Washington's Relations Research Articles

Eisenhower & Cambodia: Diplomacy, Covert Action and the Origins of the Second Indochina War by William J. Rust

<i>Eisenhower &amp; Cambodia: Diplomacy, Covert Action and the Origins of the Second Indochina War</i> by William J. Rust

ИНДИЯ — ПОИСКИ ВНЕШНЕПОЛИТИЧЕСКОГО КУРСА

In January 2023, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that the world is in crisis and called for a summit of more than 120 developing and less developed countries comprising the Global South with the goal of creating a new world order. Until recently, India has been able to maintain neutrality in her relations with Russia. As for China, there are unresolved problems with this country, especially the protracted border conflict. India is concerned with China’s growing power. Current world developments, including those in Asia and Ukraine, resulted in an invitation to N. Modi to come to the US with a state visit in June 2023 to ‘celebrate the enduring friendship’ between the two countries. The invitation stated that the US looked forward to continuing to work with India to build a brighter future for both countries and for the world. The expectations for this visit were based on the assumption that India was an important power that could counter China’s growing economic and military influence. US – India relations in the XXI century will be critical for the whole world. During his talks with Modi, Biden underscored the importance Quad, which includes USA, India, Japan, and Australia and is aimed at limiting China’s influence and outreach. Modi stated that the New Delhi – Washington relations were stronger and deeper than ever before and prior to his state visit he said that there was ‘unprecedented trust’ between the leaders of India and the US.

The Indian World of George Washington by Colin G. Calloway

Reviewed by: The Indian World of George Washington by Colin G. Calloway Timothy J. Shannon (bio) The Indian World of George Washington. By Colin G. Calloway. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xviii, 621. $34.95 cloth) Among the founders, George Washington had the most extensive experience with Native Americans. As a young man, he relied on them as allies and guides in the Ohio country, and he fought alongside and against them during the Seven Years' War. He engaged with them as allies and enemies again during the American Revolution, and as the first president of the United States, he conducted diplomacy with them that laid the foundations of federal Indian policy. For Washington, Indians were neither the "merciless Indian Savages" mentioned in the Declaration of Independence nor the archetypal inhabitants of an Enlightenment philosopher's state of nature. They were individual human beings who participated with him in the events that created the United States. [End Page 332] Colin Calloway sets out to recapture that shared experience in this important new book, the first biography of Washington to give Native Americans equal billing. An indication of that purpose is a list in the opening pages that names more than one hundred individual Indians whose own stories shape the narrative than follows. Calloway divides that story into three sections. The first covers Washington's trial by fire as a public figure in the Seven Years' War. The second part covers the Revolutionary War, when Washington once again found himself entangled in the world of Native American warfare and diplomacy. In the final part, Calloway reconstructs Washington's relations with Native Americans during the 1790s, when as president, he dealt with warfare on the nation's borderlands and initiated the federal government's Indian relations. Of course, there is no shortage of Washington biographies or histories of Native Americans in the Revolutionary era, so what is gained by weaving these two familiar topics together? Calloway presents several good answers. First, he reminds us that Indians were a constant presence in the long course of Washington's public life, and as such, they played a more complicated and influential role in the creation of the United States than is typically acknowledged. Second, Calloway's analysis reminds us that among the founders, proximity to Indians did not equal intimacy with them. Yes, Washington knew many individual Indians by name and often called them friends and brothers in diplomatic councils, but we also know that in no sense of the phrase did he ever "go native" as a result of these encounters. In this long book, there is no evidence that Washington ever came to see the world through Indian eyes. Calloway's last lesson concerns another kind of barrier that separated Native and colonial peoples in North America: land. From Washington's early days as a surveyor to his financial dealings in retirement, he tried to turn Indian homelands into real estate, and like many of his peers, he never realized the profits he anticipated. At various points in his life, Washington speculated in lands in Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. All of these [End Page 333] ventures were premised on the dispossession of Native Americans. Even Washington's efforts to secure peaceful coexistence with Indians in the new nation assumed that diplomacy was a more effective means than war for securing title to Indian lands. This book succeeds in putting Indians back into the story of Washington's life. The frustration readers may feel in the end is that for all they have learned about Washington's interactions with Indians, they still know very little about what he thought of them. Unlike Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, Washington was not prone to writing about Indians in a reflective way. He may have known more Indians by name than any of his peers, but the tragedy in this story is that the leader indispensable to the founding of the nation never clearly articulated for better or worse the place he saw for Indians within it. Timothy J. Shannon TIMOTHY J. SHANNON is a professor of history at Gettysburg College. His most recent book is Indian Captive, Indian King: Peter...

