IR-One-Definition-A-Day: NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (1949)

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 1949

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.

Signing of the NATO Treaty

NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. After the destruction of the Second World War, the nations of Europe struggled to rebuild their economies and ensure their security. The former required a massive influx of aid to help the war-torn landscapes re-establish industries and produce food, and the latter required assurances against a resurgent Germany or incursions from the Soviet Union. The United States viewed an economically strong, rearmed, and integrated Europe as vital to the prevention of communist expansion across the continent. As a result, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed a program of large-scale economic aid to Europe. The resulting European Recovery Program, or Marshall Plan, not only facilitated European economic integration but promoted the idea of shared interests and cooperation between the United States and Europe. Soviet refusal either to participate in the Marshall Plan or to allow its satellite states in Eastern Europe to accept the economic assistance helped to reinforce the growing division between east and west in Europe.

Read More

http://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/NATO

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IR Literature_Legal Reforms in China and Vietnam: A Comparison of Asian Communist Regimes

Original Title in English
By Authors: John Gillespie, Albert Chen
Publisher: Routledge, UK, ISBN:978-0-415-56104-4 (hardback) 978-0-203-85269-9 (electronic)

About the Book: Although the adoption of market reforms has been a key factor leading to China's recent economic growth, China continues to be governed by a communist party and has a socialist-influenced legal system. Vietnam, starting later, also with a socialist-influenced legal system, has followed a similar reform path, and other countries too are now looking towards China and Vietnam as models for development. 

This book provides a comprehensive, comparative assessment of legal developments in China and Vietnam, examining similarities and differences, and raising important questions such as: Is there a distinctive Chinese model, and/or a more general East Asian Model? If so, can it be flexibly applied to social and economic conditions in different countries? If it cannot be applied to a culturally and politically similar country like Vietnam, is the model transportable elsewhere in the world? Combining 'micro' or interpretive methods with 'macro' or structural traditions, the book provides a nuanced account of legal reforms in China and Vietnam, highlighting the factors likely to promote, change or resist the spread of the Chinese model.

Table of Contents

• Part I Introduction
• Chapter 1 Introduction: China and Vietnam Compared Albert Chen and John Gillespie;
• Chapter 2 Sequencing Chinese Legal Development Professor Randall Peerenboom;

• Part II Debating legal development in China and Vietnam
• Chapter 3 Legal Thought and Legal Development in the People's Republic of China Albert Chen;
• Chapter 4 The Juridification of State Regulation in Vietnam John Gillespie;

• Part III Developing an Administrative Law System
• Introduction: Michael Dowdle;
• Chapter 5 Towards Regulatory Neutrality in a Party-State? A Review of Administrative Law Reforms in China Assistant Dr Zheng Ge;
• Chapter 6 Achievements and challenges in developing an administrative law system in contemporary Vietnam Vu Doan Ket and Matthieu Salomon;

• Part IV Public access to justice
• Introduction: Nicholas Booth;
• Chapter 7 Access to Justice in China: Potentials, Limits and Alternatives Fu Hualing;
• Chapter 8 Publication and Public Access: the largely inaccessible Vietnamese court decision Pip Nicholson;

• Part V Commercial regulatory reforms
• Introduction: Donald Clarke;
• Chapter 9 Commercial Regulatory Reform in China during Transition: An Alternative Path to the Regulatory State Assistant Dr Leng Jing;
• Chapter 10 Vietnam: The development of commercial regulation in Vietnam Melanie Beresford;

• Part VI The evolving role of legal education Introduction: Jerry Cohen;
• Chapter 11 China's Lawyers and their Training: Enduring Influences and Disconnects Alison Conner;
• Chapter 12 Legal Education in Vietnam: To Change or Not to Change? Bui Bich Thi Lien;

• Part VII Legal diffusion: the role of non-state actors in shaping the regulatory environment
• Introduction: Michael Dowdle.

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IR - One Definition A Day - International Organisations

One-definition-a-day: International Organisations (p. 270, Ref. 1)

Formal institutional structures transcending national boundaries which are created by multilateral agreement among nation-states. Their purpose is to foster international cooperation in areas such as security, law, economic and social matters and diplomacy. They are a relatively recent phenomena although many commentators, from the Ancient Greeks onwards, have advocated their creation in one guise or another. In fact they began to emerge in the context of the nineteenth-century European state system where there were specific and self-conscious attempts to facilitate international intercourse and to provide a functional enabling procedure for common international endeavours.

The first of these was the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine in 1815 and the most well known was modern International Telecommunication Union (ITO). In the twentieth century these organisations have proliferated to such as extent that on almost every issue, over and above the traditional state-to-state diplomatic network there exists a more or less permanent framework of institutions through which collective measures can be realised.

Modern international organisations are of two basic types, the 'public' variety known as intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) and the 'private' variety, the international non-governmental organisations (INGOs). Foremost examples of the former would be the League of Nations and the United Nations and of the latter, the International Red Cross and Amnesty International. Common characteristics of both types are voluntary membership, permanent organisation, a constitutional structure, a permanent secretariat and a consultative conference. 

IGOs are established by treaty thus their competence is initially limited to the specifics of the convention, but organisational task expansion to meet new contingencies will commonly follow if the IGO is to respond to change. In this way, although states retain ultimate authority, international organisations not only provide a means for cooperative action but also multiple channels of communication which on varying levels overlie traditional diplomatic structures. For example, it has been estimated that at present over 389 public and 4'700 private international organisations are operative on a day-to-day basis in world politics.

The theory of international organisation has evolved from developments in such areas as internationalism, trans-nationalism, complex interdependence, the study of regimes, functionalism, federalism and integration. 

The central focus of all these concerns is an attempt to get beyond the political, social and economic fragmentation which has traditionally characterised the more parochial and individualistic views of classic realism. While it is not easy to access the extent to which international organisations have contributed to the growth of internationalism, two basic views can be identified. 

