Australia’s Colombo Plans,old and new: international students as foreign relations

This article draws on recent research and policy developments to make a case for considering international students as an important component of Australian foreign relations. It links historical and contemporary Australian experiences of international students, especially in the Colombo Plan and New Colombo Plan, to the field of public diplomacy, and sets an agenda for further research in this direction. It highlights the need to recover student voices and to be sensitive to the emergence of everyday or ‘vernacular’ internationalism, as a phenomenon of international students visiting, traveling and otherwise encountering different groups of Australians. It suggests a need to take up anew this form of inquiry for both earlier postwar student experiences and the post-1980s period, in which international students’ voices are frequently silenced by debates over commodification, funding needs, and neo-liberal economics.     

Pop-culture diplomacy in Japan: soft power,nation branding and the question of ‘international cultural exchange’

This paper critically examines the development of what is known as ‘pop-culture diplomacy’ in Japan. In the postwar era, the country’s cultural diplomacy was propelled by the necessity to soften anti-Japan perceptions, notably in Southeast Asia. In the late 1980s, the popularity of Japanese media culture in Asia began to attract the attention of policy makers, while subsequent globalized practices of soft power and nation branding gave greater emphasis to the use of media culture to internationally enhance the image of the nation, which has meant the promotion of ‘pop-culture diplomacy’ and, more broadly, ‘Cool Japan’. It is argued that pop-culture diplomacy goes no further than a one-way projection and does not seriously engage with cross-border dialogue. The Japanese case also shows that pop-culture diplomacy hinders meaningful engagement with internal cultural diversity and suggests the necessity of taking domestic implications of cultural diplomacy seriously.     

Money,Manipulation and Misunderstanding on Manus Island

The treatment of asylum seekers at the Manus Island Regional Processing Centre in Papua New Guinea (PNG) has attracted much international attention, but there has been little analysis of its local and transnational impact. This article investigates the repercussions for the communities on Manus Island, on domestic affairs in PNG, and on the relationship between PNG and Australia. Overall, it concludes that the costs arising from the money, manipulation and misunderstanding generated by the centre seem likely to outweigh the purported benefits, particularly for Manusians and other ordinary Papua New Guineans.     

Establishing the Bougainville Mining Workers' Union, 1969–1976

Bougainville Copper Limited's Panguna mine was a huge and complex undertaking that, despite its potential for creating social disruption, operated successfully for two decades before the outbreak of armed conflict in 1988. One source of conflict, common in mining but neglected in previous research on Bougainville, is labour relations and, in particular, how a local workforce was integrated into a system of negotiation that facilitated the operation of the mine by limiting the level and intensity of workplace conflict. Between 1969 and 1988, the Bougainville Mining Workers’ Union (BMWU) played a key role in this structure of accommodation of conflicting interests. This paper uncovers the history of how the BMWU developed the capacity to represent its members' interests successfully and play a positive role in conflict resolution.     

The Model Arctic Council: Simulated Negotiations as Pedagogy and Embodied Diplomacy

This article draws on the perspectives of students and organizers involved in recent iterations of the Model Arctic Council (MAC), an experiential learning simulation designed to expand students’ knowledge and understanding of the Arctic and its governance. While much of the discourse related to simulations such as the MAC emphasizes its pedagogical and networking benefits, this article leverages participant-based ethnography to argue that the MAC also affects multi-track diplomatic outcomes in addition to serving as a site for diplomatic engagement. Applying an interpretive approach driven by the onset of practice-tracing in international relations, we demonstrate that the MAC both produces and constitutes diplomacy. Such a reimagination elevates the diplomacy of non-state actors and exposes false binaries between state diplomacy and non-state diplomacy.     