Sami Moubayed. Syria and the USA: Washington's Relations with Damascus from Wilson to Eisenhower.

Sami Moubayed. Syria and the USA: Washington's Relations with Damascus from Wilson to Eisenhower.

Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam, by Edward Miller

Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam, by Edward Miller. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2013. vi, 419 pp. $39.95 US (cloth). Few areas of study are as contentious as the War, and wading into the historiographical waters is certainly not for the faint of heart. Edward Miller's most recent book, however, is on solid ground; it provides a very welcome addition to the fields of both American foreign relations and Vietnamese studies. The relationship between the United States and Ngo Dinh Diem, the first president of South from 1954-63, is an interesting one, albeit one that is frequently misunderstood. In part the rigid historiography of the War is to blame, with often coming across as two dimensional--as a US puppet or a product of tradition (p. 14)--rather than a fully-formed individual. Building on the trend of international scholars studying Vietnam, Miller's research moves beyond traditional American diplomatic sources and includes impressive French and Vietnamese archival material, providing a very well-rounded understanding of the subject matter. He also displays a strong understanding of the secondary literature which allows him to seamlessly discuss competing historical interpretations of and American foreign relations, yet he does so without becoming pigeon-holed in one of the rigid, and competing, schools of thought. This approach allows Miller to produce a nuanced and compelling piece of scholarship. Miller states that his about US-RVN relations during the era are more qualified and less black-and-white than the conclusions drawn by some other historians (p. 10), though he certainly has no problem asserting his views. According to Miller, US military advisor John Paul Vann incorrect on almost every point (p. 252), and all of these caricatures of are based on false assumptions, and of the conclusions drawn from them are wrong (p. 15). By situating the events, and personalities, in their international context--away from a simply US-centric view--Diem's relationship with the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations is better understood. It is also a relationship, according to Miller, where many of the most momentous and consequential actions were undertaken in South Vietnam (p. 10). By looking at Diem's career before 1954--a topic which has received surprisingly little attention from scholars--Miller demonstrates that neither plucked from obscurity nor installed in office by the US in 1954 (p. 20). served briefly as Interior Minister in the early 1930s and, with the help of his extensive family relations, maneuvered very actively for political advantage for the next two decades. When he was appointed Prime Minister in 1954, and subsequently became President in 1956, he came to power with a definite agenda. It is this agenda of around which Miller weaves his narrative, contending that nation-building and agendas played central roles in the formation, evolution, and eventual undoing of Washington's relations with Diem (p. …

Building New Vital Mutual Interests for a Better Future: a commentary on Wang Jisi and Kenneth Lieberthal's Addressing US–China Strategic Distrust

This analysis of the dangerous forces increasingly dynamizing Beijing–Washington relations explains why the usual proposals for increasing the cooperative aspects of USA–PRC relations will not succeed. It builds on the policy analysis and policy proposals of others who understand what a disaster it would be if China–America relations were to continue to grow worse. It makes a suggestion for restructuring the institutions of the international political economy so as to construct fundamental over-lapping interests between America and China. The author finds that without some difficult and basic changes in the relations, worst case outcomes become ever more probable.

Syria and the USA: Washington's relations with Damascus from Wilson to Eisenhower

Syria and the USA: Washington's relations with Damascus from Wilson to Eisenhower

Assurance and US extended deterrence in NATO

Historically the NATO allies have focused considerable attention on US ‘extended deterrence’— that is, the extension by Washington of an umbrella of protection, sometimes called a ‘nuclear guarantee’. A persisting requirement has been to provide the allies with assurance about the reliability and credibility of this protection. This article examines the definition of ‘assurance’ used by the US Department of Defense for most of the past decade and argues that it has drawn attention to long-standing policy challenges associated with US extended deterrence in NATO. The article considers the assurance roles of US nuclear forces in Europe, as well as elements of assurance in Washington's relations with its allies regarding extended nuclear deterrence. Whether the allies will retain the current requirements of extended deterrence and assurance in their new Strategic Concept or devise a new approach will be an issue of capital importance in the policy review launched at the Strasbourg/Kehl Summit. Contrasting approaches to these questions are visible in the United States and Germany, among other allies. The main issues to be resolved include reconciling extended deterrence with arms control priorities; managing the divisions in public and expert opinion; and avoiding certain potential consequences of a rupture with established arrangements.

