Bringing Australian foreign policy alive through teaching and assessment practice

ABSTRACT

If we are to help students develop opinions and perspectives on world politics, and understand at the same time what it means to hold these opinions and perspectives in the Australian context, we need to bring the world to the classroom. Information overload has led to feelings of alienation among students, and the way we teach needs to instil in students a sense that they are stakeholders in Australian foreign policy, and help them develop strategies for incorporating the complex information environment into their learning. In this short piece I propose two forms of assessment that authentically place the focus on these learning outcomes.     

Innovations in teaching Australian foreign policy: trust,simulations, and study tours

ABSTRACT

More than ever as the uncertainties of a digitalised world are upon us and where power shifts to and within the region disrupt the familiar patterns of engagement, the acquisition of the knowledge and competencies necessary for Australia to be a trusted international partner are pressing matters. So too, in the development of both personal and professional skills, our pedagogic remit to students guides us to assist them in learning more about themselves in the process. How, then, should we teach Australian foreign policy and in doing so grow the conjunctive tissue of student self-learning in order to prepare students for the world of diplomacy necessitated by Australia's international workspace? Here, experiential learning can have a powerful effect in the teaching of Australian foreign policy and in the development of students' life and professional skills. Both in-person simulations situated within the context of a thoughtful curriculum, and short-term international mobility study tours can contribute to an effective mix of learning experiences and assist us in moving closer toward effective practice in the current uncertainties and an era of digital transformation.     

In defence of Australian foreign policy: common themes,assumptions, and challenges

ABSTRACT

While interrelated issues and challenges can only expand, the study of foreign policy in Australia is not a very healthy discipline. While not wholly wedged on life-support, there are genuine grounds for concern about the decline of Australian foreign policy (AFP) as a subject for serious academic concentration and its position as a marginalised topic of analysis. Unfortunately, attempts to reinvigorate the field continue to contend with a number of ingrained biases. AFP can be incorrectly dismissed as muddled and marginal while major debate points in the field are often glibly portrayed as broadly settled. This is despite the that fact that it can provide unique insights into policy-making in the twenty-first century while teaching students the benefits of problem-solving through a multi-disciplinary lens. Additionally, there is an ever-changing, contested set of knowledge that future leaders will need to consider in order to be successful, critical thinkers in a multi-agency environment. This will continue to incorporate an evolving variety of significant issues that constitute both conventional and unconventional threats to national interests.     

Australia and the promise and the perils of humanitarian diplomacy

ABSTRACT

Humanitarian diplomacy has always been a crucial element of humanitarianism, however it is now becoming a more prominent element of states’ foreign policies. It holds many attractions and much promise. It provides states with a way of expressing important qualities of international empathy and solidarity and can also enhance a state’s international reputation and provide valuable means for building relationship of trust and cooperation. This can in turn can be conducive to a state’s broader foreign policy objectives. However, there are also perils to the incorporation of humanitarian diplomacy into a state’s foreign policy. It can generate ambiguity and even conflict within a state’s diplomatic endeavours due to tensions between humanitarian and broader national interests. In exploring these issues it is useful to distinguish between humanitarian diplomacy and humanitarianism as diplomacy. This article explores these issues in relations to Australia’s diplomacy. It argues that Australia has actively engaged in humanitarian diplomacy and humanitarianism as diplomacy. Whilst the two are often complementary, there are areas in which they have been in tension and even at odds. This has implications for Australia’s international reputation but also for its capacity to undertake genuine and effective humanitarian action.     

Acting on the Hill: Congressional Assertiveness in U.S. Foreign Policy

A controversy has developed in recent years pitting those who see a resurgent Congress in U.S. foreign policy against those who argue that Congress remains largely acquiescent and uninvolved. This article addresses the disagreement, using a database of congressional foreign policy activity from 1946 to 1997 to weigh the competing claims. Our results show that congressional foreign policy activity has declined over the post-World War II era while congressional foreign policy assertiveness, relative to the administration's requests, has increased during this same period. Congress is thus less active but more assertive. Based on these results, we offer a two-dimensional model of congressional foreign policy behavior that better reflects the variety of congressional roles in U.S. foreign policy.     

