Download or read book Mercantile States and the World Oil Cartel 1900 1939 written by Gregory Patrick Nowell and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Why Syria Goes to War written by Fred H. Lawson and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rejecting conventional explanations for Syrian foreign policy, which emphasize the personalities and attitudes of leaders, cultural factors peculiar to Arab societies, or the machinations of the great powers, Fred H. Lawson describes key shifts in Damascus's response to regional adversaries in terms of changes in the intensity of political struggles at home. Periodic eruptions of domestic conflict have inspired Syria's ruling coalition to adopt a wide range of programs designed to buy off domestic rivals and perpetuate the predominance of individual coalition members. These programs have undermined the unity of the Ba'thi regime, increasing the chances that opponents will overturn the established order. Challenges to the Ba'thi regime become most threatening whenever crises of accumulation shake the domestic political economy, Lawson contends. Opposition forces gain strength when the state cannot sustain new investment or when competition increases between public and private enterprises. Political and economic trends inside Syria have determined why Damascus has since 1963 alternately escalated tensions with regional rivals and adopted more accommodating postures. Lawson traces this dynamic through five major episodes: the 1967 war with Israel; limited intervention in Jordan in 1970; the widening conflict in Lebanon in 1976; the defusing of conflict with Iraq in 1982; and the rapprochement with Turkey over Kurdish separatism in 1994. These patterns, Lawson suggests, may be characteristic of nations changing from one domestic economic system to a radically different one, as Syria has in the transition from state socialism to a privatized political economy.

Download or read book Carbon Democracy written by Timothy Mitchell and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2023-10-03 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oil is a curse, it is often said, that condemns the countries producing it to an existence defined by war, corruption and enormous inequality. Carbon Democracy tells a more complex story, arguing that no nation escapes the political consequences of our collective dependence on oil. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the greatest demand for energy. Timothy Mitchell begins with the history of coal power to tell a radical new story about the rise of democracy. Coal was a source of energy so open to disruption that oligarchies in the West became vulnerable for the first time to mass demands for democracy. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the development of cheap and abundant energy from oil, most notably from the Middle East, offered a means to reduce this vulnerability to democratic pressures. The abundance of oil made it possible for the first time in history to reorganize political life around the management of something now called “the economy” and the promise of its infinite growth. The politics of the West became dependent on an undemocratic Middle East. In the twenty-first century, the oil-based forms of modern democratic politics have become unsustainable. Foreign intervention and military rule are faltering in the Middle East, while governments everywhere appear incapable of addressing the crises that threaten to end the age of carbon democracy—the disappearance of cheap energy and the carbon-fuelled collapse of the ecological order. In making the production of energy the central force shaping the democratic age, Carbon Democracy rethinks the history of energy, the politics of nature, the theory of democracy, and the place of the Middle East in our common world.

Download or read book International Governance written by Oran R. Young and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can the global environment be safeguarded in the absence of a world government? In the vanguard of efforts to address this critical question, Oran R. Young draws on environmental issues to explore the nature of international governance. Young's analysis invokes the distinction between "governance," a social function involving the management of interdependent individuals or groups, and "government," a set of formal organizations that makes and enforces rules.

Download or read book Remapping East Asia written by T. J. Pempel and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overarching ambiguity characterizes East Asia today. The region has at least a century-long history of internal divisiveness, war, and conflict, and it remains the site of several nettlesome territorial disputes. However, a mixture of complex and often competing agents and processes has been knitting together various segments of East Asia. In Remapping East Asia, T. J. Pempel suggests that the region is ripe for cooperation rather than rivalry and that recent "region-building" developments in East Asia have had a substantial cumulative effect on the broader canvas of international politics. This collection is about the people, processes, and institutions behind that region-building. In it, experts on the area take a broad approach to the dynamics and implications of regionalism. Instead of limiting their focus to security matters, they extend their discussions to topics as diverse as the mercurial nature of Japan's leadership role in the region, Southeast Asian business networks, the war on terrorism in Asia, and the political economy of environmental regionalism. Throughout, they show how nation-states, corporations, and problem-specific coalitions have furthered regional cohesion not only by establishing formal institutions, but also by operating informally, semiformally, or even secretly.

