Western Diplomats Research Articles

Justice and journalism: Islam and journalistic values in Indonesia and Malaysia

As the Global War on Terror has prompted new interest in Islam in Southeast Asia, western governments have scrambled to engage with Muslim journalists in Indonesia and Malaysia. Despite this attention, surprisingly little is known about how journalists in these two majority Muslim countries actually think about the work they do. This article draws on a series of semi-structured interviews with elite journalists in Jakarta, Surabaya, and Kuala Lumpur to provide some preliminary explorations of the relationship between Islam and journalism in Southeast Asia. It argues that Muslim journalists in both Indonesia and Malaysia express the universal values of journalism, but do so within an Islamic idiom. It concludes with a discussion of justice as the overarching ideology of journalism in Islam, and a comment on how western diplomats might use the language of Islam to reach out to journalists in these two majority Muslim countries.

American Missionaries and the Harem: Cultural Exchanges behind the Scenes

This article examines the impact on American furniture and clothing styles by women missionaries traveling to Turkey in the Victorian era. Although there has been much discussion of the impact of Western missionaries on Turkey and other parts of Asia, the reciprocal impact on American culture has not been adequately assessed. Missionary work, which started in the 1820s in a modest manner, turned into a systematic and large-scale activity, reaching its climax during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Unlike Western diplomats, whose visits took place in the palaces of Istanbul, far from the realities of everyday life, missionary women had informal contact with ordinary Turkish women. Ottoman Turkish domestic space was highly gendered, so only these missionary women would have had access to authentic Ottoman Turkish interiors and been able to observe them as social spaces. The furniture style and the unique concept of comfort that they observed in Turkey presented an alternative point of view of home life and its organization. After spending years abroad, these women would return to the US to recruit and raise money for their missions by traveling from community to community, often creating interest for their work abroad by presenting examples of material culture. This article will put letters, diaries, travelogues and other contemporary material in the context of American culture of the Victorian era in order to chart the unusual way in which American and Turkish women interacted with each other at this historical moment.

The Persian Gulf Theater in World War II

Although coveted by the Axis powers for its rich oil supplies, the Persian Gulf Theater was the scene of very little fighting in World War II due to strategic allied victories on the distant periphery. The theater remained important, however, for several reasons. The early years of World War II saw Anglo and Anglo-Russian military attacks on two Gulf regimes sympathetic to the Axis, Iraq and Iran. Logistics delivery to Soviet Russia, furthermore, brought for the first time a substantial American military presence to the Gulf, which totaled at its peak approximately 65,000 civilians and uniformed service members of the United States, primarily in Iran. The potential loss of the Gulf's prolific oil fields became a key concern early in the war, and a dialogue arose between Western diplomats, military leaders, and oil company executives over who should defend them, and if needed, who should destroy them to deny their use by invading Germans. This article analyzes the significance of the Persian Gulf Theater during World War II and its most lasting impact, the enduring relationship that emerged between the United States and the Iranians, and the United States and the Saudis.

Between Foreigners and Shi`is

After twenty-seven centuries of uninterrupted presence on the Persianplateau, the Jews of Iran have become so inextricably ingrained in everypossible aspect of Iranian life, culture, religion, and history that any valuablework of scholarship in Judeo-Persian studies, such as the one at hand,must by necessity entail an interdisciplinary approach. Between Foreignersand Shi`is, a ground-breaking work that will henceforth prove indispensableto any researcher ofmodern Judeo-Persian studies, is ameticulous pieceof scholarship that brings as much novelty to its own field as it does tomodernIranian historiography, Middle Eastern political studies, and Islamicstudies.Daniel Tsadik’s book provides a history of the religious, political, andsocial life of Iranian Jews under Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848-96).Relying on a wealth of previously untapped archival material, the authorexamines in particular detail episodes of persecution in Barforush in 1866-67 (pp. 60-78), in Shiraz at the hands of Hajj Sayyid `Ali Akbar Fal Asiri(pp. 130-37), in Isfahan at the hands of ShaykhMohammad Taqi Najafi (pp.137-49), and in Hamadan at the hands of Mullah `Abdallah (pp. 155-77).Examining these and other episodes of anti-Semitic persecution against thebroader backdrop of socio-political events throughout Iran at large, such asthe Tobacco Rebellion of 1891 and the great famine, he brings to light a hithertounnoticed dynamic in which Iran’s Jewish community emerges as therope in a three-way tug of war between the Shi`ite clergy, the Qajar court,and western diplomats, with each jostling for dominance in the fledglingnation that was becoming modern Iran ...