On one hand, they are seen as early prototypes for an emerging global governance, and on the other they are regarded as ineffectual and largely symbolic subterfuges for unilateralism, which is the 'real' or 'proper' source of international behaviour. Neither extreme adequately captures the role of international organisations in contemporary world politics. Although doubts persist as to whether they are autonomous international actors with a defined legal personality, few deny that they have made an enormous contribution to the management of international relations.


(Source: Penguin Dictionary of IR)

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IR - One Definition A Day: IMF_International Monetary Fund

IR - One Definition A Day: IMF (International Monetary Fund)

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was established as part of the Bretton Woods system in 1944. Subsequently it became part of the UN structure. In conjunction with the World Bank, the IMF was regarded as one of the central institutions for the managment of post-war economic relations.

The IMF, as the name implies, was intended to supply international liquidity to member states finding themselves in balance of payments difficulties. In addition the Fund was to manage a system of stable (rather than fixed) exchange rates. A particular currency would have a 'par value' which was expressed in terms of dollars. Alteration of that rate would be effected, with the approval of the Fund, if the states' external payments balance was held to be in 'fundemenatal disequilibrium'. 

As already stated, in addition to its supervision of the exchange rate regime, the Fund lends money to member states in balance of payments difficulties. It is always assumed that the monetary authorities of the recipient state would take appropriate measures to correct such imbalances and indeed it has become a feature of the IMF lending that so-called 'conditionality' stipulations would be part of the 'rescue package'. 

Recognition of the right to lay down such conditions is indicated by the recipient government issuing a 'letter of intent' to the IMF. This whole procedure - of laying down conditions which are then accepted in the letter - is clearly a significant erosion of state sovereignty. Although an accepted and expected feature of the IMF's conduct it is not without controversy. The IMF has a tradition of requiring states in receipt of its loans to make structural adjustments to rectify the disequilibrium. Thus raising taxes and interest rates and cutting public expenditure, including subsidies, are typical IMF-preferred policies.

The linchpin of the original Bretton Woods arrangement was the US dollar. The gold/dollar exchange rate had been fixed at 35 dollars per ounce in 1934 and it was assumed that this exchange rate was, to all intents and purposes fixed and immutable. During the early post-war period of reconstruction the principal concern about the dollar was its shortage. 

Although the US balance of payment began to move into deficit during the 1950s it was not regarded as serious. As long as the dollar shortage remained other states in the system were willing to see the US running deficits which were financed by the export of dollars. The IMF system was, in fact, a gold exchange standard with the dollar regarded as being 'as good as gold' for these purposes. The IMF system of stable exchange rates established as a fundamental principle of the system after 1944 began to be seriously questioned towards the end of the 1960s. By 1961 the great emerging problem was the US deficit. By running a deficit the US was funding the system but equally was running the risk that, if confidence collapsed, then a forced devaluation of the dollar would be necessary.

When the collapse of confidence in the dollar eventually came in 1971 it was both spectacular and momentous. Speculative attacks upon the dollar were encouraged by a series of poor trade figures which seemed to suggest that the link between gold and the dollar might have to be suspended or ended altogether. In August 1971 the US President announced that the convertibility of the dollar into gold was temporarily suspended. At the end of a year a joint meeting of the Group of Ten (G10) and the Excutive Directors of the Fund agreed to devalue the dollar 10 per cent against the other currencies in the Group. These decisions effectively brought down the Bretton Woods  system of stable exchange rates. Following a second dollar devaluation in February 1973 the system was abandoned and the new era of 'floating' rates replaced it.

Cautious and considered deliberations of these changes were reduced by the first oil shock in 1973-4. Suddenly states were moving massively into credits or debit on their balance of payments. Any chance of structured reform was abandoned and floating continued into the future. The Jamaica Agreement of January 1976 amended the Articles of Agreement of the Fund to legitimize floating. In reality there has been a good deal of 'managment' of the float by the central banking authorities of the principal G10 states since. The Jamaica Agreement also confirmed that for the future the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) would be the principal reserve asset of the Fund.

The debt crisis of the 1980s was a significant issue area in IMF management strategies. The IMF-Mexico resource package of November 1982 extended almost 4 billion dollars of IMF credit lines in return for structural adjustments such as reducing the budget deficit and subsidies from the Mexican government. Further IMF conditionality included a 5 billion dollar credit from commercial banks to match the IMF monies. The Mexican agreement became the model for other IMF-sponsored rescue packages. 

These atttempts at debt crisis management proved to be a Faustian bargain for many recipients. Growth rates significantly deteriorated as debt as a proportion of GNP rose. IMF structural adjustment demands were the object of party political atttacks from opposition groups. Eventually a new initiative under the so-called Brady Plan allowed for debts to be re-negotiated to reduce interest payments and, in some cases, to rescind the debt totally. Throughout the IMF has continued to insist upon structural adjustments as condition for debt relief.


French translation by Anh Tho Andres @YourVietnamExpert.com
Vietnamese translation by Cuong Phan
German translation by Han Dang-Klein 

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IR - One Definition A Day: Persona non grata

IR - One Definition A Day: Persona non grata

Term normally associated with diplomacy whereby a receiving state declares that it is unwilling to accept or receive a diplomat representative of another state. This may occur at the initial stage of appointment (agréation) or more usually it may occur after the granting of persona grata (acceptability) when the diplomat concerned has violated the rules of normal diplomatic behaviour. The declaration of persona non grata represents a serious diplomatic initiative since it involves expulsion or at least a request that the diplomat be recalled to his country of origin. Tit-for-tat expulsions are not an uncommon feature of contemporary international relation.