Empire and Neoliberalism in Asia

and Neoliberalism in Asia. Edited by Vedi R. Hadiz. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Softcover: 301pp. and Neoliberalism is the product of a conference held at the National University of Singapore in July 2004. The major focus of the book is on Southeast Asia, the conference re-uniting a number of specialists on the region who have been associated at some point in their careers with the Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University in Australia. In addition, the volume has contributions from specialists on globalization, on China, and on India. I will begin with a familiar lament from reviewers of edited books: the volume is very uneven in the quality of its contributions, and the extent to which they directly address any of the themes identified by the editor. As is often the case in these situations, it seems that the editor might usefully have intervened with a heavier hand--both to insist that some authors link their papers to a set of common themes, and, indeed, to take the hard decision of cutting some papers altogether. The first part of the book examines theoretical issues and the international context, focusing primarily on the current sources of U.S. foreign policy, how the U.S. international role might best be conceptualized, and on where Asia, primarily Southeast Asia, fits within U.S. strategy. Because these are the chapters that are most likely to interest a wider audience, I will discuss these in some detail below. The second part of the collection looks at how the changes in U.S. strategy post-9/11 have affected domestic politics and social relations in states from around the region. The Southeast Asian chapters are generally the strongest, and the ones most closely related to the volume's central themes. Garry Rodan and Kevin Hewison provide an insightful chapter on how the post-9/11 change in emphasis in U.S. policies has affected Washington's relations with Singapore and Thailand, and domestic politics in these two countries. Vedi Hadiz's chapter on the American Empire and authoritarianism in Indonesia is undermined by the delay that has occurred in bringing the conference papers into print: it contains no reference to the administration of S.B. Yudhyono, elected only a few months after the conference took place. Khoo Boo Teik's chapter on Malaysia focuses on the Pan Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) and the meanings of Islamic governance, topics that seem at best peripherally related to the volume's overall themes. Patricio N. Abinales' study of the Southern Philippines does have an explicitly American dimension: it reviews the history of the triangular relationship between U.S. administrations, Philippine national governments and Muslim politicians and rebels. Chaiwat Satha-Anand poses the question of what violence does to democracy through examining the impact of the violence used by the Thai state against Southern rebels, concluding that Thailand is best characterized as an authoritarian democracy. The remainder of the country studies is a very mixed bag. Zhiyuan Cui examines China's response to U.S. neo-conservatism, particularly how is attempting to move beyond the Washington Consensus to promote a Beijing Consensus. Sonn Hochul asserts that neoliberal and armed globalization constitute nothing less than 'a planetary war' against humanity, and argues that the policies of the Bush administration have not only intensified anti-Americanism in Korea but also internal disputes on key issues such as policy towards North Korea and Iraq. Lee Wen-Chih and Yang Der-Ruey's brief chapter reviews how the changing international politics of the Cold War and post-Cold War era, in particular as they have affected U.S.-China relations, have fed ethnic-based conflict on Taiwan. Finally, in the two chapters on South Asia, Habibul Haque Khondker looks at how relations between Bangladesh and the United States have recently improved under conditions of military-dominated authoritarianism, despite Bangladesh moving towards a more Islamic path; and Anand Teltumbde examines the relationship between Hindu fundamentalism in India and U. …

Turkey and the United States

Tensions between Turkey and the US in the buildup to and aftermath of the Iraq war cast a shadow over Washington's relations with one of its closest allies in the region. Attempts by Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul to forge closer ties with Iran and Syria have further fuelled speculation that, in the new regional security environment created by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, relations between Ankara and Washington will become more confrontational than cooperative - with the uncertain situation in northern Iraq providing a dangerous flashpoint. However, the deterioration in bilateral relations has been the result of accidents of timing and of the complex dynamics of Turkish politics, rather than the product of a calculated strategy on Turkey's part.