“Stalin's Note” and the Cold War

On March 10th, 1952 the USSR sent a document called “Stalin's Note” to the representatives of the Western Powers; the USA, the UK and France. It proposed both making a “peace treaty” with Germany and unifying Germany. For seven years following the end of World War II, Germany had been divided into two states. The separate governments of West and East Germany were provisionally formed in 1949. To resolve this situation, “Stalin's Note” proposed that Germany form a Unified Government and establish a “peace treaty” on a principal of neutrality. However, the USA, the UK, France and the West German leader, Konrad Adenauer, were pursuing a policy of West European Integration of West Germany, and rejected “Stalin's Note” forthwith.Since the Western Powers didn't accept “Stalin's Note”, the real intention of the USSR has remained a big mystery in post WWII history. Academic disputes continue to this day, as to the real intentions of the Soviet Diplomacy. These disputes are roughly split into two groups. One group, the positive group, argues that “Stalin's Note” was a peaceful attempt to establish a “Neutral German State”, while the other, negative group, believes that it was an “Obstructive Operation” to disturb Western diplomacy and cut off the military connection between West Germany and the Western Powers.Following the end of the Cold War, historical materials were released in the former East Germany. Researchers had hoped to find the truth of “Stalin's Note”. Many papers have been presented by historians specializing in diplomatic history of Germany and the USSR, but the disputes have not ended between the positive and the negative groups. This paper investigates the truth of “Stalin's Note” and its relation to the Cold War through rethinking its problems from the viewpoint of the East German leaders. As a result, this investigation finds that East German leaders had formed two groups; supporters of “Stalin's Note, ” the domestic group, and dissidents, the Moscow group.

Elizabeth Mataka: UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa

One Sunday morning last year an elderly Zambian woman four grandchildren in tow showed up at Elizabeth Matakas door. "Im looking for Mrs Mataka-people said she will help me. Shes the one who helps grandmothers" the woman said. She had found exactly the right person. Mataka herself a grandmother of three heads the Zambia National AIDS Network (ZNAN) and helps coordinate funds fl owing in from donors. And earlier this year she was elevated to the highest levels of the global response to the pandemic. In April 61-year-old Mataka was elected Vice Chair of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria. The next month she got a surprise midnight call from New York with the news that she had been chosen to replace the outgoing United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Canadian diplomat Stephen Lewis. (excerpt)

How to shake the fakes [intellectual property protection

Seeming to heed the call of western diplomats, bureaucrats and politicians, the Chinese government has begun to take a tougher stance toward IP (intellectual property) protection. Chinese companies and inventors have now grasped the importance of IP legislation. The expected rise of China's own IP industry means companies will need to look more closely at the country's patent databases to avoid accidental infringement.

Diplomatic Cultures: Comparing Russia and the West in Terms of a 'Modern Model of Diplomacy'

AbstractDiplomacy is an international institution, although national and regional diplomatic services keep their own intrinsic identity. Existing differences occasionally interfere with mutual understanding as an essential requirement for overcoming today's instability. Comparative analysis of Western and Russian diplomacy enables deeper insight into some essential reasons for existing differences. The modern model of diplomacy was formed because of the Renaissance, which was characterized by a process of secularization. In Russia this process was delayed by the Byzantine tradition of 'symphony'. From Tsar Peter's era, however, a gradual rapprochement can be observed between the two systems of diplomacy — Western and Russian. However, within new parameters, the ghost of Byzantium appeared now and again. Even under Soviet-imposed atheism, diplomacy was viewed as a tool for a new Messianic universalism (as it was in pre-Petrine times), expressed in terms of 'proletarian internationalism'. New and dramatic events placed an urgent need for a qualitatively new type of diplomacy on the agenda: the European experience, with its emphasis on a solid juridical basis, rationalism and human rights; and the Russian experience, with its universalism that is attentive to existential problems and traditional values. Diplomacy of the future should be based on a synthesis of both European and Russian historical experiences.