(Source: wikipedia)

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IR - One Definition A Day: MFN - Most Favoured Nation

IR - One Definition A Day:

MFN - Most Favoured Nation

This fundamental principle of international trade seeks to establish and advance the principle of equality of treatement and non-discrimination among trading states. The principle may be illustrated by taking a bilateral situation thus: under mfn principles, the parties will extend to each other the same advantages that they have extended to other third parties in the past, or are extending to others concurrently, or intend to extend in the future. Most favoured nation (mfn) principles are typically applied to tariffs and if these principles are applied consistently, they should lead to mutual and balanced tariff reductions.
It is generally agreed that the MFN principle began to be applied to international trade in the eighteenth century, reaching its peak in the last decades of the nineteenth. The First World War and the events thereafter led to the weakening of its application but with the formation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1947 a concerted attempt was made to resuscitate these ideas by writing them into the first article of GATT. At the same time GATT allows important exceptions to the mfn principle. Crucially trade blocs, free trade areas and common markets are all except. The emergence of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Developement (UNCTAD) in the 1960s further weakened the mfn principle because the Third World called for a system of positive discrimination in their favour to replace it. This call has been recognized system of preferences between advanced industrial countries (AICS) and the Third World.
The mfn principle remains a testament to those who believed in a liberal, equal, non-discriminator international trading system.

Read more on multilateralism, reciprocity


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IR - One Definition a Day: International Relations (IR)

One-Definition-A-Day: International Relations (IR), (p. 274, Ref. 1)

This term is used to identify all interactions between state-based actors across state boundaries. The term can immediately be compared with, though is broader than, international politics. Indeed, the latter is subsumed as one, and certainly one of the most important, sub-fields of international relations. Thus international law is part of international relations but not international politics. Law is, after all, certainly in its customary form, created by interactions between state-based actors. Similarly international economic relations are part of international relations but not international politics. This is not to say that political calculations will not intrude into these areas, but only that they can be separated for the purposes of analysis.

International relations (IR) is thus an interdisciplinary and heterogeneous area of study. It has no unifying methodology because, taken with three examples mentioned above, international economics is an empirical social science, international law is far more normative than most social sciences while international politics is eclectic, borrowing from a number of traditions and divided in many minds into a rather unruly flock of activities. It should also be noted that the above listing is illustrative rather than exhaustive, diplomatic history, which again has its own methodology, being an obvious omission.

Despite its multidisciplinary and fragmented nature, most students of international relations view it as a sub-discipline of political science, broadly conceived. Although the main professional societies in the Anglo-American world have specifically and deliberately avoided using the term IR in order to indicate its multidisciplinary character (The International Studies Association and the British International Studies Association) the majority of members are in fact drawn from the study of politics. Indeed the domain of IR is often still referred to as 'international politics' despite the differences noted above. This terminological imprecision can also be noted in related labels such as 'world politics', 'foreign affairs', 'international affairs' and more recently 'international studies' and 'global politics'. Foreign policy analysis, security studies, International Political Economy and normative theory are the most vibrant sub-fields and these also are dominated by political scientists.

History and approaches

As a separate fields of academic inquiry distinct from International law, Political Theory and Diplomatic History, IR effectively began with the establishment of its first chair at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1919. The first general theoretical perspective was popularly labelled idealism and was characterized by a belief in progress; that the international system could be transformed into a fundamentally more peaceful and just world order.

From the start therefore IR was policy-orientated. Thereafter the subject underwent a succession of waves of theoretical activity which inspired a number of 'great debates' within the discipline. In rough chronological order (mindful that these 'schools' are not exclusive and do overlap) these are: realism, behaviorism, neo-realism, neo-liberalism, world systems theory, critical theory and postmodernism. These perspective shifts often involved bitter disputes about methodology, epistemology and ontology. However, there is now general acceptance within IR that given the range and complexity of the subject matter, a wide variety of theoretical approaches might be an asset rather than a liability. 

Most of these paradigm controversies were centred on the work of analysts in the USA and Europe (sometimes, inaccurately referred to as the 'Anglo-Amercian tradition' which tended to concentrate on great power/superpower issues. IR students in the Third World or South by and large, by-passed these debates and not unnaturally focused on particular policy problems with their states or regions. 

Overall theoretical perspectives, if developed at all, usually had their origins in Marxist/Leninist theories of imperialism in dependency theory and structuralism. With the ending of the Cold War, IR like its subject matter is in the state of flux. The two dominant perspectives are neo-realism and neo-liberalism but the general uncertainty about the continued validity of the state as the key actor in world politics, has led to doubts about the ability of IR in its present form, to survive as a separate area of academic study.

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Original Title in English: Dictionary of International Relations, Penguin (1998) by Authors Graham Evans and Jeffrey Newnham

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IR - One Definition A Day: AICs - North-South

IR - One Definition A Day: AICs - Advanced Industrial Countries

UN abbreviation for North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australasia. These states are often referred to simply as the North in documents such as the Brandt Report 1980.

The North
The term 'North' is a loose, portmanteau concept used in the advanced industrial countries (AICs). It is particularly popular in political economy and, in terms of developmental models, it may be regarded as being synonymous with the growth of the First World. Systems analysis tends to juxtapose it with the equally amorphous concept of the south. Indeed, the popular title of the first Brandt Report was 'North-South?'

The South
A collective noun used in the context of international political economy to identify a group of state actors. The first Brandt Report referred to the 'South' as broadly synonymous with 'developing' and 'poor' (Brandt, 1980, p. 31). The burden of the Brandt case was that the term was a dialectic antithesis to north and that the 'divide' could and should be bridged by Northern policies of self-interested cooperation. Gill and Law (1988) criticîze 'South' as contestable label but then proceed to use it, thereby selling the pass of conceptual clarity for the sake of convenience. Unlike the term 'Third World',  'South' is not derived from a particular ideological persuasion but it is rather a stipulative term for a typology of state action as the Brandt usage demonstrates.
The case against using the term at all in the analysis of international relations (IR) is that there is so much differentiation within the classification as to render it useless. At the top end of the range are the NICs as the archetype middle income growth-orientated economies. At the bottom end are located the 'famine belt' states of the fourth world. The end of the Cold War era in world politics and the collapse of communism has left the South with an absense of alternatives to the Northern model of market economics. In many parts of the South economic inefficiencies are compounded by political corruption and failure of leadership. Defections from Southern ranks will continue as individual states break out of the vicious cycle of low income-growing population-low growth. This will lead to an increasing fragmentation of Southern solidarity. The nightmare scenario for the rump of the South may be Northern indifference more than anything else.