The Construction of the League of Nations Secretariat. Formative Practices of Autonomy and Legitimacy in International Organizations

This article investigates the formative staffing practices of the League of Nations Secretariat. Drawing on the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, it argues that core traits of the League's institutional capacity and identity was produced through the institutionalization of recruitment practices in the League's formative years from 1919 to 1923. Through an exploration of early negotiations and practices of staffing, we show how the League built and balanced legitimacy, by combining a clearly international make-up of the League Secretariat with acute sensitivity to state interests, and autonomy, by defending the Secretary-General's exclusive prerogative of staffing, in a way that has been defining for the trajectory of international organizations (IOs) until today. The article thus turns to the institutional landscape where the individual and its surroundings meet: through the daily staffing practices of the Secretariat, it explores how an institution came to be, function and assert its influence as an autonomous and legitimate diplomatic agent in a broader international field. As such, the article, as an innovative contribution to the field, argues that international historians should connect thorough institutional investigations with elements of the ‘cultural turn’ in International History, in order to properly engage with and understand IOs as diplomatic actors.     

Final Strategy: The Post-War Grand Strategic Designs of Henry L. Stimson

Few men arguably shaped the trajectory of American foreign policy in the twentieth century as durably and profoundly as Henry L. Stimson. After all, Stimson was not only directly involved in many consequential decisions dealing with highly important matters of war and peace, but was also a major influence in the United States’ more proactive involvement in extra-territorial affairs. For Stimson, it was simply wishful thinking to presume that the United States could forever disengage itself from far-reaching occurrences in other parts of the globe. Accordingly, he thought it just as critical to anticipate international problems as it was to successfully resolve them afterwards, with the result that he became an ardent and early proponent of a much more sophisticated global strategy after the Second World War. In that context, however, most historians have primarily focused on Stimson's role in the development and use of the atomic bomb against Imperial Japan, though arguably less on his more sweeping grand strategic designs. Consequently, the present article will attempt to offer a more comprehensive analysis of Stimson's grand strategic designs, particularly as they related to his vision and reflections on the necessary ingredients of a more peaceful, stable and secure interstate system.     

Toyotomi Hideyoshi's effort of retreat and the ending of the East Asian War

Abstract

During the second stage of the East Asian War, Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豐臣秀吉 hopefully sought to make an honorable exit, but the Choson 朝鮮 formulated a unique diplomatic strategy that brought the Ming to the battlefield, and there was no way for Toyotomi Hideyoshi's retreat and attempts at peace talks to be successful. In the end, the war concluded with Toyotomi Hideyoshi's death from illness and the retreat of the Japanese army in defeat, and the international order established between China and Korea was maintained.     

Has the euro sustainably increased home price co‐movement?

A low level of co‐movement between different euro country housing markets creates difficulties for the ECB in setting monetary policy. Such co‐movement across eurozone countries has been the subject of a number of studies, using different methodologies and finding mixed results. In this study, we use endogenous break methods to explicitly test for whether the introduction of the euro has changed home value co‐movement. We also employ informal correlation analysis. Endogenous break results indicate no sustainable increase in co‐movement attributable to the euro, whereas correlation analysis is suggestive of a decrease in synchronization since the currency's introduction.     

The ICC pre-trial chamber decision on jurisdiction over the situation in Myanmar

The transfer and deportation of ethnically Rohingya people from Myanmar into Bangladesh is a crime against humanity demanding an international response. What role, however, should the International Criminal Court (ICC) play? On 6 September 2018 an ICC Pre-Trial Chamber ruled that the Court has jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute such crimes as they are completed on the territory of a State party, Bangladesh. Myanmar is not a party to ICC Statute and has invoked the principle that treaties do not bind third parties without their consent. The case put in this commentary is that while the Pre-Trial Chamber’s approach to the law was arguable as an interpretation of the ICC Statute, it was unwise as a matter of policy. The argument is threefold. First, the Pre-Trial Chamber’s ruling is as a matter of legal method only the first-move in a process of norm-creation and persuasion. Second, it does not follow that because territorial jurisdiction in international law includes ‘objective’ jurisdiction over transboundary acts completed on a State’s territory that such jurisdiction was delegated by member States to the ICC in all cases. Finally, it is argued that international criminal tribunals do not succeed when the cooperation of necessary territorial governments (here, Myanmar) is withheld. Proceeding in this case risks becoming a quagmire of the ICC’s own creation at a time when it can little afford further risks to its legitimacy.