Hegemonic stability in the Indo-Pacific: US-India relations and induced balancing

2021 ◽  
pp. 004711782110592
Author(s):  
Jan Hornat

The United States has improved relations with no other country during the Trump administration as much as it advanced its relationship with India. US-India relations have arguably marked their historical high points since Trump entered office and India seems to be overcoming its suspicion of closer cooperation with the US. Given these developments, this article aims to theorize the relationship through the hegemonic stability theory and explain US strategy toward India. We first demonstrate why India is accepting the hegemonic standing of the US in the Indo-Pacific and then – since balance of power politics are still a staple of policymakers’ approach to stability in the Indo-Pacific – we introduce the notion of induced balancing to show what approach the United States has adopted to empower India to expand its balancing capacity vis-à-vis China. The last section of the article empirically maps the various incentives that Washington offers to New Delhi in order to situate it in the desired position of a proxy China-balancer.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (04) ◽  
pp. 19-27
Author(s):  
Weixing CHEN

The rise of China has shaken, to some extent, the pillars sustaining the US dominance in the world. Facing structural challenges from China, the United States has responded on three levels: political, strategic and policy. The Donald Trump administration has adopted a hard-line approach while attempting to engage China at the structural level. The China–US relationship is entering uncertain times, and the reconstruction of the relationship could take a decade.


2020 ◽  
pp. 181-205
Author(s):  
Francine R. Frankel

The US policy of collective security against the Soviet Union led to the pursuit of the Middle East Defense Organization, which was undermined by Nehru’s success in persuading Egypt to follow his example of remaining nonaligned. Nehru failed, however, to prevent the 1954 Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement between the United States and Pakistan, which tilted the balance of power in the subcontinent away from India—although Mountbatten weighed in to provide advanced British aircraft and averted an incipient deal between New Delhi and Moscow. Subsequently, Nehru was confirmed in his belief that the United States was determined to build up Pakistan and build- down India.


2020 ◽  
Vol 01 (01) ◽  
pp. 2050003
Author(s):  
JAGANNATH P. PANDA ◽  
MRITTIKA GUHA SARKAR

The intensifying trade war between the United States and China has been the focal point of geoeconomics as well as geopolitics, in the purview of the current times. Trump’s unilateral trade tariffs imposed on China and the latter’s retaliation with further duties against the United States has jostled the global trade chains, which has had repercussions beyond the two largest economies. Furthermore, while the G20 summit in Osaka witnessed the US and China returning to the negotiating table to end the tariffs and the Phase One deal between both the countries provided some amnesty, the tensions are much deeper rooted and are far from being resolved. However, as the implications of the trade war move beyond the stratagem of the US–China tug-of-war, many countries like India maneuver through the tussle to find a delicate equilibrium between national interests and global power politics. In this regard, this paper tends to analyze India’s perspective towards the trade war, arguing that New Delhi is taking a non-confrontational, measured approach to surpass the fluid international affairs; in a way that is letting New Delhi shape its decisions on the basis of its national interests and concerns, rather than taking sides.


Author(s):  
Steven Hurst

The United States, Iran and the Bomb provides the first comprehensive analysis of the US-Iranian nuclear relationship from its origins through to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. Starting with the Nixon administration in the 1970s, it analyses the policies of successive US administrations toward the Iranian nuclear programme. Emphasizing the centrality of domestic politics to decision-making on both sides, it offers both an explanation of the evolution of the relationship and a critique of successive US administrations' efforts to halt the Iranian nuclear programme, with neither coercive measures nor inducements effectively applied. The book further argues that factional politics inside Iran played a crucial role in Iranian nuclear decision-making and that American policy tended to reinforce the position of Iranian hardliners and undermine that of those who were prepared to compromise on the nuclear issue. In the final chapter it demonstrates how President Obama's alterations to American strategy, accompanied by shifts in Iranian domestic politics, finally brought about the signing of the JCPOA in 2015.


Author(s):  
Frédéric Grare

India’s relationship with the United States remains crucial to its own objectives, but is also ambiguous. The asymmetry of power between the two countries is such that the relationship, if potentially useful, is not necessary for the United States while potentially risky for India. Moreover, the shift of the political centre of gravity of Asia — resulting from the growing rivalry between China and the US — is eroding the foundations of India’s policy in Asia, while prospects for greater economic interaction is limited by India’s slow pace of reforms. The future of India-US relations lies in their capacity to evolve a new quid pro quo in which the US will formulate its expectations in more realistic terms while India would assume a larger share of the burden of Asia’ security.