Kosovo's clouded future

The Balkans are facing a moment of truth. After years of speculation, political manoeuvring and diplomacy, at issue is whether Kosovo will emerge as Europe’s newest state and thus bring to seven the number of countries to have emerged from the wreckage of Yugoslavia. For most of 2006 the vast majority of analysts and western diplomats had assumed that all these things would transpire by the end of the year or very soon afterwards; now, potentially dangerous delays and doubts have set in.

The “Velvet Revolution” of Iranian Puritan Hardliners

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 2005 victory in Iran's presidential elections baffled foreign political circles in the same way that the rise to power of President Khatami-who preceded him-befuddled western diplomats and analysts.1 During the campaign, opinion polls indicated that Ahmadinejad had very little chance to emerge triumphant in the elections. Political analysts, consequently, paid little or no attention to him. After the election, however, many concluded that Ahmadinejad's victory proved how little the west knew about Iranian politics.Immediately after his election, Ahmadinejad's sensational and controversial stances towards Israel and the US alarmed the international community and marred the former Khatami's government's efforts at confidence building with the west.All the while, erroneous, sensational, and often misleading information presented on Ahmadinejad-mostly for publicity purposes-depict a simple picture of him, and complicate the international community's interactions with the new government.This article attempts to offer an in-depth understanding of the new government's policies by examining Ahmadinejad's personality, the powers that support him, and the conditions conducive to the rise to power of a puritan, hardline non-clergy candidate who took the reins of power from a reformist cleric.AHMADINEJAD'S CHILDHOODAhmadinejad was born in 1956 in the village of Aradan in the city of Garmsar into a poor, religious family. His father, whom he adored, exposed him to early religious education and regularly took him to the mosque. To find employment, his family moved to Tehran with one-year-old Mahmoud and his three siblings. He completed his primary and high school education in Tehran. In 1975, during Mohammad Reza Shah's regime, he passed the extremely difficult university entrance exam with high marks, and began graduate work at the Science and Technology University (Elm & Sanat, or S&T), one of the country's best universities.AHMADINEJAD'S UNIVERSITY PERIODHe swiftly got involved in university party politics, but his pre-revolution activism was not of such great magnitude as to place him in jail. At that time, the S&T University's Islamic Association was actually more politically and religiously conservative than those of many other contemporary universities in Tehran. Even after the revolution, religious radicalism was not the predominant force in the association, as it was at other universities in the capital.During the revolution, revolutionary organizations such as the Mujahideen Khalq and Chereekhaye Fadaee Khalq found success in recruiting young students by appealing to their anti-imperialist and justice-seeking collective impulses. Meanwhile, the liberal cabinet of Mehdi Bazargan-Iran's first post-revolution prime minister-was unable to meet the radical demands of the younger generation, leaving them prey to leftist propaganda. Thus the Islamic Association of Universities decided to take matters in its own hands, and strove to wipe out their rivals. The US embassy takeover was meant to serve as one such step against both the liberal government and the political left.Representatives from the Islamic associations of various Tehran universities met secretly to discuss the idea put forward by Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, Mohsen Mirdamadi, Bitaraf, and Reza Seifullahi. They decided to stage a demonstration in Algiers to object to Mehdi Bazargarfs meeting with US National security Advisor Zbigniew Brezhenski, and a sit-in strike in the US embassy courtyard in Tehran to protest the Shah's presence in the US. The sit-in strike ultimately turned into the US embassy takeover. In these secret meetings, representatives of the S&T University, including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had opposed the measure on the grounds that other big powers might retaliate against Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ahmadinejad further argued that if the US embassy was to be occupied, the Soviet embassy should be occupied too. …

