20th+

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD, also known as the Quad) is an informal strategic dialogue between the United States, Japan, Australia and India that is maintained by talks between member countries. The dialogue was initiated in 2007 by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, with the support of Vice President Dick Cheney of the US, Prime Minister John Howard of Australia and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India. The dialogue was paralleled by joint military exercises of an unprecedented scale, titled Exercise Malabar. The diplomatic and military arrangement was widely viewed as a response to increased Chinese economic and military power, and the Chinese government responded to the Quadrilateral dialogue by issuing formal diplomatic protests to its members.

The QSD ceased following the withdrawal of Australia during Kevin Rudd’s tenure as prime minister, reflecting ambivalence in Australian policy over the growing tension between the United States and China in the Asia-Pacific. Following Rudd's replacement by Julia Gillard in 2010, enhanced military cooperation between the United States and Australia was resumed, leading to the placement of US Marines near Darwin, Australia, overlooking the Timor Sea and Lombok Strait. India, Japan, and the United States continue to hold joint naval exercises through Malabar.

During the 2017 ASEAN Summits in Manila, all four former members led by Shinzo Abe, Narendra Modi, Malcolm Turnbull, and DJT agreed to revive the quadrilateral alliance in order to counter China militarily and diplomatically in the South China Sea. Tensions between Quad members and China have led to fears of what was dubbed by some commentators as "a new Cold War" in the region.

In a 2021 joint statement, "The Spirit of the Quad," Quad members described "a shared vision for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific," and a "rules-based maritime order in the East and South China Seas," which Quad members state are needed to counter Chinese maritime claims. The Quad pledged to respond to COVID-19, and held a first Quad Plus meeting that included representatives from New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam to work on its response to it. Widely viewed as intending to curb "China's growing power," the Quad's joint statement drew criticism from China's foreign ministry, which said the Quad "openly incites discord" among regional powers in Asia

◊ Indo-Pacific ..

Anglosphere - CANZUK ..

Asian NATO? ..

AUKUS - 2021-9-15 ..

BRI - Belt & Road Initiative ..

CAI, RCEP - Asia, Europe, USA ..

Eurasia & Power Competition at Sea ..

Freedom of Navigation ..

Maritime Strategy - Australia ..
Military Ambitions - China 2021 ..

NZ, Aus, USA vs China in Pacific ..

QUAD - PATO ..
Superpower Potential ..
2021 Power Projection - US Military ..
Prisoners of Geography ↬

RCEP - Asia-Pacific trading bloc ..
US Overseas Territories ..

ΧίΧίР's Naval Ambitions - РLΑΝ ..

Resources

Coming Resource Conflicts ..

⧫ Taiwan ⇔ China ..

ROC Armed Forces ..

Taiwan ..

ΧίΧίР's Naval Ambitions - РLΑΝ ..

Monday, May 31, 2021

● International Relations

French Diplomacy ..

Glocalization, Neomedievalism ..
Realism - Descendent of Realpolitik ..

Sunday, May 23, 2021

French Diplomacy

21-10-9 Les [Puériles] Français - Peter Zeihan > .

23-5-14 French Defence Strategy & Rearmament - strategic autonomy - Perun > .

23-1-3 Macron's Neo-Gaullism - plans for hegemony - Caspian Report > .

22-12-30 Most disappointing politicians - VisPol > .

22-7-26 France's Geostrategic Choices in Central Europe - gtbt > .

22-5-9 Macron's Plan to Revive France - VisPol > .

2022 Why 2022 could see the end of Macron’s European dream - Telegraph > .

21-10-1 Australia scraps French submarine deal [AUKUS 21-9-15] - Caspian > .

22-1-25 The great Scandals of France's new Empire - VisPol > .

22-11-7 Charles de Gaulle | Power without autocracy (subs) - Katz > . skip > .

> African Economies >> > Africa >> > Africa~ >>

24-3-23 Islamist Terrorists, French, Ruscians - Proxy Insurgencies in Africa - Real > .

> France Geopolitics >>

> French Armed Forces >>

> Strategy >>

Foreign Relations of France: In the 19th century France built a new French colonial empire second only to the British Empire. It was humiliated in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, which marked the rise of Germany to dominance in Europe. France allied with Great Britain and Russia and was on the winning side of the First World War. If it was initially easily defeated early in the Second World War, Free France, through its Free French Forces and the Resistance, continued to fight against the Axis powers as an Allied nation and was ultimately considered one of the victors of the war, as the allocation of an French occupations zone in Germany and West Berlin testifies, as well as the status of permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. It fought losing colonial wars in Indochina (ending in 1954) and Algeria (ending in 1962). The Fourth Republic collapsed and the Fifth Republic began in 1958 to the present. Under Charles De Gaulle it tried to block American and British influence on the European community. Since 1945, France has been a founding member of the United Nations, of NATO, and of the European Coal and Steel Community (the European Union's predecessor). As a charter member of the United Nations, France holds one of the permanent seats in the Security Council and is a member of most of its specialized and related agencies.