Download or read book Looking Backward Moving Forward written by Richard G. Hovannisian and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The decades separating our new century from the Armenian Genocide, the prototype of modern-day nation-killings, have fundamentally changed the political composition of the region. Virtually no Armenians remain on their historic territories in what is today eastern Turkey. The Armenian people have been scattered about the world. And a small independent republic has come to replace the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was all that was left of the homeland as the result of Turkish invasion and Bolshevik collusion in 1920. One element has remained constant. Notwithstanding the eloquent, compelling evidence housed in the United States National Archives and repositories around the world, successive Turkish governments have denied that the predecessor Young Turk regime committed genocide, and, like the Nazis who followed their example, sought aggressively to deflect blame by accusing the victims themselves.This volume argues that the time has come for Turkey to reassess the propriety of its approach, and to begin the process that will allow it move into a post-genocide era. The work includes "Genocide: An Agenda for Action," Gijs M. de Vries; "Determinants of the Armenian Genocide," Donald Bloxham; "Looking Backward and Forward," Joyce Apsel; "The United States Response to the Armenian Genocide," Simon Payaslian; "The League of Nations and the Reclamation of Armenian Genocide Survivors," Vahram L. Shemmassian; "Raphael Lemkin and the Armenian Genocide," Steven L. Jacobs; "Reconstructing Turkish Historiography of the Armenian Massacres and Deaths of 1915," Fatma Muge Go;cek; "Bitter-Sweet Memories; "The Armenian Genocide and International Law," Joe Verhoeven; "New Directions in Literary Response to the Armenian Genocide," Rubina Peroomian; "Denial and Free Speech," Henry C. Theriault; "Healing and Reconciliation," Ervin Staub; "State and Nation," Raffi K. Hovannisian.

Download or read book Governing Ideas written by J. Nicholas Ziegler and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite increasingly open markets and a pervasive move toward international production methods, national governments continue to pursue remarkably distinctive policies for promoting innovation in industry. J. Nicholas Ziegler analyzes this apparent paradox by comparing government efforts to promote technological advance in Germany and France. His findings reveal a great deal about the roots and limits of public strategies for economic growth. Through close comparison of three technologies— digital telephone exchanges, computer-controlled machine tools, and semiconductors—Ziegler shows how each country displays predictable strengths and weaknesses in promoting innovation. These distinctive capacities depend more upon the links among different skill- and knowledge-bearing elites than on the structure of the state or the industrial sector in question. As business outcomes hinge less on economies of scale and more on knowledge-based competition, the politics of contending interest groups steadily gives way to a competition for status and jurisdiction among more specialized professional groups. As a result, Germany's strengths stem directly from what Ziegler calls an ethos of competence whereas France's strengths stem from an order of state-created elites. More generally, Ziegler contends, neo-institutional approaches to public policy need to pay far more attention to the professional identities of different occupational groups.

Download or read book Monetary Orders written by Jonathan Kirshner and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wherever there is money, there is money politics-a subject demanding ever greater attention at a time when monetary policies lead and the real economy follows. A principal defining characteristic of the contemporary global economy, Jonathan Kirshner contends, is the rise and preeminence of monetary phenomena—international financial crises, Central Bank Independence and inflation fighting, the creation of the euro, and monetary reform in emerging economies, to name only a few. Moreover, unlike most debates in political economy (such as those regarding trade policy), which are generally recognized as political, monetary phenomena and macroeconomic policies are typically represented as expressly apolitical. In Monetary Orders, a distinguished group of scholars explores the inescapable political origins of choices about money. The essays in Monetary Orders each address a specific issue or puzzle relating to money and its management. Their authors focus on markedly disparate cases but share a common observation: for most policy choices about money, market forces and economic logic can rule out certain options, but are indeterminate in explaining why one policy rather than another will be chosen. Ultimately, political factors are essential to explain fundamental and consequential choices about money.

Download or read book America s Kingdom written by Robert Vitalis and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now newly updated, America's Kingdom debunks the many myths that now surround the United States's special relationship with Saudi Arabia, also known as "the deal": oil for security. Exploding the long-established myth that the Arabian American Oil Company, Aramco, made miracles happen in the desert, Robert Vitalis shows how oil led the US government to follow the company to the kingdom, and how oil and Aramco quickly became America's largest single overseas private enterprise. From the establishment in the 1930s of a Jim Crow system in the Dhahran oil camps, to the consolidation of America's Kingdom under the House of Fahd, the royal faction that still rules today, this is a meticulously researched account of Aramco as a microcosm of the colonial order.