Law-enforcement and intelligence capabilities

The 9/11 attacks revealed that the transnational terrorist threat facing the US and its partners was far more dangerous than most had previously discerned. It was now clear that al-Qaeda intended to, and could threaten the West's – particularly the US' – political and military leverage, with the aim of shifting the balance of power from the West to Islam after a violent global confrontation. In that sense, the new terrorist threat is strategic, and it has led to a worldwide mobilisation comparable to that required by a world war. This Paper argues that prevailing in the ‘war’ on terror, much like victory in the Cold War, entails containment, deterrence, out performance and engagement. Military power is secondary to intelligence, law enforcement, enlightened social policy and diplomacy. Diplomatic engagement with the larger Muslim world is paramount as a means of denying al-Qaeda not merely recruits but the ‘clash of civilisations’ it seeks. The US-led intervention in Iraq, though intended to introduce democratic reform in the wider Middle East, has so far antagonised Islam and strengthened Islamist terrorism. This suggests that coercive or aggressively ideological diplomacy is unlikely to win over an Islamic population biased by anti-Western propaganda. Successful Western diplomacy will have to be discreet, nuanced and incremental.

Outperforming the terrorists

The 9/11 attacks revealed that the transnational terrorist threat facing the US and its partners was far more dangerous than most had previously discerned. It was now clear that al-Qaeda intended to, and could threaten the West's – particularly the US' – political and military leverage, with the aim of shifting the balance of power from the West to Islam after a violent global confrontation. In that sense, the new terrorist threat is strategic, and it has led to a worldwide mobilisation comparable to that required by a world war. This Paper argues that prevailing in the ‘war’ on terror, much like victory in the Cold War, entails containment, deterrence, out performance and engagement. Military power is secondary to intelligence, law enforcement, enlightened social policy and diplomacy. Diplomatic engagement with the larger Muslim world is paramount as a means of denying al-Qaeda not merely recruits but the ‘clash of civilisations’ it seeks. The US-led intervention in Iraq, though intended to introduce democratic reform in the wider Middle East, has so far antagonised Islam and strengthened Islamist terrorism. This suggests that coercive or aggressively ideological diplomacy is unlikely to win over an Islamic population biased by anti-Western propaganda. Successful Western diplomacy will have to be discreet, nuanced and incremental.

Russia's Project 2008: Reforming the Military and Preparing a Coup

war that, since 2004, has spread into the North Caucasus. The extension of this war places the entire region of the North Caucasus at risk for an unending, long-term terrorist insurgency. This threat can no longer be ignored; indeed, it places the integrity and stability of the Russian Federa tion at risk. Therefore, the conflict now receives overwhelming governmental, media, and mili tary attention, right up to President Vladimir Putin, who traveled to Dagestan and the Caspi an coast in mid-2005. Indeed, close examination of developments in reforming the force structure of Russia's multiple armed forces since 2002-2003-when practical application of such reforms began, along with a change in threat assessment that led to a new emphasis on terror ism and insurgency-indicates Chechnya's impact on those changes in force structure.1 The second, perhaps even more portentous threat, is the succession to Putin. The Russian constitution prohibits Putin from succeeding himself after his term ends in This con stitutional obstacle presents Russia's elite with a very difficult problem. The various means by which they hope to overcome this obstacle have been called Project 2008. Succession, that is, the transfer of power and especially the transfer of power by wholly legitimate democratic means, is a primary weakness of Russia's polit ical system.2 Every succession since 1991 has been the result of violence or electoral fraud, if not both.3 The recurrence of these phenomena is one of the most important indicators that Russia's elite refuses to be bound by any sys tem of laws or of legal-political institutions. Consequently, democratic institutions that can ensure the legitimacy of a succession-or even of a government in power-have atrophied, and Russia's political history is characterized by one-man rule and constant struggles among the elite over his support.4 Western diplomats, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have publicly expressed a preference that Putin observe the terms of the constitution and not succeed himself in 2008.5 Obviously, if he were to attempt such a coup or stage one similar to the coup that led to his ele vation, he would set off a constitutional crisis, and a phony election could trigger both an exter nal and internal campaign to unseat him. Clear ly, the prospect of another color revolution similar to those in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyr gyzstan terrifies the Kremlin's current masters. They have good reason for fearing such a denouement. Putin's underlings actually cele brate that they have smashed all institutions and bureaucratic veto groups as well as any hope of autonomous political action from the Duma. Igor Bunin, director general of the Cen ter for Political Technologies, stated that Putin's reforms have aimed to convert the entire state system into a monocentric adminis tration in which he and his entourage have all the power. In such a system, conflicts within the bureaucracy are supposedly absent because it is vertically integrated. Hence, the govern ment becomes a technical instrument rather than a policy initiator, a position reserved for Putin and his entourage in the presidential chancellery.6 Putin, his chancellery, and their media spokesmen evidently believe they have achieved a result that has eluded Russian rulers since Nicholas I, namely officialdom's recurrent dream of a perfectly integrated vertical hierar chy that functions strictly as a machine. Because this machine supposedly incarnated the tsar's position as superseding all factional, partial, and sectoral interests, it was wholly depoliticized. Stephen Blank is a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Army War College. His research focuses on contempo rary strategy and defense and foreign policy in the Common wealth of Independent States. Copyright @ 2006 American Peace Society