France is also a founding member of the Union for the Mediterranean and the La Francophonie and plays a key role, both in regional and in international affairs.

Charles de Gaulle: De Gaulle's foreign policy was centered around an attempt to limit the power and influence of both superpowers, and at the same time increase France's international prestige. De Gaulle hoped to move France from being a follower of the United States to becoming the leading nation of a large group of non-aligned countries. The nations de Gaulle looked at as potential participants in this group were those in France's traditional spheres of influence: Africa and the Middle East. The former French colonies in eastern and northern Africa were quite agreeable to these close relations with France. These nations had close economic and cultural ties to France, and they also had few other suitors amongst the major powers. This new orientation of French foreign policy also appealed strongly to the leaders of the Arab nations. None of them wanted to be dominated by either of the superpowers, and they supported France's policy of trying to balance the US and the USSR and to prevent either from becoming dominant in the region. The Middle Eastern leaders wanted to be free to pursue their own goals and objectives, and did not want to be chained to either alliance bloc. De Gaulle hoped to use this common foundation to build strong relations between the nations. He also hoped that good relations would improve France's trade with the region. De Gaulle also imagined that these allies would look up to the more powerful French nation, and would look to it in leadership in matters of foreign policy.

The end of the Algerian conflict in 1962 accomplished much in this regard. France could not portray itself as a leader of the oppressed nations of the world if it still was enforcing its colonial rule upon another nation. The battle against the Muslim separatists that France waged in favour of the minority of white settlers was an extremely unpopular one throughout the Muslim world. With the conflict raging it would have been close to impossible for France to have had positive relations with the nations of the Middle East. The Middle Eastern support for the FLN guerillas was another strain on relations that the end of the conflict removed. Most of the financial and material support for the FLN had come from the nations of the Middle East and North Africa. This was especially true of Nasser's Egypt, which had long supported the separatists. Egypt is also the most direct example of improved relations after the end of hostilities. The end of the war brought an immediate thaw to Franco-Egyptian relations, Egypt ended the trial of four French officers accused of espionage, and France ended its trade embargo against Egypt.

In 1967 de Gaulle completely overturned France's Israel policy. De Gaulle and his ministers reacted very harshly to Israel's actions in the Six-Day War. The French government and de Gaulle condemned Israel's treatment of refugees, warned that it was a mistake to occupy the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and also refused to recognize the Israeli control of Jerusalem. The French government continued to criticize Israel after the war and de Gaulle spoke out against other Israeli actions, such as the operations against the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon. France began to use its veto power to oppose Israel in the UN, and France sided with the Arab states on almost all issues brought to the international body. Most importantly of all, however, de Gaulle's government imposed an arms embargo on the Israeli state. The embargo was in fact applied to all the combatants, but very soon France began selling weaponry to the Arab states again. As early as 1970 France sold Libya a hundred Dassault Mirage fighter jets. However, after 1967 France continued to support Israel's right to exist, as well as Israel's many preferential agreements with France and the European Economic Community.

Emmanuel Macron, 2017+

Sophie Meunier in 2017 ponders whether France is still relevant in world affairs:

France does not have as much relative global clout as it used to. Decolonization ... diminished France’s territorial holdings and therefore its influence. Other countries acquired nuclear weapons and built up their armies. The message of “universal” values carried by French foreign policy has encountered much resistance, as other countries have developed following a different political trajectory than the one preached by France. By the 1990s, the country had become, in the words of Stanley Hoffmann, an “ordinary power, neither a basket case nor a challenger.” Public opinion, especially in the United States, no longer sees France as an essential power. The last time that its foreign policy put France back in the world spotlight was at the outset of the Iraq intervention...[with] France’s refusal to join the US-led coalition....In reality, however, France is still a highly relevant power in world affairs....France is a country of major military importance nowadays...., France also showed it mattered in world environmental affairs with....the Paris Agreement, a global accord to reduce carbon emissions. The election of DJT in 2016 may reinforce demands for France to step in and lead global environmental governance if the US disengages, as the new president has promised, from a variety of policies.