Download or read book Oil and the Great Powers written by Anand Toprani and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-04 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of oil is a chapter in the story of Europe's geopolitical decline in the twentieth century. During the era of the two world wars, a lack of oil constrained Britain and Germany from exerting their considerable economic and military power independently. Both nations' efforts to restore the independence they had enjoyed during the Age of Coal backfired by inducing strategic over-extension, which served only to hasten their demise as great powers. Having fought World War I with oil imported from the United States, Britain was determined to avoid relying upon another great power for its energy needs ever again. Even before the Great War had ended, Whitehall implemented a strategy of developing alternative sources of oil under British control. Britain's key supplier would be the Middle East - already a region of vital importance to the British Empire - whose oil potential was still unproven. As it turned out, there was plenty of oil in the Middle East, but Italian hostility after 1935 threatened transit through the Mediterranean. A shortage of tankers ruled out re-routing shipments around Africa, forcing Britain to import oil from US-controlled sources in the Western Hemisphere and depleting its foreign exchange reserves. Even as war loomed in 1939, therefore, Britain's quest for independence from the United States had failed. Germany was in an even worse position than Britain. It could not import oil from overseas in wartime due to the threat of blockade, while accumulating large stockpiles was impossible because of the economic and financial costs. The Third Reich went to war dependent on petroleum synthesized from coal, domestic crude oil, and overland imports, primarily from Romania. German leaders were confident, however, that they had enough oil to fight a series of short campaigns that would deliver to them the mastery of Europe. This plan derailed following the victory over France, when Britain continued to fight. This left Germany responsible for Europe's oil requirements while cut off from world markets. A looming energy crisis in Axis Europe, the absence of strategic alternatives, and ideological imperatives all compelled Germany in June 1941 to invade the Soviet Union and fulfill the Third Reich's ultimate ambition of becoming a world power - a decision that ultimately sealed its fate.

Download or read book Contemporary Issues in Politics International Relations written by Nesrin Kenar and published by IJOPEC PUBLICATION. This book was released on 2021-12-26 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Conflict” is a phenomenon as old as human history. Although the actors and reasons have changed, conflicts have occurred in every period of history. In the pre-Cold War era, conflicts in the international system were experienced between states. The conflicts during the Cold War mainly were interstate conflicts arising from the rivalry between the two blocs. In this period, it was expected that the threat to the security of a state would come from outside the borders of the state and from other states.For this reason, all the regulations made by the League of Nations, which was established at the end of the First World War, and the United Nations, which was established after the Second World War, to protect international peace and security included the measures to be taken against the attack or threat of attack by one state against another state. However, the developments that took place right after the end of the Cold War confirmed that the risk of interstate conflict decreased, and new security threats emerged in this period. The conflicts that emerged in the post-Cold War period were separatist conflicts due to ethnic and religious reasons, such as the former Yugoslavia and Georgia, or intra-border conflicts that occurred for other reasons, such as in Syria. Upon the inadequacy of international organizations and international law to intervene in intra-border conflicts, the concept of "security" was redefined, and a transformation from the security of the state to the security of the individual took place. New security threats such as environmental security, human security, food security, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and pandemics have been identified. One of the reasons for the decrease in conflicts between states in the post-Cold War period is that states mostly use "soft power" instead of military force in achieving their foreign policy goals. The structure of the international system is also a dynamic that affects conflicts. After the end of the bipolar system, the transformation of the international system is not yet complete. One of the most critical problems in today's world is the competition and struggle between states to become the future superpower. While the US wants the current status quo to continue, China is trying to change the status quo in its favour. The European Union is to become the dominant power in the international system after its transformation in the post-Cold War period.

Download or read book The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony written by David E. Spiro and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-30 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1973 and 1980, the cost of crude oil rose suddenly and dramatically, precipitating convulsions in international politics. Conventional wisdom holds that international capital markets adjusted automatically and remarkably well: enormous amounts of money flowed into oil-rich states, and efficient markets then placed that new money in cash-poor Third World economies. David Spiro has followed the money trail, and the story he tells contradicts the accepted beliefs. Most of the sudden flush of new oil wealth didn't go to poor oil-importing countries around the globe. Instead, the United States made a deal with Saudi Arabia to sell it U.S. securities in secret, a deal resulting in a substantial portion of Saudi assets being held by the U.S. government. With this arrangement, the U.S. government violated its agreements with allies in the developed world. Spiro argues that American policymakers took this action to prop up otherwise intolerable levels of U.S. public debt. In effect, recycled OPEC wealth subsidized the debt-happy policies of the U.S. government as well as the debt-happy consumption of its citizenry.