North South
(à compléter)

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IR - One Definition A Day: Bretton Woods System

IR - One Definition A Day : Bretton Woods

A series of multilateral agreements on international economic relations were reached at Bretton Woods (BW/US) in July 1944 under the aegis of the embryo UN. Forty-four states agreed to a Final Act establishing an IMF and an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). The proposals that were discussed at BW were the outcome of a series of bilateral nogotiations conducted between the US and the UK over the previous two years. The IBRD was described by the London Economist in 1945 as a 'much simpler project which has attracted neither much discussion nor much hostility...'. 

The IMF, on the other hand, was from its inception more controversial. The two states concerned with these preliminaries, the US the UK had ratehr divergent ideas about the future monetary regime. These differences were made public in, respectively, the White Plan, originating in the US Treasury, and the Keynes Plan, originating in the UK Treasury. White envisaged a Stabilisation Fund made up entirely of contributions from member states. Keynes envisaged a Clearing Union based on the overdraft principle and employing a new unit of account - the 'bancor'. Whereas the total available liquidity remained constant under White - so that drawing rights equalled liabilities - in the Keynes scheme additional liquidity could be pumped into the system to enable debtor states to overdraw. Conversely, creditor states would provide the main collateral in this arrangement.

The Anglo-American differences over the putative IMF are sometimes peresented as the conservative versus the radical views of the future. It should be noted, however, that both schemes tended to reflect the perceived national interests of the parties advocating them. In the event, the US bargaining position was more credible and the Bretton Woods conference produced a fund which bore a close family resemblance to the White Plan.

The term 'Bretton Woods system' is often used to refer to these two institutions and to the regimes established. Both have changed considerably since their inception. Accordingly, the reference to 'Bretton Woods' is of historical, rather than contemporary, validity.


(Source: wikipedia)


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IR - One Definition A Day: Free Trade

IR - One Definition A Day: Free Trade (p. 183-184, Ref 1)

A trading system between two or more actors. The essence of free trade is that goods are imported without any restrictions, such as tariffs, being placed upon them. 

From an economic standpoint, free trade increases competition and efficiency. Producers have access to foreign markets, while consumers have access to imports. As a result of free trade the greater specialisation occurs in economic activity throughout the system. Individual members become less self-sufficient and more dependent upon others. Consequently, free trade is often associated with the growth of interdependence among actors. As a system of organising economic relations it may be directly contrasted with autarky or self-sufficiency.
The advocacy of free trade is usually associated with economic liberalism, at least in its classical phase. Many of these ideas were resuscitated after 1945 under the Bretton Woodssystem of international economic relations. Under the hegemonial influence of the United States, the major institutional framework for post-war relations was established. 

Similarly the later negotiations for an international trade regime, under the defunct International Trade Organisation (ITO), and the substitute General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) reflected the same liberal free trade philosophy. The same outlook influenced the Marshall Plan and post-war tariff-cutting negotiations under GATT. Free trade regimes have been most successful in manufacturing (secondary) sectors of economic activity. Agricultural production has rarely been truly free whilst free trade in service industries is technically difficult to implement. As a result the call for 'fair trade' as opposed to free trade is increasingly heard in these sectors.

The philosophical assumptions behind free trade have been criticized by the compensatory liberals and others. The rise of the Third World has thrown these doubts into sharp relief because the alleged shortcomings are not simply a matter of intellectual fashion or preference. Writers such as Prebisch (1964) have argued that if terms of trade penalize certain economies a system of free trade will leave some states permanently at a disadvantage. If those penalized are those that can least afford it, then free trade can exacerbate and widen inequalities within the system. Demands for a free trade regime that ignore such structural inequalities have been opposed by the Third World. 

The New International Economic Order (NIEO) and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) have been used by this constituency to press for changes in the trade regime that will recognize and compensate for these difficulties.


(Source: Ref 1, Dictionary of IR, Penguin Reference)



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IR - One Definition A Day: Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

IR - One Definition A Day: Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) - Doctors Without Borders

Established in 1971 by a group of former International Red Cross (IRC) medics, MSF is now the world's largest non-governmental organization (NGO) providing emergency medical relief. Consisting mainly of doctors, nurses, surgeons and logistical experts it has six operational sections in Europe and twelve branches world-wide. It is an independent body but it often works in conjunction with other humanitarian agencies, notably the IRC and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). It maintains a strictly impartial status and believes in the cosmopolitan notion of an absolute right to humanitarian assistance. It scorns the Westphalian principle of non-intervention and, if necessary, is prepared to work clandestinely with people in need, and to speak out publicly against human rights abusers. Apart from providing medical refief in man-made conflicts or in natural emergencies, the bulk of MSF work is in primary health care. It is therefore not a one-shot operation; an important part of its remit is reconstruction and long-term amelioration of local conditions. In 1997 the MSF's largest relief effort was in Rwanda where it had 360 expatriate volunteers and over 1'500 support staff in Burundi, Tanzania, and Zaire. Other recent major emergency missions include Bosnia, Angola, Sudan and Afghanistan. 


ONE DEFINITION A DAY is a campaign by YourVietBooks.com to encourage young Vietnamese talents to practise their translation skills and learn more on Vietnam's Culture, the Land and the People.

Vietnamese translation: Volunteers are welcome to contribute their translated version of today's DEFINITION in the 'comments' below.