Polls indicate that American president Barack Obama was highly popular in France, but DJT has been extremely unpopular [true of most "sane" nations]. Natalie Nougayrède argues:

Yet behind this widespread revulsion lies a diplomatic opportunity. With the United States looking inward and DJT having torn up the traditional foreign policy rule book...Macron, is seeking to reinvigorate the European project as a way of restoring French leadership. French power is no substitute for American power, of course. But with the United States’ image, global role, and reliability newly uncertain, Europeans feel a void that someone must fill—and France thinks it should at least try to do just that.

In July 2019, the UN ambassadors from 22 nations, including France, signed a joint letter to the UNHRC condemning China’s mistreatment of the Uyghurs as well as its mistreatment of other minority groups, urging the Chinese government to close the Xinjiang re-education camps.

Maritime Strategy - Australia ..

Saturday, May 22, 2021

Glocalization, Neomedievalism

Neo-Medievalism and the New World Order - Geopoliticus > .

18:18 addendum - Neomedievalism & Cyberspace > .

History of German Flag - Hilbert > .

24-3-20 What a Deglobalized Economy Will Look Like - M&M > .

23-9-1 Rise of economic nationalism | Business Beyond - DW > .

22-1 How a Deglobalized World Works, Full Webinar | Peter Zeihan - tco > .

22-2-15 Life at the End of the World | Peter Zeihan @ Fort Benning - geopop > .

23-2-18 Critique of Realism - Kraut > .

22-7-27 Rationality, Cooperation, Pooti and the Security of Others - Frog > .

21-3-25 International Relations 101: Economic Interdependence - Spaniel > .

> Deglobalization >>

24-5-15 Why Less Globalization Might Actually Be Beneficial - EcEx > .

Sociopolitical Conflict

Age of Revolutions (2024) ..

EPo - Europolitics ..

Globalization ⇔ Decoupling ..

History of Globalization æ

The theory of Neomedievalism proposes that the international system is rapidly transforming into a world order similar to that which existed in Medieval Europe, with overlapping structures of authority and multiple loyalties of international actors, which is gradually eroding the power and agency of nation states.

There are two imagined futures in a Neomedieval worldview: one, of a coming anarchy, an era of systemic breakdown and perpetual wars; the second of a New Universalism in which new transnational regimes, which are secular version of the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire, will be constructed to bring order to the world.

Neo-medievalism (or neomedievalism, new medievalism) is a term with a long history that has acquired specific technical senses in two branches of scholarship. In political theory about modern international relations, where the term is originally associated with Hedley Bull, it sees the political order of a globalized world as analogous to high-medieval Europe, where neither states nor the Church, nor other territorial powers, exercised full sovereignty, but instead participated in complex, overlapping and incomplete sovereignties.

The idea of neomedievalism in political theory was first discussed in 1977 by theorist Hedley Bull in The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics to describe the erosion of state sovereignty in the contemporary globalized world:

It is also conceivable that sovereign states might disappear and be replaced not by a world government but by a modern and secular equivalent of the kind of universal political organisation that existed in Western Christendom in the Middle Ages. In that system no ruler or state was sovereign in the sense of being supreme over a given territory and a given segment of the Christian population; each had to share authority with vassals beneath, and with the Pope and (in Germany and Italy) the Holy Roman Emperor above. The universal political order of Western Christendom represents an alternative to the system of states which does not yet embody universal government.

Thus Bull suggested society might move towards "a new mediaevalism" or a "neo-mediaeval form of universal political order", in which individual notions of rights and a growing sense of a "world common good" were undermining national sovereignty. He proposed that such a system might help "avoid the classic dangers of the system of sovereign states by a structure of overlapping structures and cross-cutting loyalties that hold all peoples together in a universal society while at the same time avoiding the concentration inherent in a world government", though "if it were anything like the precedent of Western Christendom, it would contain more ubiquitous and continuous violence and insecurity than does the modern states system".

In this reading, globalization has resulted in an international system which resembles the medieval one, where political authority was exercised by a range of non-territorial and overlapping agents, such as religious bodies, principalities, empires and city-states, instead of by a single political authority in the form of a state which has complete sovereignty over its territory. Comparable processes characterising Bull's "new medievalism" include the increasing powers held by regional organisations such as the European Union, as well as the spread of sub-national and devolved governments, such as those of Scotland and Catalonia. These challenge the exclusive authority of the state. Private military companies, multinational corporations and the resurgence of worldwide religious movements (e.g. political Islam) similarly indicate a reduction in the role of the state and a decentralisation of power and authority.