Download or read book The Currency of Ideas written by Kathleen R. McNamara and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-30 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why have the states of Europe agreed to create an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and a single European currency? What will decide the fate of this bold project? This book explains why monetary integration has deepened in Europe from the Bretton Woods era to the present day. McNamara argues that the development of a neoliberal economic policy consensus among European leaders in the years after the first oil crisis was crucial to stability in the European Monetary System and progress towards EMU. She identifies two factors, rising capital mobility and changing ideas about the government's proper role in monetary policymaking, as critical to the neoliberal consensus but warns that unresolved social tensions in this consensus may provoke a political backlash against EMU and its neoliberal reforms.McNamara's findings are relevant not only to European monetary integration, but to more general questions about the effects of international capital flows on states. Although this book delineates a range of constraints created by economic interdependence, McNamara rejects the notion that international market forces simply dictate government policy choice. She demonstrates that the process of neoliberal policy change is a historically dependent one, shaped by policymakers' shared beliefs and interpretations of their experiences in the global economy.

Download or read book Asian States Asian Bankers written by Natasha Hamilton-Hart and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Beliefs about American Hegemony in Southeast Asia -- 2. Behind Beliefs: Hard Interests, Soft Illusions -- 3. The Politics and Economics of Interests: Ruling Elites and U.S. Power -- 4. History Lessons -- 5. Professional Expertise -- 6. Regime Interests, Beliefs, and Knowledge -- Appendix: Interviews -- References -- Index.

Download or read book U S Politics and the Global Economy written by Ronald W. Cox and published by Lynne Rienner Publishers. This book was released on 1999 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the influence of globalization on ideology and politics in the United States. Ronald Cox and Daniel Skidmore-Hess argue that U.S. policy has been motivated less by anxiety about the independence and stability of the domestic economy and more by worry about factors that might limit the participation of U.S. corporations in international markets. Connecting trends in domestic and foreign policy with the changing needs of industry, they associate increased globalization with the the breakup of the liberal, New Deal coalition; the collapse of the Bretton Woods Agreement in the 1970s; the neoconservative, antiregulatory movements of the 1980s; and the rightward drift of both the Republican and Democratic Parties.

Download or read book International Political Economy written by James H. Nolt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-17 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a completely new and unique introduction to the economics of international relations. It treats all the traditional major themes of international relations theory while giving each a refreshing new twist with the incorporation of the influence of private power, particularly in the realm of war and peace. It reframes the history of the modern global economy and politics by thoroughly purging the myth of the market, a systematic blindness to private power. It not only draws on, but also illuminates major themes and empirical findings of comparative politics, business history, business strategy, business cycle theory, social evolutionary theory as well as the practical wisdom of traders and investors. Part one introduces the major concepts of competing theories of international relations, emphasizing a unique approach, corporatism. Part two introduces the critical importance dynamic and oppositional analysis of issues. Part three traces the rise of the modern world from the mercantilist period until the rise of modern corporate organizations and the demise of imperialism in the crucible of World War I. Part four begins with the origins of the contemporary dominance of business internationalism before and during World War II, then analyzes three major facets of the postwar era: the unification of much of Europe, the industrialization of the Third World, and the Cold War and its aftermath. The final chapter considers the present and future of a fairly peaceful yet economically unstable world. This book presents a refreshing and exciting portrayal of the global economy which challenges every major subject from money to markets to the business cycle. This book eschews the economics of dull averages to restore the drama of contending business forces, struggling for wealth and, in the process, influencing war and peace.

Download or read book Nationalism Liberalism and Progress written by Ernst B. Haas and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far from being an inevitably aggressive and destructive force, nationalism is, for Ernst B. Haas, the primary means of bringing coherence to modernizing societies. In the second volume of his magisterial exploration of this topic, Haas emphasizes the benefits of liberal nationalism, which he deems more progressive than other nation-building formulas because it relies on reason to improve citizens' lives.The Dismal Fate of New Nations considers several societies that modernized relatively recently, many of them aroused to nationalism by the imperialism of the "old" nation-states. The book probes the different patterns of development in emerging countries—Iran, Egypt, India, Brazil, Mexico, China, Russia, and Ukraine—for insights into the possibilities and limitations of all nationalisms, especially liberal nationalism.Employing a systematic comparative perspective, Haas organizes the book around the notion of change and its management by political elites in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Haas particularly wants to understand how nationalism plays out in the politics of modernization within non-Western cultures, especially those where religions other than Christianity predominate. Where the hold of religion remains formidable, he argues, the mixture of traditional and secular-modernist institutions and beliefs will challenge the victory of liberal nationalism and the very success of nation-state formation.