Nicaragua: Soviet-Cuban Pawn or Non-aligned Country?

1985 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 163-176
Author(s):  
Jiri Valenta

It is now six years since the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) toppled the regime of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Even today, the nature of the FSLN - its road to power, its political complexion and orientation, and its objectives - remains the subject of heated debate. Some still argue that the Sandinista regime is a nationalistic, non-aligned, although radical, Third World government. Others emphasize the Marxist-Leninist overtones characterizing its seizure and consolidation of power, its foreign relations, and its efforts to introduce socialist transformation to Nicaraguan society.Basically, there are two exaggerated views of Nicaraguan foreign policy: one depicts Nicaragua as a communist pawn of Moscow and Havana; the other views Nicaragua as a classical non-aligned Third World nation. Neither school of thought reflects the complex reality of Nicaraguan politics and foreign policy.

1896 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 111-120
Author(s):  
Felix Salomon

The latest work from the pen of Sir J. R. Seeley, just published, contains, as the last legacy of an author who has rendered such good service to learning, a suggestion surpassing the limits of the subject of which he treats. In speaking of the growth of British policy, Seeley also proceeds to treat of the foreign relations of a state from the standpoint of their development, and in giving the history of this growth teaches us to observe and to reproduce the conditions of such a development. At the same time special stress is laid upon the point that the policy of a state is not to be considered by itself, but that the reciprocal action of states upon one another must be followed out. The history of policy is to Seeley synonymous with international history. It cannot be said that this conception is altogether new, since there is no lack, especially in English literature, of works which have adopted it; but, on the other hand, it is doubtful whether this manner of treating of foreign policy, which cannot pay sufficient regard to its connection with the internal policy of every separate state, will always be advisable.


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothea E. Schulz

Starting with the controversial esoteric employment of audio recordings by followers of the charismatic Muslim preacher Sharif Haidara in Mali, the article explores the dynamics emerging at the interface of different technologies and techniques employed by those engaging the realm of the Divine. I focus attention on the “border zone” between, on the one hand, techniques for appropriating scriptures based on long-standing religious conventions, and, on the other, audio recording technologies, whose adoption not yet established authoritative and standardized forms of practice, thereby generating insecurities and becoming the subject of heated debate. I argue that “recyclage” aptly describes the dynamics of this “border zone” because it captures the ways conventional techniques of accessing the Divine are reassessed and reemployed, by integrating new materials and rituals. Historically, appropriations of the Qur’an for esoteric purposes have been widespread in Muslim West Africa. These esoteric appropriations are at the basis of the considerable continuities, overlaps and crossovers, between scripture-related esoteric practices on one side, and the treatment by Sharif Haidara’s followers of audio taped sermons as vessels of his spiritual power, on the other.


Author(s):  
Rahul Sagar

This chapter examines ideas about war, peace, and international relations over the century preceding independence, of which there were many more and in greater depth than widely supposed. It outlines how and why Indians first began to articulate views on the subject, and subsequently analyses these ideas. It proposes that, contrary to the opinion of some scholars, Indians thought carefully about the nature of international relations. Most importantly, it emphasizes the plurality of views on the subject, and explains how and why proponents of pragmatism in foreign relations came to be sidelined in the period immediately preceding independence. Several of the personalities developing notions of what a foreign policy for India should involve as of the early twentieth century, including India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, became important actors in formulating and implementing foreign policy post-independence.


Worldview ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 25-29
Author(s):  
Gustav Ranis

AbstractNo aspect of our foreign relations produces more yawns on Main Street or occasional discomfort along Pennsylvania Avenue than our programs of economic assistance to developing countries. If we rather arbitrarily date the beginnings of that effort to coincide with President Truman's Point Four Inaugural, we are now in the thirty-first year of an enterprise that has already cost us more than $150 billion, with no end in sight. As to results, the general feeling is one of frustration, of being overwhelmed and undercompensated. It does not help to have other international and domestic problems clamoring for attention while one developing country after another denounces either our indifference or our interference. Instead of success and gratitude we seem to be reaping continuous foreign policy debacles amongst erstwhile or current Third World aid recipients—from Nicaragua and Mexico to Afghanistan and Iran.


Numen ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob De Roover

Abstract For centuries, the question whether there were peoples without religion was the subject of heated debate among European thinkers. At the turn of the twentieth century, this concern vanished from the radar of Western scholarship: all known peoples and societies, it was concluded, had some form of religion. This essay examines the relevant debates from the sixteenth to the twentieth century: Why was this issue so important? How did European thinkers determine whether or not some people had religion? What allowed them to close this debate? It will be shown that European descriptions of the “religions” of non-Western cultures counted as evidence for or against theoretical claims made within a particular framework, namely that of generic Christian theology. The issue of the universality of religion was settled not by scientific research but by making ad hoc modifications to this theological framework whenever it faced empirical anomalies. This is important today, because the debate concerning the cultural universality of religion has been reopened. On the one hand, evolutionary-biological explanations of religion claim that religion must be a cultural universal, since its origin lies in the evolution of the human species; on the other hand, authors suggest that religion is not a cultural universal, because many of the “religions” of humanity are fictitious entities created within an underlying theological framework.


Author(s):  
Sarah B. Snyder

In its formulation of foreign policy, the United States takes account of many priorities and factors, including national security concerns, economic interests, and alliance relationships. An additional factor with significance that has risen and fallen over time is human rights, or more specifically violations of human rights. The extent to which the United States should consider such abuses or seek to moderate them has been and continues to be the subject of considerable debate.


2006 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabetta Brighi

AbstractBy adopting a longue durée approach this paper aims to move the debate on Italy's foreign policy under the leadership of Silvio Berlusconi beyond the presentism and personalization currently dominating it. It argues firstly that the equation of Italian foreign policy with Berlusconi – irresistible as it may be – does not ultimately hold, and secondly that Berlusconi's ‘new course’ in foreign policy has to be put in a broader context. A more historically informed reading of the subject can on the one hand confer meaning and substance to what otherwise could appear to be a supremely ephemeral foreign policy, and on the other help illuminate its current trajectory and future implications. Far from being the product of ‘one man alone’ and his surreal quirks, the recent change in Italy's foreign policy results from a particular dialectic interplay between structural and contingent developments, which have come to intersect at this particular time.


1969 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 741-754 ◽  
Author(s):  
RFD

The argument whether the United States in the conduct of foreign policy should lean toward multilateral or unilateral action tends to revolve in the stratosphere. Proponents of each course cite the conspicuous failures of the other and submit wishful designs varying from triumphant world government to uninhibited national sovereignty. Unfortunately, the range of real choices confronting the policymaker is very much narrower. Constraints on decisionmaking in a democracy, even in a dictatorship, are very strict and nowhere more so than on issues having to do with sharing among nations decisions affecting major national interests.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-64
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Legucka

This article is devoted to the evaluation of the Eastern Partnership from the point of view of the implementation of Russia’s foreign policy. Using the research approach of constructivism, it analyses Russia’s attitude towards the EU’s Eastern Partnership project, as well as Russia’s reactions to the implementation of the EaP. Therefore, the subject of the analysis is not so much the relations of the EU and Russia with six states: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, as well as Russia’s and the EU’s narratives on its neighbourhood. This will make it possible to examine to what extent the position of one actor (EU) in relation to another (Russia) has been strengthened/weakened and, secondly, how the argumentation has promoted (the given message) in legitimizing the project as a whole, for both internal and external use. These projects were, on the one hand, Russia’s “close abroad” and, on the other, the EU’s “common neighbourhood”.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document