Stormy waters: Britain,the Falkland Islands and UK–Argentine relations

This article considers Britain's relationship with the Falkland Islands and the wider context of UK–Argentine relations. It does so by considering three main themes. First, the current Argentine government's strategy towards the Falklands (Islas Malvinas) and the manner in which the question of disputed ownership has been tied into wider Latin American relationships designed to unsettle UK and Falkland Islands interests. Second, the debate surrounding the defence of the Falklands is examined for the purpose of considering how this issue, especially sensitive given the 30th anniversary of the 1982 conflict, brings into sharp relief the implications of recent defence and spending reviews. Finally, the article aims to assess and evaluate the manner in which the Falkland Islands community engages with and responds to worsening UK–Argentine relations. It is concluded that UK–Argentine relations are in their worst state since 1982 and that there is little or no prospect of any improvement given the Argentine government's commitment to force the UK into entering sovereignty negotiations. On its side, the UK and the Falkland Islands’ community do not believe that sovereignty is negotiable and would rather consider how more cordial relations could be established in a manner reminiscent of the late 1990s.     

The British road to war: Blair, Bush and the decision to invade Iraq

The British decision to go to war against Iraq with the United States has been widely criticized for being based on inaccurate and exaggerated assessments of the threat posed by Iraq. This article shows that the case for military action made by the British government was based on a measured analysis of the threat, on the conviction that the continued containment of Iraq through sanctions was not effective or morally acceptable, and that the human rights violations of the Iraqi regime were of a such a scale that they could no longer be tolerated. The article then assesses the judgements of the British government in the light of the information that has come to light since the war against Iraq in 2003.     

Bush,Obama and a faith‐based US foreign policy

In a calculated move to appeal to his core constituency during his first term, President George W. Bush launched domestic and international faith‐based initiatives designed to leverage public finance for religious groupings to carry out social and welfare functions formerly performed by government or secular organizations. In December 2002 the Center for Faith‐Based and Community Initiatives (CFBCI) was extended to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The Center's intention was to ‘create a level playing field’ for faith‐based and community groups to compete for foreign assistance funding. These presidential initiatives are problematic, however, calling into question the first amendment—the separation of church and state. Upon taking office Barack Obama set up the Office of Faith‐based and Neighborhood Partnerships, promising a greater emphasis on community/neighbourhood programs. The CFBCI remains a fixture in USAID and Obama shows as much enthusiasm for the initiative as his predecessor. Faith‐based international relations and political science scholars have sought to build on these initiatives and call for a greater role for faith in US foreign policy. On the eve of the 2012 presidential election, this article considers the claims for a faith‐based foreign policy by examining the construction of a faith‐based discourse by academics and successive presidents. Using faith‐based initiatives and USAID as a case–study, the article discusses criticisms of the policy and focuses on the role of a conservative evangelical organization, Samaritan's Purse, to illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of faith‐based approaches. The article argues that advocates of faith‐based foreign policy, in seeking special privileges for ecumenical religious actors, overlook their declining international significance and the opportunities afforded to less tolerant but more populist religious actors which have the potential seriously to harm US foreign policy objectives.     

Disproportionality and bias in US Presidential Elections: How geography helped Bush defeat Gore but couldn't help Kerry beat Bush

The 2000 and 2004 US Presidential elections were closely fought contests, with in the first case victory in the Electoral College being denied to the candidate with the largest share of the popular vote. Disproportionality in the translation of votes into seats (in this case, from popular votes to votes in the Electoral College) is common to contests using a winner-takes-all electoral system. So is bias, whereby that disproportionality does not apply equally to each candidate. Analysis of the bias at those two elections shows that Bush was favoured at the first but not at the second. Identification of the bias components shows that Bush was advantaged by variations in the number of popular votes per Electoral College voter across the states, and also by variation in turnout. In 2000, his popular votes were also more efficiently distributed than Gore's; in 2004 they were less efficiently distributed than Kerry's, largely because of increased turnout – producing larger numbers of surplus votes – in states that were already safe for Bush.     

Asymmetric parity: US–China relations in a multinodal world

The period 2008 to 2015 is likely to prove a traumatic transition from the post‐Cold War era of American unipolar hegemony to a new status quo of asymmetric parity between the US and China. With approximately equal masses of production and one third of the world's total, the relationship of the United States and China will remain the focus of global politics for the foreseeable future. While parity in economic mass makes each the greatest concern of the other, their asymmetry in wealth, developmental levels, and geopolitical concerns makes unnecessary a power transition scenario. Hitherto the analysis of parity has assumed symmetry, and therefore the point of power transition and challenge is highlighted and strategy has focused on relative gain vis‐à‐vis the rival. With asymmetric parity the transitional moment becomes ambiguous, and it is a reasonable strategy for each side to pursue absolute gain. Sustainable asymmetric rivalry is competitive, but it can also be win‐win. Moreover, neither the US nor China—nor the two together—can exercise the kind of hegemonic control that was the premise of earlier bipolar and unipolar eras. The diffuse interdependence created by globalization gives every state broader alternatives and raises the cost of hostility. The US and China do not face each other as hegemon and challenger, but rather as the largest, but quite different, players in a multinodal world that neither controls.     

British civil–military relations and the problem of risk

Drawing primarily on the experience of the UK since 2001, this article examines the increasing prevalence of risk as an organizing concept for western defence and security planning and its implications for civil–military relations and strategy‐making. It argues that there may be tensions between such approaches and the principles of good strategy‐making, which aim to link means and resources to ends in a coherent manner. Not only does risk potentially blur the relationship between means and ends in the strategy‐making process, it also exposes it to contestation, with multiple interpretations of what the risks actually are and the strategic priority (and commitment) which should be attached to them. The article examines these tensions at three levels of risk contestation for British defence: institutions, operations and military–society relations. In the case of the UK, it contends that the logic of risk has not been able to provide the same national motivation and sense of strategic purpose as the logic of threat. In this context, calls for a reinvigoration of traditional strategy‐making or a renewed conception of national interest may be missing a more fundamental dissonance between defence policy, civil–military relations and the wider security context. More widely, the strategic ennui that some western states have been accused of may not simply be a product of somehow falling out of the habit of strategy‐making or an absence of ‘political will’. Instead, it may reflect deeper social and geostrategic trends which constrain and complicate the use of military force and obscure its utility in the public imagination.     

Normalizing US–Cuba relations: escaping the shackles of the past

President Barack Obama explained his historic reversal of half a century of US antagonism towards Cuba as necessary because of the failure of the policy of hostility pursued by his ten predecessors. But the old policy's failure was not new, and thus was not, in itself, an adequate explanation for the dramatic shift. This article uses theories of agenda‐setting, policy failure and policy change to explain the persistence of the US policy of hostility from 1959 to 2014 and the policy change announced by President Barack Obama in December 2014. Four structural factors account for the continuity in policy and, as a result of gradual changes in those factors, the eventual policy shift. They are: the security threat Cuba posed to the United States during the Cold War; the political influence of the Cuban American community; the diplomatic cost to Washington, especially in Latin America, of maintaining the status quo; and domestic changes under way in Cuba.