Toward an Understanding of Canada’s International Identity

ABSTRACT

This article examines the construction of Canada’s postwar international identity and how that identity continues to influence Canadian foreign policy, especially with the United States. Furthermore, the article illustrates how changes in Canadian policy necessitated by the Trump Administration may impact Canada’s international identity in the future. The article argues Canadian policy makers have consistently constructed an international identity in opposition to the United States and continue to use the US as a reflective tool in shaping their own policy. The first part of the article briefly examines the concept of state identity outlining both type and role variants and their relevance to foreign policy and this is followed in the second part by a discussion of Canada’s postwar international identity.     

Becoming a ‘Cultural Destination of Choice’: lessons on vernacularization from Beirut and Buenos Aires

ABSTRACT

This article builds upon the concept of vernacularization as a way to better understand the circulation and implementation of global policy assemblages. The added value of a vernacularization approach is that it combines under one analytical umbrella the separate but interdependent factors which affect policy travel and use including: (a) positionality or the social and spatial status of actors, institutions and localities, (b) processes of communication that go beyond translation to make ideas and practices understandable, resonant, and useful, (c) the resulting vernacularization of aspirations and goals, and (d) the ways in which these factors change over time as policies come to ground, are modified, and circulate once again. Each aspect of vernacularization relies deeply on meaning making and remaking, whether it be the identity of the vernacularizer herself or of the institutions and cities where she is located.     

Going Global: Assessing Presidential Foreign Travel

Abstract

Since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt broke the “Ironclad Custom”—and especially following World War II—presidents have routinely traveled outside of the United States to visit other countries and meet foreign leaders and publics. Presidents are expected to engage in face-to-face diplomacy, but they must also be present and active in domestic politics. To balance these pressures, presidents need to be strategic and mindful of their limited political resources and the opportunities the political environment creates. How, then, do international and domestic political resources and opportunities affect the extent and frequency of foreign travel? To examine this question, we collected and analyzed a dataset of presidential foreign travel—number of trips, countries visited and days spent abroad—during the post-World War II period (1953–2016) and estimated the frequency of travel with a set of explanatory variables that capture U.S. foreign involvement as well as the domestic policy agenda and political incentives that affected presidents from Eisenhower to Obama. Our findings demonstrate that domestic policy and political incentives are strong determinants of presidential foreign travel.     

The Gospel of Freedom,or Another Gospel? Augustinian Reflections on Empire and American Foreign Policy

Abstract

American foreign policy is often extolled in terms of exporting "freedom" to the rest of the world— extending God's gift to humanity (according to President Bush's Second Inaugural). But just what notion of "freedom" undergirds this project? According to the National Security Strategy, the freedom being globalized is a negative, non-teleological notion of freedom that primarily underwrites the expansion of free markets. But such a liberal, non-teleological notion of freedom is just the notion of freedom that is rejected by the orthodox (Augustinian) theological tradition. So the theological invocations that cloak this foreign policy can only be, technically, heretical. This paper takes Augustine's theology as a mode of cultural criticism, offering a contemporary rendition of Augustine's critique of empire in The City of God by interrogating the discourse of freedom associated with the Bush Doctrine as well as a critique of Hardt and Negri's alternative as it is laid out in Empire and Multitude.     

How to Further Develop the Nonproliferation Regime? West German Nuclear Exports to Brazil and Iran in Context of US Criticism

ABSTRACT

Nuclear exports were a crucial part of West Germany's nuclear industry. Its domestic market was too small to keep a big nuclear industry alive. But nuclear exports were subject to a nonproliferation regime which West Germany had accepted when signing the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). During the 1970s, there were major quarrels with the United States about West Germany's nuclear export policy and its approach to the nonproliferation regime. Using sources from several German archives, this article examines the nuclear export policy of West Germany and the patterns of justification as a further development of the nonproliferation regime. It is focused on two different cases, the nuclear export to Brazil and to Iran, which are strongly connected and both included sensitive technology such as reprocessing and enrichment.

The export cases touch on the issue of further development of the nonproliferation regime, the emerging nuclear world order and broader conflicts about the hegemonic and discriminatory structure of the NPT. The way West Germany handled US criticism of the exports shows West German willingness to shape its own foreign policy and the attempt to gain independence from US dominance, thus contributing to the decline of bipolarism and strengthening middle powers.     

