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ID:
089508
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| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article is critical of a series of works on Chinese soft power which have garnered much attention in recent years. These works typically portray Chinese soft power, characterised by its disregard for Western models of development that propagate 'democratic governance', as a latent threat to global order. The article argues that such claims are premature, and to date there is little evidence of a systematic attempt by the Chinese to propagate a 'Beijing model' of autocratic development. These claims are substantiated by analysing China's participation in United Nations peacekeeping operations in Africa, which are characterised by mandates aimed at transforming war-torn states into liberal democracies. I suggest that China's participation in these operations is a crucial component of its 'charm offensive' aimed at the West, and designed to allay fears of a 'China Threat'. The article argues that Chinese understandings of soft power are diverse and directed at multiple audiences. The tendency to 'look for potential threats' in many Western policy-informed works, however, ignores the multifaceted nature and diverse views on Chinese soft power, and clouds our ability to understand this new phenomenon in Chinese foreign policy
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| 2 |
ID:
092624
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| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article tries to chart some of the parallels between the British Mesopotamia Campaign in the First World War and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Both campaigns were justified by faulty or contrived intelligence; both were launched with little consideration of the future potential needs of the liberated/occupied territory; and both were characterized by a lack of planning and clear objectives. However, in spite of their obvious paternalism, several military and civilian members of the British-Indian expedition had a fair understanding of the Middle East, Arabic, Islam, tribal society, and so on; this sort of expertise was almost completely absent both among those planning, and among those running, the US invasion of 2003.
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| 3 |
ID:
093026
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| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
A capital- and firepower-intensive military doctrine is, in general, poorly suited for combating an insurgency. It is therefore puzzling that democracies, particularly the United States, tenaciously pursue such a suboptimal strategy over long periods of time and in successive conflicts. This tendency poses an empirical challenge to the argument that democracies tend to win the conflicts they enter. This apparently nonstrategic behavior results from a condition of moral hazard owing to the shifting of costs away from the average voter. The voter supports the use of a capital-intensive doctrine in conflicts where its effectiveness is low because the decreased likelihood of winning is out-weighed by the lower costs of fighting. This theory better explains the development of the United States' counterinsurgency strategy in Vietnam during Lyndon Johnson's administration compared to the dominant interpretation, which blames the U.S. military's myopic bureaucracy and culture for its counterproductive focus on firepower and conventional warfare.
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