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YourVietBooks is a collection of books on Vietnam for Readers who are interested in Vietnam's History, Culture, Language, Economy, or Business. Most titles are in English, but some are only available in French or Vietnamese. We can provide interested parties an accurate translation of some parts of the books for your research purposes. Translations are done by YourVietnamExpert's qualified and experienced translators. contact@yourvietnamexpert.com

IR - One Definition A Day: Neutrality

IR - One Definition A Day: Neutrality

Unlike neutralism with which it is often confused, neutrality is a legal concept which involves established rights and duties, both for the state which refrains from taking part in a war and for the belligerents themselves. 

Like other international legal concepts, the laws of neutrality were formed mainly by treaties in the 17th and 18th centuries, subsequently entered customary law and were then codified by judicial rulings and international conventions in the 19th and 20th centuries. Under the UN Charter, although neutrality is recognized no member can assume the posture of a neutral if the security council has sanctioned a proposed action against an aggressor. In this sense, it can conflict with notions of the Just War. 

Generally, a state is presumed neutral if by word or deed it has not declared support for one or other of the belligerents. In that case, certain specific rights and duties are delineated. For example, belligerents must not violate the territorial integrity of neutrals. Their commercial activities on land, sea and in the air are to be respected so long as they are sanctioned by international law. In return, neutrals are to remain impartial, they are not to aid any of the belligerents directly or indirectly and they are expected not to allow their citizens to do so. 

In particular, they should not permit neutral territory to be used for war purposes. Clearly these rights are always enjoyed precariously and neutrality must not be confused with demilitarization. In fact, because of the conditions imposed by international law, neutrality involves the ability to defend one's territorial integrity.

Neutrality can be proclaimed in unilateral declarations, as the US did in 1793, but also in multilateral treaties. In 1815, for example, The Perpertual Neutrality of Switzerland was guaranteed by the Congress of Vienna. This was later reaffirmed by the Versailles Treaty in 1919, and by the League of Nations in 1933. In 1830 the London Conference proclaimed the neutrality of Belgium (it was in violation of this that the UK formally entered the First World War). 

In 1907 the Second International Hague Peace Conference reaffirmed the territorial inviolability of neutrals and codified their rights and obligations at sea. Difficult areas in this respect involve the laws of blockade, the definition of contraband and the whole process of neutral shipping plying between ports of the belligerents. The issues of trade and commerce are notoriously thorny and the general rule of thumb is encapsulated in the phrase notoriously 'free ships give freedom to goods'. 

In other words, the nationality of a ship determines the status of its cargo. Enemy goods on a neutral ship, if they do not fall into the category of contraband, are thus not subject to seizure. However, as with so many things 'contraband' often lies in the eye of the beholder, and belligerents have rarely hesitated to intervene if there is any possibility at all of neutral activity giving aid and succour to the enemy. 

The rights of neutrality have been largely ignored in both World Wars and few states - with the continuing exceptions of Switzerland and Sweden - saw neutrality as a viable policy for maintaining independence. In total or nuclear war conditions, neutrality appears a very quaint proposition. However, in 1955 the Austrian Peace Treaty provided for the perpetual neutralization of Austria. Although technically this was self-neutralization, it was directly promoted by the Soviet Union and agreed to by the United States, the United Kingdom and France. The extent of Austrian autonomy rather than mere acquiescence in this regard is difficult to assess.

Other concepts associated with neutrality are 'neutral territories' and 'neutral zones'. The former usually refers to uninhabited territories that divide two states and which are under joint supervision, for example, the desert territory on the borders of the Iraq and Saudi Arabia or that between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (which was in fact divided in 1965 after the discovery of oil pools). 'Neutral zones' refer to sanitary or security zones formed during a war, to protect civilian populations under the supervision of the International Red Cross. 

These were first established at Madrid during the Spanish Civil War of 1936 and have since become common practice especially in conflicts in the Middle East. Article 14 of the Geneva Convention of 1949 provided for the establishment and recognition of sanitary and security zones which were specifically designated for the wounded and the sick (whether they were combatants or non-combatants) and for the protection of civilian populations. In similar fashion, 'safe havens' were declared by the UN and the Allies in Bosnia and Iraq respectively during the conflicts in Yugoslavia and the Persian Gulf War.


(Source: Wikipedia)

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IR - One Definition A Day: Adjudication

IR - One Definition A Day: Adjudication

A method of settling disputes by referring them to an established court; as such, it ought not be confused with arbitration. The basis of adjudication is that the adjudicator applies international law to settle the dispute. The creation of the World Court in the present century has meant that the means for international adjudication now exists on a permanent basis. 


In 1920 the Permanent Court of International Justice (JCIJ) was established by the League of Nations and between 1922 and 1940 it made thirty-three judgments and gave twenty-seven advisory opinions. In 1945 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) was established as its successor. The main difficulties both courts have experienced are the limitations upon their jurisdiction. Parties can only submit a case for adjudication by express consent, although there is an optional clause in the statute of the ICJ (see Article 36). Moreover, only states may be party to cases before the Court (Article 34). This has had the effect that important non-state actors, including individuals, cannot directly initiate litigation.


It must be recognised that many disputes are simply not justiciable. International actors find that other modes of conflict settlement allow greater flexibility for bargaining and comprise and do not imply the same loss of control over the outcome that is inherent in adjudication. Also, international law tends to have a status quo orientation. Revisionist states thus tend to find that the use of adjudication does not allow sufficient scope for peaceful change. This must be said notwithstanding the ability of the World Court to apply principles ex aequo et bono if the parties agree (see Article 38).


Although the World Court represents the most significant attempt yet to apply the rule of law in international disputes instead of the more traditional modes of settlement (war, diplomacy, arbitration), it is severely hampered in its operation by the absence of the principle of compulsory jurisdiction. International adjudication is always dependent on the consent of states, and this is rarely given on matters of vital importance. The doctrine of sovereignty is therefore seen by many as an insuperable barrier to the development of the international judicial system. Compulsory jurisdiction is not on the horizon and the international judicial process has played no significant part in the major issues of world politics since 1946 (e.g. The Cold War, the anti-colonial revolution, the North-South division, or the regulation of nuclear weapons).


