw the remaining US troops while creating healthy interval for South Vietnam's fate to unfold. The evidence uncovers a number of behind-the-scenes ploys - such as secret nuclear alert of October 1969 - and sheds more light on goals in Vietnam and his and Kissinger's strategies of Vietnamization, the China card and triangular diplomacy. The excerpted documents also reveal significant new information about the purposes of the Linebacker bombings, manipulation of the POW issue and the conduct of the secret negotiations in Paris - as well as other key topics, events and issues. All of these are effectively framed by Kimball, whose introductions provide an historical context. Building on the arguments of his earlier work, Nixon's Vietnam War, Kimball also offers readers a concise narrative of the evolution of Nixon-era strategy and a critical assessment of historical myths about the war. The story that emerges from both the documents and Kimball's contextual narratives directly contradicts the Nixon-Kissinger version of events. In fact Kimball concludes that they did not pursue a consistent strategy from beginning to end and did not win a peace with honour.

Triangular diplomacy writ small: the political economy of the Indonesia–Malaysia–Singapore growth triangle

In an increasingly integrated international economy, nation-states are, of themselves, no longer the prime containers or coordinators of political–economic activity. The extra-territoriality of states and the blurring of the boundaries between states and firms, for example, have been captured in analytical concepts such as ‘triangular diplomacy’ the ‘web of global interdependencies’ and ‘cosmopolitan democracy’. Such trends have become visible in what have been termed mega-urban regions or zones of economic integration or of graduated sovereignty. Moreover, such zones are held to illustrate non-traditional or cooperative inter-state relations. This paper utilizes Stopford and Strange's (1991) notion of ‘triangular diplomacy’ to interpret the development of one such zone – the Indonesia–Malaysia–Singapore growth triangle (IMS-GT). The paper argues that whilst embodying elements of cooperative inter-state relations the development of the IMS-GT also highlights the persistence of the ‘traditional’ concerns of inter-state relations. It also uses the notion of triangular diplomacy to draw attention to different models of social order sought by multinational enterprises (MNEs).

Selling the 'Decent interval': Kissinger, triangular diplomacy, and the end of the Vietnam war, 1971-73

With the help of recently declassified documents, this article examines the link between triangular diplomacy and the Vietnam War. It argues that from the summer of 1971 to the conclusion of the Paris Agreements in January 1973 Kissinger tried to 'sell' a peace agreement to his Soviet and Chinese inter locutors by stressing the American willingness to accept a 'decent interval' solution: that is, the United States would not reenter the war provided that the collapse of the South Vietnamese goverment did not occur immediately after the last US ground troops returned home. While such a posture played a significant role in increasing Sino-Soviet pressure towards a negotiated settlement, Kissinger's policy also served to bolster the subsequent competition between Moscow and Beijing over influence in Indochina.

China diplomacy: the Washington-Taipei-Beijing triangle

The Taiwan Relations Act - representing the response of Congress to the Carter administration's 1978 abandonment of Taipei in favour of Beijing - is the focus of this analysis of Washington's dual China policy. Considering not only the US perspective, but also that of Taiwan and the PRC, this book explores the contradictions of the situation. The triangular diplomacy between the three capitals has been, and remains, a problematic configuration in the history of international relations. In addition to delineating the factors involved, this book also highlights the implications of legislating foreign policy and discusses the occasionally advantageous role of ambiguity in affording flexibility to diplomats and policymakers under complicated circumstances.

Australia, Japan and Great Britain, 1914–18: A study in triangular diplomacy∗

(1970). Australia, Japan and Great Britain, 1914–18: A study in triangular diplomacy. Historical Studies: Vol. 14, No. 54, pp. 250-259.