Shifting Civilizational Borders in Orange Ukraine

INTRODUCTIONPerhaps surprisingly to some, the modern history and politics of Ukraine are conducive to religious pluralism, political moderation, and civic accord. These maturing subsurface features help to explain the appearance and success of the peaceful in 2004. Ukraine can now be called not just a managed or plebiscitary democracy, but something much closer to an authentic democracy, for recent events have affirmed the sovereignty of the people; these events themselves can be called revolutionary, for they have overturned an old pattern of state-society relations and augur a rule-of-law regime. The appearance, success, and peacefulness of the orange revolution indicate profound or civilizational features that deserve attention in their own right; these features also draw Ukraine away from more insular Russia.Accordingly, the first purpose of this article is to contest a critical aspect of Samuel Huntingtoris religion-based thesis regarding the clash of civilizations1-namely where he locates the civilizational fault-line between western Christianity and east European orthodoxy within Ukraine. The second-related but more substantial-purpose is to contextualize and interpret recent events in the country as products of the features noted above, now brought to the surface.These topics are important because the (at least provisional) establishment of history's first authentic eastern Slavic democracy opens the door to further domestic reforms and to innovative western diplomacy in the region. They are important, also, because Huntingtoris thesis on civilizational affiliation to a significant degree both informs and reflects western politics regarding Ukraine and Russia. If his thesis is misconceived, then western political views regarding these two countries-and likely other regions on the peripheries of Russia-need to be revised.Indeed, a closer examination of religious affiliation and cultural-political orientation shows that Huntingtoris thesis is conceptually and empirically untenable. He is clearly wrong in his view that Ukrainians only in the western part of their country form a base for a national-democratic movement and a pro-European political preference. In fact the orange revolution was supported by many religious and ethnic groups, including Russians in the central and eastern regions. Electoral results show that the Ukrainian idea and European border move continuously eastward, where they are well received by the local population2. Similar trends in Ukraine's economy, education, and culture both animate and reflect transformations in the country's society. These trends signify a growing consensus around national and European values.A subtheme of this article is that an space or social constructionist critique, based on the ideas of Jacques Ellul,3 offers a better explanation of events in Ukraine and a better guide to western policy in the region than does Huntingtoris civilizational or spheres of influence model. In his notable work on propaganda, Ellul sees ideological regimes as vulnerable to overturning when the informational monopolies within their borders are breached. This is what happened to the Soviet and neoSoviet regime in Ukraine. An information-aided, religious, pluralism-political modernization perspective might also apply in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, though these cases will not be treated here.The installation of history's first eastern Slavic democracy by peaceful means is a novel event. The presence of a large number of Russians who now find themselves under a democratic regime is also novel. These and other developments call for suitable western responses in the region, suggested in the closing discussion.RELIGIOUS AND CIVILIZATIONAL BOUNDARIES IN UKRAINEHuntingtoris premise is that civilizational allegiance is most importantly defined by the factor of religion. Religion orients the individual or community towards political authority and shapes the larger part of a country's system of political beliefs and structures. …

Between Political Rhetoric and Realpolitik Calculations: Western Diplomacy and the Baltic Independence Struggle in the Cold War Endgame

Fifteen years after the Baltic SSRs' independence declarations, this article sheds new light on the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian struggle to regain statehood in the context of international relations between 1988 and 1991. Based on declassified archival sources from Western and Eastern archives, memoirs and official histories, it reveals the nature of ‘Western’ Baltic policies and analyses how (far) they impacted on the Soviet Union's demise. Second, the role universal normative values played in Western, Soviet and Baltic politics will be discussed in historical perspective; with the article concluding by offering some reflections on the general relationship between political rhetoric and foreign policy.