Author(s):  
Diomaris E.S. Jurecska ◽  
Chloe E. Lee ◽  
Kelly B.T. Chang ◽  
Elizabeth Sequeira

Abstract The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between intelligence (IQ) and self-efficacy in children and adolescents living in the United States and Nicaragua. The sample consisted of 90 (46 male, 44 female) students (mean age=11.57 years, SD=3.0 years) referred by school administrators and faculty. United States (US) participants (n=27) resided in rural counties in the Northwest. The other group consisted of 63 students from Central America. A comparison between groups revealed that in the US, sample higher grades and IQ scores are typically associated with higher levels of self-efficacy. However in the Nicaraguan sample, both IQ scores and grades were not associated with self-efficacy, although age was correlated with self-efficacy. Results suggest that the construct of self-efficacy might change depending on whether one belongs to an individualistic or collectivistic society. Additionally, the effects of socioeconomic factors might influence perceived ability even more than intellectual abilities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 645-668 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Talmon

Abstract The United States’ recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan has been widely considered a flagrant breach of international law. This illegal act gives reason to examine the relationship between the United States under President Trump and international law more generally. Unlike its predecessors, the Trump administration has not just violated international law whenever U.S. economic, political, or strategic interests demanded it to do so, it has rather challenged international law and its institutions as such, and has actively undermined them. The attitude of the Trump administration towards international law and its institutions is marked by an unparalleled contempt or disdain. This article delivers a powerful “J’accuse” against this international law nihilism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (5) ◽  
pp. 1281-1303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Norrlöf

Abstract COVID-19 is the most invasive global crisis in the postwar era, jeopardizing all dimensions of human activity. By theorizing COVID-19 as a public bad, I shed light on one of the great debates of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries regarding the relationship between the United States and liberal international order (LIO). Conceptualizing the pandemic as a public bad, I analyze its consequences for US hegemony. Unlike other international public bads and many of the most important public goods that make up the LIO, the COVID-19 public bad not only has some degree of rivalry but can be made partially excludable, transforming it into more of a club good. Domestically, I demonstrate how the failure to effectively manage the COVID-19 public bad has compromised America's ability to secure the health of its citizens and the domestic economy, the very foundations for its international leadership. These failures jeopardize US provision of other global public goods. Internationally, I show how the US has already used the crisis strategically to reinforce its opposition to free international movement while abandoning the primary international institution tasked with fighting the public bad, the World Health Organization (WHO). While the only area where the United States has exercised leadership is in the monetary sphere, I argue this feat is more consequential for maintaining hegemony. However, even monetary hegemony could be at risk if the pandemic continues to be mismanaged.


2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANTHONY PAYNE

United States–Caribbean relations over the period of the last thirty or forty years have rarely—if ever—been analysed in a thoroughly satisfying way. It is a strange omission in the international relations literature given the proximity of the United States to the Caribbean, and vice versa. But the fact is that most accounts of the relationship have fallen prey to a powerful, but ultimately misleading, mythology by which small, poor, weak, dependent entities in the Caribbean have either created trouble for, or alternatively been confronted by, the ‘colossus to the north’ that is the United States in whose ‘backyard’ they unfortunately have to reside. Virtually all analysts of the US–Caribbean relationship have thus drawn a picture marked at heart by the notion of an inherently unequal struggle between forces of a different order and scale. Within this broad metaphor the only major difference of interpretation has reflected the competing theories of power in the international system developed by the realist and structuralist schools.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Hong Nguyen

This article argues that representations in popular culture of the Holocaust of World War II are being used to reframe issues of racism in the United States. It critically examines three major discourse formations: contemporary Western thought on fascism, critical scholarship on the US collective memory of the Holocaust, and popular culture’s use of the Holocaust for racial instruction. The Americanization and de-Judification of the Holocaust shows how fascist racism is constructed through institutional discourses and practices and functions as an archetype for understanding race and racism in the United States. Exploring the emergence of Holocaust references in US public culture following Barack Obama’s election, this article proposes that the analogy gains its efficacy because the Americanization of the Holocaust articulates the relationship between institutional practices and race for racist whites.


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