Westphalian sovereignty, or state sovereignty, is a principle in international law that each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory. The principle underlies the modern international system of sovereign states and is enshrined in the United Nations Charter, which states that "nothing ... shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state." According to the idea, every state, no matter how large or small, has an equal right to sovereignty. Political scientists have traced the concept to the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which ended the Thirty Years' War. The principle of non-interference was further developed in the 18th century. The Westphalian system reached its peak in the 19th and 20th centuries, but it has faced recent challenges from advocates of humanitarian intervention.

Stephen J. Kobrin in 1998 added the forces of the digital world economy to the picture of neomedievalism. In an article entitled "Back to the Future: Neomedievalism and the Postmodern Digital World Economy" in the Journal of International Affairs, he argued that the sovereign state as we know it – defined within certain territorial borders – is about to change profoundly, if not to wither away, due in part to the digital world economy created by the Internet, suggesting that cyberspace is a trans-territorial domain operating outside of the jurisdiction of national law.

Anthony Clark Arend also argued in his 1999 book Legal Rules and International Society that the international system is moving toward a "neo-medieval" system. He claimed that the trends that Bull noted in 1977 had become even more pronounced by the end of the twentieth century. Arend argues that the emergence of a "neo-medieval" system would have profound implications for the creation and operation of international law.

Although Bull originally envisioned neomedievalism as a positive trend, it has its critics. Bruce Holsinger in Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror argues that neoconservatives "have exploited neomedievalism's conceptual slipperiness for their own tactical ends." Similarly, Philip G. Cerny's "Neomedievalism, Civil War and the New Security Dilemma" (1998) also sees neomedievalism as a negative development and claims that the forces of globalization increasingly undermine nation-states and interstate forms of governance "by cross-cutting linkages among different economic sectors and social bonds," calling globalization a "durable disorder" which eventually leads to the emergence of the new security dilemmas that had analogies in the Middle Ages. Cerny identifies six characteristics of a neomedieval world that contribute to this disorder: multiple competing institutions; lack of exogenous territorializing pressures both on sub-national and international levels; uneven consolidation of new spaces, cleavages, conflicts and inequalities; fragmented loyalties and identities; extensive entrenchment of property rights; and spread of the "grey zones" outside the law as well as black economy.

Glocalization (a portmanteau of globalization and localization) is the "simultaneous occurrence of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies in contemporary social, political, and economic systems." The notion of glocalization "represents a challenge to simplistic conceptions of globalization processes as linear expansions of territorial scales. Glocalization indicates that the growing importance of continental and global levels is occurring together with the increasing salience of local and regional levels."

Glocal, an adjective, by definition, is "reflecting or characterized by both local and global considerations." The term “glocal management” in a sense of “think globally, act locally” is used in the business strategies of companies, in particular, by Japanese companies that are expanding overseas.

The concept comes from the Japanese word dochakuka, which means global localization. It had referred to the adaptation of farming techniques to local conditions. It became a buzzword when Japanese business adopted it in the 1980s. The word stems from Manfred Lange, head of the German National Global Change Secretariat, who used "glocal" in reference to Heiner Benking's exhibit Blackbox Nature: Rubik's Cube of Ecology at an international science and policy conference.

"Glocalization" first appeared in a late 1980s publication of the Harvard Business Review. At a 1997 conference on "Globalization and Indigenous Culture", sociologist Roland Robertson stated that glocalization "means the simultaneity – the co-presence – of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies."

"Glocalization" entered use in the English-speaking world via Robertson in the 1990s, Canadian sociologists Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman in the late 1990s and Zygmunt Bauman. Erik Swyngedouw was another early adopter.

In literary theory regarding the use and abuse of texts and tropes from the Middle Ages in postmodernity, the term "neomedieval" was popularized by the Italian medievalist Umberto Eco in his 1986 essay "Dreaming of the Middle Ages".

Since the 1990s, "glocalization" has been productively theorized by several sociologists and other social scientists, and may be understood as a process that combines the concerns of localism with the forces of globalization, or a local adaptation and interpretation of global forces. As a theoretical framework, it is compatible with many of the concerns of postcolonial theory, and its impact is particularly recognizable in the digitization of music and other forms of cultural heritage. The concept has since been used in the fields of geography, sociology, and anthropology. It is also a prominent concept in business studies, particularly in the area of marketing goods and services to a heterogenous set of consumers.