The impact of Russian food security policy on the performance of the food system

Abstract

Food security has guided Russia’s food policy since 2010. The article examines the impact of food security policy on the food system. The Russian model of food security combines government intervention in the form of assistance for domestic production while simultaneously restricting market access. Food security does not appear to have a deleterious impact on the food system. We measure impact on four dimensions. Financial support for agriculture continues to increase in nominal rubles. In food production, the beef and dairy branches continue to lag, but increased grain production has made Russia a global leader in grain exports. Average per capita food consumption improved, although the poor consume much less, and the decline of the ruble affects the way Russians shop. The largest impact of food security has been on food trade. Food security policy has brought food to the forefront as an instrument of foreign policy. Food trade is politicized, witnessed by the food embargo against the West and food import bans against Turkey and Ukraine.     

European Integration and Spatial Rescaling in the Baltic Region: Soft Spaces,Soft Planning and Soft Security

Abstract

Spatial rescaling arguably represents one of the most significant recent changes in planning. Rescaling processes do not merely imply changes in powers across existing layers of decision-making, but also entail new scales of intervention, new actor constellations and new geometries of governance. A wide range of examples of spatial rescaling can be seen across Europe, varying from local through to regional and international. The emergence of “soft spaces”—regions in which strategy is made between or alongside formal institutions and processes—is one of the phenomena associated with contemporary spatial rescaling. These spaces are often overlapping and characterized by fuzzy geographical boundaries. The formation of soft spaces is often articulated in terms of breaking away from the rigidities associated with the practices and expectations of working within existing political or administrative boundaries but can also be viewed as providing a means of bypassing formal procedures and reducing democratic accountability. Focusing on European territorial cooperation and development strategies in the Baltic region, this paper discusses how they are contributing to spatial rescaling in soft spaces and how the strategies can be seen as a form of soft planning and as a means to promote soft security policy (which could be considered as a wider form of foreign policy).     

Oriental borrowings in Medieval Greek: new evidence from the BnF manuscript Supplément persan 939

Abstract

The topic of this article is the historical evolution of Greek foreign policy in the Middle East over the past thirty-five years. It essentially seeks to explain the broad framework of conditions and objectives within which Greek foreign policy has been made towards the Arab Middle East and Israel. It argues that the amount of involvement of Greek foreign policy in the area was relatively little. Though much has changed in Greece's approach towards the Middle East since the 1990s, there is also a significant continuity of attitude, in the sense that serious attention has not been paid to this part of the world.     

The changing role of the FIRB and the politics of foreign investment in Australia

ABSTRACT

Australia’s policy on foreign investment aims to achieve both the liberal goal of maximising capital inflows and the statist one of ensuring that those inflows are in ‘the national interest’. This article analyses the tensions between these goals through interviews with policymakers who have direct knowledge of the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB), which has functioned as an ‘offstage’, pre-market regulator for capital inflows to Australia. The tensions between these policy goals were manageable because the FIRB exercised its powers rarely, decisively and quietly, and the government believed that foreign investment did not threaten the national interest. The emergence of state-owned enterprises as foreign investors, however, significantly altered this calculus, and the FIRB has been tasked with assessing the national security implications of proposed investments. Instead of working offstage, as in earlier decades, the FIRB has become central to debates about how Australia should respond to the rise of China.     

George W. Bush, Idealist

There is much anger and confused grumbling these days outside the United States—and in Europe in particular—about the character of the Bush administration's foreign policy. Perceived American unilateralism is raising hackles and questions. This article contends that current trends in US foreign policy can be better understood by realizing that many senior Bush administration officials are not 'realists', at least as that philosophy of world politics is classically understood. Many of the resulting views—that, for example, threats to security often originate in ideology rather than material strength—are demonstrably correct and even hopeful in their faith in long-term historical trends. But there may be no getting around the essential contradictions required of US foreign policy in an age when America is the leading power, when a new global community of trading democracies is emerging, and yet when a number of distinctly old-style threats to the peace remain very much in evidence. Washington could do more to smooth the edges of those contradictions in order to point up the idealism and hopefulness of US policy.     