(Source: Wikipedia)







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IR - One Definition A Day: Arbitration

IR - One Definition A Day : Arbitration (p. 33, Ref. 1)

A method of conflict settlement involving third-party intervention. Arbitration is a favored method of settlement in domestic labor-management conflicts, at least in the advanced industrial countries (AICs). The basis of an arbitration award is that the parties to the conflict agree to submit their differences to the third party to make a binding decision to settle the dispute. 

The arbitrator may apply known rules, precedents and laws in seeking a settlement and the arbitration award may be reinforced by sanctions to secure compliance. It is possible, and desirable, for the parties to agree to these rules, at least implicitly, in advance. This means that existing rules and practices can be abandoned in favor of any agreed-upon set of principles. Thus arbitration is more flexible than adjudication because the latter process tends to rigorously eschew innovation and to reflect a status quo frame of reference.


In international relations arbitration as a form of settlement has always had powerful advocates but, apart from a short period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it has been little used. Anglo-American diplomacy provides the best examples in the modern world. The Jay Treaty of 1794 inaugurated arbitration as a method of settlement between the two states. The most famous case is that of the Alabama Arbitration of 1872. Scholars are generally agreed that this settlement in favor of the US was prompted by the desire of both parties to improve their relations rather than by any philosophical commitment to the arbitration process.


Many idealists regarded the development of arbitration as essential if war was to be eradicated from international relations. The two Hague Peace Conferences (1899 and 1907) failed to achieve agreement on compulsory arbitration but succeeded in creating the Permanent Court of  Arbitration. This was, in point of fact, neither permanent nor a court. It was a list of persons from which the parties to a conflict could select a name.


Arbitration has not had the success or impact that the nineteenth and twentieth century idealist believed. Essentially the consensus that is required to make arbitration work has been absent. Moreover, although it is marginally more flexible than adjudication, arbitration appears not to be favored in the present system as a means of settlement. The growth of international regional institutions in the contemporary system must be as accounted a major force in reducing the potential for arbitration as a third party mode.


(Source: Penguin Dictionary of IR)



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IR - One Definition A Day: New World Order (NWO)

IR - One Definition A Day: New World Order (NWO), (p. 371, Ref. 1)

In contemporary usage the phrase is associated with President George Bush who popularized it in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990. Bush was anxious that the American reaction to this act of aggression should not be, or be seen to be a unilateral one, but should be viewed in the context of a re-emergence of collective security in the post Cold War era. In a speech to a joint session of both houses of Congress on 11 September 1990, President Bush outlined five 'simple principles' which should form the framework of an evolving international order: 'Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective - a new world order - can emerge: a new era - freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace, an era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony. 

As this quotation indicates, President Bush's conception of the NWO did not rise much above the rhetorical and it clearly lacked operational precision (what's new? which world? whose order?) but most analysts argued that at the very least the phrase referred to greater power cooperation, a strengthening of the United Nations and a more robust role for international law. 

Many in the triumphalist West believed that with positive US leadership a new more stable and more just international order could arise out of the straitjacket of Cold War rivalry and hostility. Although the term is associated in the popular mind with the Persian Gulf war, the ideas it embodies are by no means new; calls for a 'new world order' have regularly accompanied significant events - usually the ending of general wars - in international relations. Similar calls were made in 1815, 1918 and 1945 - 46. In essence, these ideas are a re-embodiment of traditional idealist or Kantian liberal notions concerning inter-state cooperation, perpetual peace and harmony of interests.

The remarkably events in world politics between nineteen eighty-nine and the early 1990s led many to believe that international relations was now in a period of profound transformation. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the demise of the Soviet Union, the end of the Warsaw Pact, the unification of Germany and the ending of apartheid in South Africa were events that encouraged the idea that a 'new age' of international relations had arrived. Among the elements associated with this supposed transformation are increased evidence of interdependence and cooperation, globalisation, integration, regionalism, the disutility of military force and importantly, a possible new role for the UN. Indeed, much of the discussion of a NWO centered on reforming the UN, strenghthening the machinery for collective action and laying down the groundwork for global governance. 

For optimists therefore the 1989-91 period marked a watershed in world politics, producing conditions of unheard of political, economic and military cooperation. Pessimists, (usually drawn from the realist/neorealist perspective) have taken a much less sanguine view. Indeed one analyst has suggested that the end of the Cold War has released long-repressed ethnic and communal conflicts on a global scale and that far from eradicating conflict altogether, the NWO will be characterized by a clash of civilization, of which the conflict in ex-Yuguoslavia is but a prelude. The proliferation of nuclear weapons accompanied by failed states, resource wars and environmental decay may in fact make the original Cold War something that 'we will soon miss' (Mearsheimer, 1990). 

For realists NWOs are always false dawns since continuity not change is the fundamental feature of international relations. On this view, there are no grounds to assume that the future will be any better than the past.

View New International Economic Order (coming up)

(Source: Penguin Dictionary of IR)

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IR: One Definition A Day - ASEAN

ONE DEFINITION A DAY is a campaign by YourVietBooks.com to encourage young Vietnamese talents to practise their translation skills and learn more on Vietnam's Culture, the Land and the People. 
Translation: Volunteers are welcome to contribute their translated version of today's DEFINITION in the 'comments' below.

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One Definition a Day: ASEAN

"ASEAN (Association of South East Nations) was formed in 1967, following the Bangkok Declaration of 8 August by the foreign ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Brunei joined in 1984 and Vietnam in 1995. Papua New Guinea has observer status. The original agreement were strengthened and extended at the Bali summit of February 1976. A secretariat was established and agreement was reached on the outline of a trade bloc. Internally, ASEAN covers a spectrum of economies which have one thing in common - actual and potential economic dynamism. 