Although the Westphalian system developed in early modern Europe, its staunchest defenders [users] can now be found in the non-Western world. The presidents of China and Russia issued a joint statement in 2001 vowing to "counter attempts to undermine the fundamental norms of the international law with the help of concepts such as 'humanitarian intervention' and 'limited sovereignty'". China and Russia have used their United Nations Security Council veto power to block what they ~~see as~~ [claim is] American violations of state sovereignty in Syria. Russia was left out of the original Westphalian system in 1648, but post-Soviet Russia has seen Westphalian sovereignty as a means to ~~balance~~ [oppose] American power by encouraging a multipolar world order [A pseudo-principle diametrically opposed to the military Sovietization of nations occupied and forcefully subsumed into the USSR.].

Some in the West also speak favorably of the Westphalian state. American political scientist Stephen Walt urged U.S. UNpresident Wanna-Be-Autocrat to return to Westphalian principles, calling it a "sensible course" for American foreign policy. American political commentator Pat Buchanan has also spoken in favor of the traditional nation-state.

Addendum to the video presentation -- emergence of Cyberspace as a realm where we might already be seeing Neomedieval structures of power developing and influencing the trajectory of global politics.

New World Order - End of Liberal International System? - https://youtu.be/90rjypFSLVg .

Spheres of Influence in the Cold War - https://youtu.be/tGKnwFNWmQ8 .

Podcast: Theatres of the New Cold War - https://youtu.be/cve8XyTxjiI .

Podcast: Outer Space and Fourth Dimension of Geopolitics - https://youtu.be/Ri3ag1wRIZA .

Americanization .
Cultural homogenization .

Civic nationalism .

English school of international relations theory .

Fratelli Tutti .
Internationalization and localization .
McDonaldization .
Mobile privatization .

Monopoly on violence .

Neo-feudalism .
Neoliberalism .

Refeudalization .

Westfailure .

Westphalian sovereignty .

Japan's Economy

24-5-13 Japan's Lost Decade - An Economic Disaster [Doc] - Cold Fusion > .

Thursday, May 20, 2021

IR - International Relations

International Relations: An Introduction - LSE > .

24-3-20 What a Deglobalized Economy Will Look Like - M&M > .

23-8-7 Germany's Gamble: Why Ostpolitik P00ti Policy Backfired - Spaniel > .

22-2-24 Global Power Rivalry | Michael Buckley > .

21-3-25 International Relations 101: Economic Interdependence - Spaniel > .

> I-P Coalition of the Willing >>

23-7-31 Ċold Ŵar 2: Biden placing spies & jets in Australia to deter Xina | Tim Cross > .

> Strategy >>

U.S. Alliances in the Western Pacific Archipelago | George Friedman > .

Understanding International Relations - OpenLearn >> .

International Relations - Guy Lewis >> .

Weaponized Interdependence - Graydations >> .

Long Shadow & Impossible Peace → Global Conflicts - BePr >> .

International Trade - Means >> .

Cliodynamic Analysis of History: End Times (2023) ..

EPo - Europolitics ..

Globalization ⇔ Decoupling ..

History of Globalization æ

International relations (IR), international affairs (IA) or international studies (IS) is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such as war, diplomacy, trade, and foreign policy—and relations with and among other international actors, such as intergovernmental organisations (IGOs), international non-governmental organisations (INGOs), international legal bodies, and multinational corporations (MNCs).

International relations is widely considered a subdiscipline of political science. However, IR draws considerably upon international economics, international law, world history, and cultural anthropology. In the US, IR is frequently one of the sub-fields within political science departments, but some academic institutions characterize it as an independent or multidisciplinary.

While international politics has been analyzed throughout much of history, IR did not emerge as a discrete field until the turn of the 20th century, initially as an extension of political science; it was first distinguished as its own discipline in 1919, when it was offered as an undergraduate major by Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom. Over the next decade, similar studies were established at the University of Oxford and London School of Economics, which led the field to develop its independence and prominence.

After the Second World War, international relations burgeoned in both importance and scholarship—particularly in North America and Western Europe—partly in response to the geostrategic concerns of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent rise of globalization in the late 20th century presaged new theories and evaluations of the rapidly changing international system[disambiguation needed]. Into the 21st century, as connections between states become progressively more complex and multifaceted, international relations has been incorporated into other fields, such as economics, law, and history, leading to a convergent, interdisciplinary field.

Pages

Saturday, June 12, 2021

QUAD - QSD

Monday, May 31, 2021

● International Relations

Sunday, May 23, 2021

French Diplomacy

Saturday, May 22, 2021

Glocalization, Neomedievalism

Thursday, May 20, 2021

IR - International Relations

sī vīs pācem, parā bellum