Analysing Heritage Landscapes with Historical GIS: Contributions from problem-based inquiry and constructivist pedagogy

This article examines a practical classroom experience using GIS technologies to analyse aspects of a local heritage landscape. An inventory of historic buildings comprising architectural and construction details was revised in the field and then analysed using GIS software. Elements of the geographies of these buildings were displayed using thematic mapping and students used these maps to develop explanatory hypotheses and to suggest policy options for future management of the heritage landscape. Practically, the project demonstrated the contribution GIS can make to historical geography methods, engaged students in an externally supported research partnership working with real-world data, and suggested directions for local public policy formation. Pedagogically, the project demonstrated that historical GIS can be used effectively to shape problem-based inquiry and constructivist learning.     

The Origin of Alliances: From Sparta to the EU’s Solidarity Clause

Abstract

According to the International Relations theory known as Realism, interstate interactions, whether ancient or modern, are motivated by the pursuit of hegemony of individual states, which act as monolithic groups in articulating their foreign policy decisions. The application of Realism to the study of Spartan foreign policy in the third century BC shows the validity of this theory in explaining certain aspects of ancient interstate interactions, as illustrated by the two alliances discussed in this article. The first, earlier alliance, between King of Macedonia Antigonos Gonatas and Sparta and some Peloponnesian cities, was made in response to the threat posed by King Pyrrhus of Epirus who was set on conquering them. The later alliance, between Sparta and other states, was made to stop the ambitions of King Antigonos Gonatas who controlled many cities of the Peloponnese and sought to conquer the whole of Greece. In forging such alliances, according to the Realist view, the states acted as large monolithic groups, yet a broader assessment of the available evidence shows the presence of smaller, subtler networks of individuals, which were paramount in articulating important foreign policy decisions. The comparison of Spartan decision making with the activation in 2009 of the EU’s Solidarity Clause, included in Article 222 of The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), indicates that the activation of this clause too required the consensus of several European governing bodies. By bringing to light the critical role played by smaller networks of power in foreign policy decision making in the ancient and the current-day EU alliances, this article exposes both the merits and the limits of the Realist international relations theory.     

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     

Cultural implications of international volunteer tourism: US students’ experiences in Cameroon

ABSTRACT

A popular trend is for US colleges to organise short-term, self-funded trips for students to volunteer for several weeks in poverty-stricken communities in the global South. To explore the cultural implications of short-term, international volunteer projects, I undertake an ethnographic study of college students of who travel to a small village in Cameroon to improve the quality of drinking water and community health. I examine whether the volunteer tourism can serve as a unique opportunity to see beyond the African stereotypes to recognise the historical and structural context in which Africa continues to suffer. Although a trip such as this can be a disruptive event for students to critically evaluate the global privileges of Westerners, students tend to experience Cameroon through the lens of popular stereotypes about Africa and Western paternalism. The encounters with Africans in the absence of sufficient education about postcolonial Africa can affirm the stereotypes and cultural superiority formed in USA because students negotiate their actual experience in ways to confirm their perception of Africa. Therefore, seminars and workshops about the fundamental aspects about global inequality can help educate volunteers about the postcolonial context of foreign aid of Western countries for the Third World, and White privilege.     

Norwegian and Soviet/Russian World War II Memory Policy During the Cold War and the Post-Soviet Years

Abstract

World War II has played a significant role in using “memory” in all kind of “memory politics” in Europe as well as in the USA. Using examples from Norway and the Soviet Union, later the Russian Republic, this article shows how successfully, but also how contradictorily, historical events can be used as memory politics. We will also see what “memory culture” and “memory policy” is predominant in circumpolar Norway and the Soviet Union/Russia after World War II. We are introduced to the concept of “memory agents”, the producers and directors of “memory politics”. The case is first and foremost the battle of Narvik in Norway in the spring of 1940. We also take a look at the circumpolar borderland between Norway and the Soviet Union during World War II, where the German “Gebirgsjäger” from the Narvik front regrouped and continued their assault on Soviet Union in Murmansk County from the summer of 1941. In what way were the war events useful in the post war era, and how could they directly affect Soviet–Norwegian relations during the Cold War? In addition we ask how memories contributed to the justification of different approaches to the foreign policy in both countries. Besides, the article demonstrates how the memory policy of World War II was affected after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union in Norway and Russia, respectively.