scholarly journals Politics, Power, and Influence: Defense Industries in the Post-Cold War

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
João Carlos Gonçalves dos Reis

The post-Cold War era is placing the defense industry at a crossroads. If, on the one hand, it is under great pressure to guarantee warlike efforts around the world, with tight budgets and uncertain lead-times, on the other hand, it is seen as a central instrument for national sovereignty and foreign policy. The purpose of this research is to report the state-of-the-art of the existing literature and explore the most relevant research areas in order to provide the conceptual basis for further empirical research. To do so, this study uses a preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis (PRISMA), which is an adequate technique as it allows one to discover concepts, ideas, and debates about the defense industry. The results evidenced three different approaches to the defense industry—integration, autarky, and domination. In that regard, we present several case studies in which the defense industry is used as an instrument of foreign policy or national sovereignty. Future studies may focus on empirical research to validate the theoretical findings or to identify variables that lead some defense industries to seek synergies, resorting to mergers and acquisitions, while other defense companies prefer to obtain State funds.

Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent

This chapter focuses on the United States’s predominance and the search for order in the post-Cold War period. George H. W. Bush, who came to power in January 1989, concentrated on world affairs and had a series of foreign successes before the end of 1991. Bush’s cautious, pragmatic, orderly approach carried both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand he escaped any major disasters abroad and avoided antagonizing the Soviet Union or rekindling the Cold War. On the other hand, he seemed to be undynamic and at the mercy of events — he failed to provide a sense of overall direction to US foreign policy once the Cold War ended. The chapter first considers US foreign policy in the 1990s before discussing the Gulf War of 1990–1991, US–Soviet relations in the 1990s, US policy towards the ‘rogue states’ during the time of Bill Clinton, and ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Somalia and Haiti.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-81
Author(s):  
Regina Helle

Despite continued weak economic performance, Russia displays high determination to increase its global influence. On the one hand, hard power and the use of violence play a much greater role as foreign policy tools than a few years ago. On the other hand, Russia seems to be pursuing the goal of overthrowing the liberal international order, thereby also accepting long-term distortions of relations especially with the West. What are the links between Russia’s conflict-laden, aggressive foreign policy and the liberal international order? In this article, the conflictual dynamics between Russia and the West are primarily understood as conflicts over social status. An emotion-focused analysis of official Russian speech between 1994 and 2015 shows how the subjective status expectations of Russian decision-makers have affected their attitudes and policies towards the West and the post-Cold War liberal order.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-60
Author(s):  
N. N. Neklyudov

The study of Russia’s foreign policy poses something of a paradox. On the one hand, Russia’s actions are viewed as aimed at revising the existing rules-based order built by the end of the Cold War. On the other hand, on numerous occasions, one pinpoints that Russia has devised a language similar to the Western nations to justify its foreign policy. I call the phenomenon that explains this paradox the game of interpretation. The article illustrates how Russia is engaged in the game of interpretation with the West in the post-Cold War order by Russia’s appliance to the norm of humanitarian interventions. By analyzing the Russian discourse during the Russo-Georgian War (2008), I demonstrate how the Russian foreign policy leadership reproduces similar narrative patterns used by the West during the Kosovo War (1999). Exemplifying the game of interpretation by humanitarian interventionism is not accidental. Humanitarian interventionism is studied in the literature as being characteristic of the Western ‘ethical foreign policy’ originated by the end of the Cold War, with Russia being depicted as either skeptical or as an unequivocal opponent of such an approach in world politics. Methodologically, the work builds on quantitative and qualitative analysis of selected texts compiled from the archives of NATO and the US State Department, as well as the website “Kremlin.ru” and the website of the Russian Foreign Ministry.


Author(s):  
Patrick M. Morgan

This chapter focuses on the social aspects of strategy, arguing for the importance of relationships in strategy and, in particular, in understanding of deterrence. Deterrence, in its essence, is predicated upon a social relationship – the one deterring and the one to be deterred. Alliance and cooperation are important in generating the means for actively managing international security. Following Freedman’s work on deterrence in the post-Cold War context, ever greater interaction and interdependence might instill a stronger sense of international community, in which more traditional and ‘relatively primitive’ notions of deterrence can be developed. However, this strategic aspiration relies on international, especially transatlantic, social cohesion, a property that weakened in the twenty-first century, triggering new threats from new kinds of opponent. The need for a sophisticated and social strategy for managing international security is made all the more necessary.


2018 ◽  
Vol 236 ◽  
pp. 1197-1205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin Kaczmarski

A decade ago, Beijing's relations with Moscow were of marginal interest to China scholars. Topics such as growing Sino-American interdependence-cum-rivalry, engagement with East Asia or relations with the developing world overshadowed China's relationship with its northern neighbour. Scholars preoccupied with Russia's foreign policy did not pay much attention either, regarding the Kremlin's policy towards China as part and parcel of Russia's grand strategy directed towards the West. The main dividing line among those few who took a closer look ran between sceptics and alarmists. The former interpreted the post-Cold War rapprochement as superficial and envisioned an imminent clash of interests between the two states. The latter, a minority, saw the prospect of an anti-Western alliance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo De Rezende Saturnino Braga

The foreign policy narrative of South Africa is strongly grounded in human rights issues, beginning with the transition from a racial segregation regime to a democracy. The worldwide notoriety of the apartheid South Africa case was one factor that overestimated the expectations of the role the country would play in the world after apartheid. Global circumstances also fostered this perception, due to the optimistic scenario of the post-Cold War world order. The release of Nelson Mandela and the collapse of apartheid became the perfect illustration of the victory of liberal ideas, democracy, and human rights. More than 20 years after the victory of Mandela and the first South African democratic elections, the criticism to the country's foreign policy on human rights is eminently informed by those origin myths, and it generates a variety of analytical distortions. The weight of expectations, coupled with the historical background that led the African National Congress (ANC) to power in South Africa, underestimated the traditional tensions of the relationship between sovereignty and human rights. Post-apartheid South Africa presented an iconic image of a new bastion for the defence of human rights in the post-Cold War world. The legacy of the miraculous transition in South Africa, though, seems to have a deeper influence on the role of the country as a mediator in African crises rather than in a liberal-oriented human rights approach. This is more evident in cases where the African agenda clashes with liberal conceptions of human rights, especially due to the politicisation of the international human rights regime. 


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