The whole Pacific Basin has witnessed the most impressive economic growth rates globally over the last two decades, within this region South East Asia shown the greatest self-awareness of the need for cooperation and coordination of policy in both the military-security and wealth-welfare contexts. Structurally, China and Japan threaten to dominate the sub-region in both these key issues areas. The ASEAN states have sought to balance against this putative domination by involving the entire Pacific basin and outside parties such as the European Union and the United States in regional diplomacy. The ending of the Cold War, the demise of the Soviet Union and what many see as the hesitancy within the USA to exercise leadership might be seen as exacerbating these needs. 

1993 witnessed two key developments that were headed by ASEAN: the formation of the ASEAN Regional Forum, which linked the ASEAN States with eleven Pacific Basin countries plus the EU, and the institutionalisation of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, often referred as APEC with the establishment of a Secretariat in Singapore."

(Source : Dictionary of International Relations, Penguin (1998) by Authors Graham Evans and Jeffrey Newnham, pp. 35-36.)


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IR - One definition a day: Alliance

IR - One definition a day: Alliance

A formal agreement between two or more actors - usually states - to collaborate together on perceived mutual security issues. By allying themselves together it is anticipated that security will be increased in one, some or all of the following dimensions: by joining an alliance a system of deterrence will be established or strengthened, by joining an alliance a defence pact will operate in the event of a war, by joining an alliance some or all of the actors will be precluded from joining other alliances. 

Allies will stipulate in treaty form the conditions under which a military response will be required. At a minimum this collaboration will cover mutual obligations upon the outbreak of hostilities, but collaboration often extends beyond this. Joint military exercises, staff training and weapons procurement may all be regarded as proper activities under the rubric of 'being allies'. Allies may feel the need to support each other diplomatically in the conduct of their foreign policies. As with any diplomacy, alliances may be secret or open, bilateral or multilateral. It is not difficult to see why, under traditional concepts of state-centrism, alliance diplomacy was regarded as paradigm high politics.

The alliance was a key variable in the balance of power system. States were assumed to blance against a revisionist state or coalition to maintain stability. In this context alliances were contingent, issue-orientated. Waltz (1979) has suggested that an equally plausible dynamic in the balance of power would be for states to 'bandwagon' behind a putative victor rather than balance against it. In a bipolar system, bloc leaders and superpowers will engage in ally-seeking in order to counter perceived threats at the margin or periphery. Since military capabilities are unevenly distributed in bipolar alliances, serious conflicts can occur within the blocs over the scope and domain of bloc leadership and followership. This tendency is often referred to as polycentrism.

In a multipolar system, alliance dynamics are intrinsically more fluid and there may be greater uncertainty and less predictability about foreign policies and alliance dynamics.As Christensen and Snyder (1990) have suggested, under conditions of multipolarity states may either 'chain gang' (rush headlong into hostilities in support of their allies) of 'buck pass' (stand off from hostilities in the expectation or hope that others will not do so). This dilemna is built into multipolarity and - as the authors suggest - non-systemic, perceptual agent-centered considerations may ultimately decide the dilemna.

The twentieth century has seen ally-seeking and alliance construction as typical repertories of state behaviour. The examplaes of 1914 and 1939 have been widerly studies to extrapolate and validate theories about alliances and occurrence of war. The findings seem to be ambivalent as to whether alliances inhibit or encourage states to go to war. The outbreak of the Cold War confirmed many of the bipolar dynamics already referred to. Both the United States and the former Soviet Union found that bloc leadership could not presume bloc followership. 

Many saw nuclear weapons as exacerbating these tendencies to centrifugalism. Gaulism was perhaps the most explicit statement of these views. The end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union has left the system with 'morning after the night before' remnants of the old bipolar structure. Whilst the Warsaw Pact has now gone, NATO continues to re-invent itself although whether it is still an 'alliance' remains a moot point.

(Source: wikipedia)

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IR - One Definition A Day: Amnesty International

IR - One Definition a Day: Amnesty International

An INGO working in the issue area of human rights. Amnesty began as a protest movement but quickly took on an organisational structure commensurate with its goals and tasks. The original conception for an international campaign in support of those detained throughtout the world for political or religious beliefs was that of Peter Benenson. Benenson's article in the British Sunday Observer in May 1961, entitled 'The Forgotten Prisoners' caught the imagination of world public opinion. Within a year over 200 cases had been taken up and representations on behalf of prisoners of conscience had been made.

Amnesty pursues three broad policy goals: the release of all prisoners of conscience; an end to all forms of torture (including the death penalty); and fair and prompt trials for all political prisoners. Amnesty is essentially a monitoring organisation and it critically depends upon a well-developed responsiveness from attentive publics throughout the system. In addition its reputation for impartiality and reliability makes it an important information source which is widely used by political elites across the world.

At the time of writing Amnesty has over one million members and supporters in over 150 states and territories. It is governed by a nine-member Executive Committee and a Secretary-General who implements policy decisions and heads the Secretariat. Its headquarters are based in London, UK. It is represented at the United Nations and in 1978 was awarded the UN human rights prize in recognition of its works in this area. Amnesty is officially recognized by the European Union, the Council of Europe, the organisation of American states and the Organisation of African Unity. It was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1977.


(Source: wikipedia)


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IR - One Definition A Day: Third World

IR - One Definition A Day

Third World

A portmanteau term for those states in Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia (excepting Japan) and the Pacific islands (excepting Australia and New Zealand) which have experienced decolonisation over the last two centuries. The term 'Third World' is an anglicized rendition of the French 'Tiers-Monde' popularized in the 1950s by writers such as Georges Balandier and Alfred Sauvy. The Third World originally stood in contradistinction to the 'First World' (of capitalist liberal democracy) and the Second World (of command economic planning), but with the collapse of communism the trichotomy has lost much of its significance. The retention of the term 'Third World' although difficult to justify in logic perhaps, is testimony to the custom and usage of thirty years and the enduring significance of the Cold War ideological debates. China was always marginalised by the idea of Third World. Possessing many of the attributes of the typical Third World state, ideology ruled China out of all identification. Also at the margin were Israel and South Africa, geographically and historically within the meaning of the term but nevertheless regarded as near pariahs on ideological grounds.

