Past,present, and future: the role of the Cold War in legitimising Danish foreign policy activism

The Cold War has had an extended life span in Danish foreign policy due to the establishment of a right-wing revisionist agenda. This article argues that this revisionism came to serve different contemporary purposes under the Anders Fogh Rasmussen governments. Externally it was used to legitimise the Danish participation in the Iraq War and came to serve as a tool to discipline the war-sceptical social democratic led opposition and secured parliamentary support for an offensive Liberal-inspired activism in Danish foreign policy. Domestically the revisionism became entangled with the overall cultural war that the Liberal-led government launched and thereby became a part of the overall ideological war that united the governing coalition from 2001 to 2011.     

The Pendulum of Congressional Power: Agenda Change,Partisanship and the Demise of the Post-World War II Foreign Policy Consensus

Many scholars contend that Congress rarely matters in the realm of foreign policy. The source of this collective impotence is often explained by the weaknesses in congressional institutions vis-a-vis the president, as well as a general inability to respond effectively to a dynamic international political environment. We contend that the debate over congressional activism has not adequately addressed the role of agenda change. We analyze all roll call votes in the House of Representatives relating to the international affairs agenda between 1953 and 1998. We find that presidents have become significantly more likely to stake out positions on economic and trade issues as compared to other international issues. We also observe that presidential positions in the realm of foreign policy are increasingly characterized by interparty and interinstitutional conflict. While this increased conflict has dramatically decreased the president's ability to successfully pass executive priorities in foreign affairs more generally, presidential success on economic and trade issues has witnessed a significantly greater decline. We infer from these results that changes to the foreign policy issue agenda represent one important factor that has affected not only the incentives for political parties to participate actively, but also the willingness of Congress to challenge the president in the foreign policy debate.Asked one day whether it was true that the navy yard in his district was too small to accommodate the latest battleships. Henry Stimson (chair of the House Naval Affairs Committee early in the century) replied, 'That is true, and that is the reason I have always been in favor of small ships.'1Carriers have been, are and will be for the foreseeable future an absolutely essential part of our deterrence force…2John Warner, senator from Virginia, home state of Newport News Shipbuilding     

Participation,Social Cohesion and the Challenges in the Governance Process: An Analysis of a Post-World War II Neighbourhood in the Netherlands

In the past 5 years, several scientific articles have been written on the theme of social cohesion in urban neighbourhoods. In most cases this literature focuses on the loss of social cohesion in these areas. In addition, many problems, such as a declining quality of life, physical deterioration, and social isolation have been related to a lack of social cohesion. Another set of articles has increased our knowledge on urban governance. While this work adds considerably to our general understanding of the changing role of the organization of urban social policy and its effects on neighbourhoods, there has been little attempt to date to analyse how policy-makers experience this relationship. This experience is crucial, because it is the basis of policy practice and action. The first aim here is therefore to analyse to what extent policy-makers experience an effect of participation on social cohesion, although the number of participants is relatively low. The empirical findings show that policy-makers do experience a positive effect of participation on the various dimensions of social cohesion. The second aim of the paper is to explain the level of participation by evaluating the governance process. The analyses indicate that the policy-makers face challenges related to the diversity of the population in the participation process, as well as reconciling different needs within decision-making processes.     

Global multipolarity,European security and implications for UK grand strategy: back to the future,once again

The international system is returning to multipolarity—a situation of multiple Great Powers—drawing the post‐Cold War ‘unipolar moment’ of comprehensive US political, economic and military dominance to an end. The rise of new Great Powers, namely the ‘BRICs’—Brazil, Russia, India, and most importantly, China—and the return of multipolarity at the global level in turn carries security implications for western Europe. While peaceful political relations within the European Union have attained a remarkable level of strategic, institutional and normative embeddedness, there are five factors associated with a return of Great Power competition in the wider world that may negatively impact on the western European strategic environment: the resurgence of an increasingly belligerent Russia; the erosion of the US military commitment to Europe; the risk of international military crises with the potential to embroil European states; the elevated incentive for states to acquire nuclear weapons; and the vulnerability of economically vital European sea lines and supply chains. These five factors must, in turn, be reflected in European states’ strategic behaviour. In particular, for the United Kingdom—one of western Europe's two principal military powers, and its only insular (offshore) power—the return of Great Power competition at the global level suggests that a return to offshore balancing would be a more appropriate choice than an ongoing commitment to direct military interventions of the kind that have characterized post‐2001 British strategy.     

Total security as threat: The blurring of hard and soft security in northern Europe

Part of the rapid change in thinking about security and security policy is occurring in northern Europe. Notions of “hard” and “soft” security are being implemented, most notably in the Visby Process of the Baltic Sea states. These variations of national security also interact with those of the United States and NATO. The direction of US security policy is called “total security” in the paper. The content of US policy is discussed as a contradiction of the basis for identifying hard and soft security. The blurring of these concepts contributes to the threatening character of total security. Implementation of measures to ensure total security involves the creation of pervasive and comprehensive intelligence gathering mechanisms that, because of their lack of sharply defined targets, has the potential for threatening the security of individuals for the sake of preserving national security.     

US grand strategy and national security: the dilemmas of primacy,decline and denial

The foreign policy crises that the USA has confronted under the administration of President Barack Obama have generated profound uncertainty about whether the USA can maintain what has been its consistent grand strategy since the end of the Cold War: primacy. The authors argue, drawing on a neoclassical realist framework, that this uncertainty has been driven not so much by fundamental changes in the international system itself, but rather by how such changes have been interpreted by the Obama administration and its critics. US grand strategy is now caught between approaches best described as the ‘decline management’ of the Obama administration and the ‘decline denial’ of president Donald Trump, which reflects the fracturing of the domestic ‘political support system’ that has underpinned primacy since the end of the Cold War.