How Khrushchev Leaked his Secret Speech to the World

On the night of 24 February 1956, the windows of the Communist Party's Central Committee building in the heart of Moscow were ablaze with light into the early hours, with the great black limousines of the Party elite parked all round it. This, it seemed to westerners in Moscow, was very odd. The Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) had formally ended that afternoon. So why was the Party headquarters still humming with activity that night? It was not many days before inflammatory rumours began to circulate, fuelled by western diplomats with good connections to their Central European communist colleagues, and by western correspondents of communist newspapers. Scarcely credible tales were whispered that Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, First Secretary of the CPSU, had made a sensational speech denouncing Stalin for heinous crimes, including murder and torture. As it was a mere three years since Stalin's death, this seemed barely credible. True, for many months the rigidly controlled press had been full of mounting attacks on the 'cult of personality', obviously a veiled reference to Stalin. This criticism had reached a crescendo during the Twentieth Congress, though only Anastas Mikoyan, Khrushchev's right hand man, had been authorized to criticize Stalin cautiously by name in a published speech. But overt charges of torture and murder? Surely impossible. The rumours in 'diplomatic circles' suggested nevertheless that something totally unprecedented really had happened: a furious personal denunciation of the man who, only three years before, had been looked upon as God by the overwhelming majority of the population. Now, it seemed, God had been cast down and showered with accusations of committing appalling crimes and oppression on a massive scale. Nothing, however, appeared in the Party or government press. The rumours could not be substantiated. But they were so insistent that my colleague in Reuters news agency, Sidney Weiland, filed a report of four brief paragraphs. This stated merely that 'diplomatic circles' were a-buzz with rumours of a speech by Khrushchev denouncing Stalin at a special meeting after the formal end of the Party Congress. But in those days there was prior censorship in the USSR. Western correspondents had to write and send their stories from a special office in the Central Telegraph building. Weiland handed in his story for cabling, fully expecting it to be censored. He was right; it vanished into the censor's maw and was never heard of again.

Moods of Bitterness: How Political Polarisation has Influenced Zimbabwean Elections

Since 2000 elections in Zimbabwe have been characterised by bitter struggles, mainly between the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). In the 2000 parliamentary elections and the 2002 presidential elections these struggles became so violent that lives were lost on both sides, with the protagonists blaming each other for instigating the violence. Real and imagined violence became the language with which even the international community, especially the media, articulated the Zimbabwean crisis at the expense of other equally problematic issues such as the land question, the constitutional debate, economic and personal sanctions, drought and hunger, and poor political decisions by major players on both sides of the political divide. This paper argues that the violent character of the Zimbabwean crisis is a result of a general mood of bitterness that had been building up for decades prior to the current crisis. That mood is traceable to the brutality of the liberation struggle and the bitterness continued in the early 1980s with the Matebeleland crisis, whose violent suppression raised bitter ethnic questions. The mood continued to thicken with the militarisation of Zimbabwean politics when the war veterans entered the political fray especially after the February 2000 constitutional reform referendum. Although Zimbabwe has had a multi-party system since 1980, the real contribution of past political parties, civil society and the international community in Zimbabwe's democratic experiment has been lost in the rhetoric of violence of the last five years. The general mood of bitterness has made it impossible even for wellmeaning religious groups and concerned governments of neighbouring countries to negotiate a compromise political solution. Sections of the international media, human rights organisations and some Western diplomats, rather than helping to tone down the bitterness have increased tensions by employing the rhetoric of violence, even in the elections of March 2005, long after the conflicting parties had expressly and demonstrably abandoned violence.