Notes from the minefield: United States intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East, 1945-1958

Notes From the Minefield: United States Intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East, 1945-1958, by Irene L. Gendzier. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. xxii + 378 pages. Notes to p. 422. Bibl. to p. 444. Index to p. 470. $39.95. This is a comprehensive study of the first 15 years of post-World War II American diplomacy in the Middle East and its impact on developments in Lebanon. Irene L. Gendzier has amassed valuable information to research the factors that led to the landing of the US Marines in Beirut in 1958, and has given the reader a clear picture of Washington's relations with the Arab world at an important phase in the Cold War. Notes From the Minefield is divided into five chapters. The first, Setting of U.S. Policy, defines the historical and political fundamentals of US global interests and describes the formation of Lebanon as a modern state. The second focuses on the role of Lebanon's political elite in structuring that country's external alliances, as well as on the United States' economic and political stakes in the Middle East during the Truman administration (1945-53). The third chapter provides a detailed account of the relationship between the Eisenhower administration (1953-61) and the regime of Lebanese president Camille Sham`un (1952-58). The fourth chapter looks at the events that preceded the decision to dispatch American military troops to Lebanon. Finally, the dynamics of US military intervention in Lebanon and the implications of that intervention-internationally and regionally-are the topics of the last chapter of the book. The author raises the question, What is the meaning of 1958 in the context of U.S. Middle East policy? (p. 365). She disagrees with the official National Security Council memorandum (NSC 5820/1), which criticized America's identification with conservative and pro-Western regimes as detrimental to US influence in the Middle East. According to Gendzier, Washington adopted a very flexible response to the different elements pertinent to the brief 1958 civil crisis. While the United States feared Egyptian president Jamal `Abd al-Nasir's popularity in the Arab world and the radicalism of his brand of Arab nationalism, it appreciated his anti-communist stance. Although America supported President Sham`un, this did not preclude it from demanding reforms of the confessional system in Lebanon. British-American differences over the merit of US intervention in Lebanon subsided in favor of a wider Western strategic scheme to strengthen Britain's ties with Jordan and the Persian Gulf states. Notes From the Minefield contains important de-classified material in the form of National Security Council memos and a number of State Department documents. In addition, it depicts well the interplay among the different departments and agencies of the national security apparatus in the US government. This approach is commendable, since most accounts of US diplomacy in the Middle East depict it as a reflection of the values and disposition of a small cluster of 'Arabists' who worked to balance US relations with the Arab world in the face of the efforts of Israel's sympathizers. …

Cocaine, the contras, and the United States: How the U.S. government has augmented America's drug crisis

A study of Washington's connections to Honduran and other contra supporters in the illicit drug traffic shows that such gray alliances for covert operations are themselves a major part of this country's drug problem. It is true that the U.S. has arrested contra supporters on drug charges; but, time after time, these drug arrests have come after the U.S. has ceased to promote the contra faction which those arrested had been supporting. The new Bush drug strategy seems unlikely to affect the window of drug smuggling opportunity opened by Washington's relations with the corrupt Honduran military, and may well open new such windows by new grey alliances with the corrupt right-wing forces in the Andean countries of origin. The following has been abstracted from , by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall (Berkely and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991). Some of Jonathan Marshall's research has been incorporated into this paper.

Movement Toward Democracy in South Korea

For better or worse United States foreign policy is now identified with human rights, setting moral standards for other nations. Human rights guidelines have become a screen filtering Washington's relations with virtually all countries. Among the most controversial of these is South Korea, where we are accused on the one hand of condoning human rights violations in order to protect our regional security interests and on the other of undercutting our security interests by pressing human rights policies that weaken South Korea.

Booker T. Washington's Relations with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

Some years ago, before he became Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Roy Wilkins stated that Booker T. Washington's contributions were important in the creation of the Association.' Actually, Washington never supported the NAACP, distrusted many of its founders, and resisted most of their friendly overtures. Furthermore, there were some NAACP leaders, such as W. E. B. DuBois, who found it virtually impossible even to accept the slightest hint of Tuskegeean amity. The present paper reviews the relations between leaders of the Association and Mr. Washington, from 1909 when the organization was formed, until 1915 when the Alabama educator died. By 1909, Oswald Garrison Villard, grandson of William Lloyd Garrison, believed that the time was ripe to encourage Negroes like W. E. B. DuBois, since the white journalist was becoming impatient not only with Booker Washington's conservative leadership, but also with his monopoly on leadership. Villard joined others to form the National Negro Committee2