Although the Third World has shaken off the formal political control of colonialism, legacies of the past remain. Thus the actual territorial dimensions of many Third World states, notably in Africa, are the results of colonialist cartographers and political geographers. As a consequence of this arbitrary demarcation, many states in the Third World are ethically heterogeneous.Ethnic nationalism, as a centrifugal tendency working against the centripetal state nationalism, is a divisive factor in these states as a result.

Marxist-inclined analyses of international relations deny that the formal granting of independence made any substantial difference to the relative power positions of the Third World vis-à-vis the First World - wherein, according to Marxists, imperialism arose. In particular the considerable economic power of the AICs of the First World is a determining factor in these relations. Assisting First World domination are the multinational corporations (MNCs) which function as conduits for this influence. many of the examples that inform this view are taken from latin American experience, and it would appear that a comprador middle class has developed in the region to provide a linkage with the dominant economic interests in the First World. Latin America may not be typical, however, and in other parts of the Third Wolrd, notably in Asia, a more nationalist bourgeoisie has developed. In the most dynamic NICs, indeed, countervailing corporative growth can counterbalance the economic domination of First World interests.

As far as intergovernmental relations are concerned, the Third World has responded to this domination trhough organisations such as OPEC and UNCTAD by making a number of demands under the new international economic order initiative. The Third World states have also used their majority membership of organisations like the UN to call for closer control and supervision to be exerciced of MNCs. Again they have campaigned through UNCTAD for the abandonment of the Bretton Woods system of non-discrimnation in favour of trade preferences aimed at assisting their development goals.

In the military-security issue area the Third World states have often faced significant problems in managing their national security. The centrifugal ethnic tendencies referred to above have in extreme cases produced the disintegration of states (for example Pakistan) or significant and damaging civil strife. Additionally, with such notable exceptions as India affords, many Third World states lacked the habits of the heart to ensure effective governance of their states. The terms 'quasi-state' has been coined to identify this problem. The cold war environment into which these states had to conduct their foreign policies probably exacerbated these problems. From the Truman Doctrine onwards, all that Third World leaderships had to show to engage US in Military AID arrangements was the presence of an internal/external threat that could plausibly be perceived as communist. 
Interventionalist policies have not been the prerogative of the First or Second Worlds of course. States within the Third World have been prompted to intervene in a variety of military-securit issue areas. Ths Vietnam, India, Lybia, Tanzania, Cuba and Nigeria have shown a willingness towards internation in regional conflict situations. The Persian Gulf War's proximate cause was Iraqi intervention and annexation of neighbouring Kuwait, whilst Syrian intervention in the Lebanon altered the communal balance significantly. 

The end of the Cold War era in world politics has affected both the position and the policies of the Third World states. Indeed it has substantially altered the ideological assumptions that might be called 'Third Worldism'. The self destruction of the Second World has at one and the same time removed a viable alternative 'model' of national economic development and substantially reduced the intrinsic importance of the Third World in First World considerations. Market orientated approaches underpinned by a belief in economic liberalism can now be given full scope and significance.



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IR - One Definition A Day: Open Door

IR - One Definition A Day: Open Door Doctrine (p. 402, Ref. 1)

Used in a general sense it refers to policies that favour the encouragement of free trade. More specifically, the Open Door doctrine refers to a series of notes issued by US Secretary of State John Hay in 1899 and 1900 which invited various governments - principally Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia - to adhere to the principle of equal economic opportunity in China. 

The notes stated that while the US recognized the lead to a discriminication against US interests in respect of railway tariffs, harbour dues and other commercial matters. American foreign economic policy had for some time been seduced by the lure of the 'China market' and the Open Door policy was supported by the Committee on American Interests in China, an influential lobby group which claimed that US business interests in the potentially lucrative Chinese markets were damaded by the spheres of influence system. 

At the same time increasing interest was being shown in the market for Chinese souls by missionary activists in America. In an instance of what would be termed 'cultural imperialism', Christian missionaries implicitly confronted aspects of Chinese society - notably the treatment of women. In summary it is possible to identify a triangle of interests or constituencies: business, spiritual, and political within America during these years which favoured the Open Door doctrine and its implementation in the context of China.

The emergence of the United States as a significant actor in world politics dates from this period. The acquisition of the Philippines following the United States' victory over Spain in 1898 was a watershed in this process. The Open Door principle thus provided the rationale for US interests in the area and indicated a new role for the rapidly developing US naval power. US military revolutionary and anti-foreign forces - known as 'Boxers' - in 1900 confirmed that US interests would be advanced or protected by the use of force if necessary. 

Theodore Roosevelt's reference to the region as 'America's Achilles heel' was indicative of the new ideological framework within which American foreign policy was now being made. The strategic, economic and spiritual lure of China remained an important twentieth-century definition of the situation and it helps to explain why the victory of the communist forces in 1949 was perceived as a 'loss' of China in America.

The term Open Door is also used in the historiography of American foreign policy. Essentially associated with the writings of William Appleman Williams and in particular the provocative 1959 publication, the Tragedy of American Diplomacy, the 'Open Door thesis' argues that the search to open doors was an informal imperialism. 

The history of American foreign relations shows an inherent contradiction between self professed beliefs in self-determination and the strongly held preference that other peoples should follow the American way. 

Williams argues that the Open Door's transmogrification from a policy ideal into an ideology is the key to understanding US expansionism and the informal American empire that took off at the end of the nineteenth century (however in later works Williams sought to argue that America had been expansionist from the Founding Fathers onwards). Although he disclaimed credit, Williams founded an informal 'school' of revisionist writers, examplified by LaFeber's 1963 volume The New Empire and Parrini's 1969 work Heir to Empire.


(Source: Penguin Dictionary of IR)

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