The Dominion and the Rising Sun: Canada Encounters Japan, 1929-41 (review)

Reviewed by: The Dominion and the Rising Sun: Canada Encounters Japan, 1929–41 Jack Stanton The Dominion and the Rising Sun: Canada Encounters Japan, 1929–41. By John D. Meehan. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: UBC Press, 2004. ISBN 0-7748-1121-8. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. Pp. xii, 250. Can $29.95. From the title, a reader might logically expect to find in Meehan's study an analysis of diplomatic relations between Canada and Japan during the critical years prior to the Pacific war. That initial impression tends to be confirmed by the choice of dates to bookend the discussion: from the formal exchange of ministers in 1929 to the withdrawal of legation staff from Tokyo in 1941. Despite the author's assertion that Japan was "terra incognita," Canada had "encountered" Japan in the late nineteenth century, and developed an extensive relationship centered around trade, immigration, and missionary activity. While the author promises "new insights" into Canada's diplomatic coming of age, the focus here is largely on the familiar territory of the North Atlantic Triangle and Canada's difficulties in balancing its ties to Britain with the growing importance of the United States. Japan's determination to become a power in Asia greatly complicated the problem for Canada of finding some safe middle ground between her North Atlantic partners. Most of Meehan's discussion is taken up with the efforts of the Canadian government and its Department of External Affairs to straddle the growing distance between London and Washington in their response to Japan's expansionism. Meanwhile the situation in East Asia is handled at roughly the level of a survey text, with more space devoted to the peculiarities of Herbert Marler (Canada's Minister) than to the complications and cross currents that triggered conflicting responses in Whitehall and the White House. China is treated as monolithic, despite the struggle among nationalists, communists, and war lords, while Japan appears as the one-dimensional villain. Imperialism, Meehan explains (p. 97), was generally discredited in the West after 1919, which might have surprised the natives of Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, and the hapless "beneficiaries" of the Open Door, not to mention Canadians who celebrated the achievements of the British Empire. While the author usefully reminds us that Canadian business firms were active in pursuing opportunities in Japan and Manchukuo, his tendency to treat conservatives, imperialists, business interests, and Japan apologists as interchangeable is unhelpful, as is the suggestion that Canadian business was complicit in Japanese expansionism (p. 200) while acknowledging that evidence of complicity is difficult to find. Conversely, he has no trouble claiming that street protests over Manchuria reflected the emerging role of public opinion in the making of foreign policy without offering any evidence that the protests affected External Affairs' views. Similarly, he repeatedly describes Canada as "appeasing" Japan, despite Canada's failure to support British efforts at conciliation, its tilt toward the U.S. hard line, its refusal to recognize Manchukuo, and its decision to restrict exports of strategic metals. [End Page 1234] In sum, Canada and the Rising Sun is a study of Canada's foreign policy and struggle for autonomy with the troubles in Asia as the lens, rather than a nuanced examination of Canada's relations with Japan. The author includes a useful bibliography but offers little in the way of fresh insights into Canada's role in the Far East or its dilemmas in Western diplomacy. Jack Stanton Saint Mary’s University Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Copyright © 2005 Society for Military History

Estranged states

This article offers an anthropological perspective on international relations by studying ‘macro-structures’ as the effects of elite-conducted contingent practices. It draws on Der Derian’s genealogical explanation of diplomacy as a second-order mediation among ‘estranged states’. This view sets up the argument that national minorities are constructed as international security concerns within diplomatic discourse because they obstruct nation-states from mutually securing themselves through diplomacy. Thus, each state has a vested interest in supporting other states as stable actors with established national identities. As Others in the nation-state, national minorities threaten the inter-state system as they destabilize any given nation-state’s identity as a diplomatic actor. This situation ostensibly obstructs diplomacy whereby European nation-states seek mutual security by approximating the putative pre-Westphalian unity from which they emerged after Christendom’s collapse. The argument is demonstrated through a critical analysis of post-Second World War international agreements and ethnographic research among western diplomats working on Estonia’s minority integration policy.

Shifting Civilizational Borders in Orange Ukraine: Dilemmas and Opportunities for Western Diplomacy

Shifting Civilizational Borders in Orange Ukraine: Dilemmas and Opportunities for Western Diplomacy