Midterm Exam Definitions Flashcards
(38 cards)
Realism, Liberalism, Constructivism
Realism: Balance of relative power; power maximization; endless power competition and risks of war, world in anarchy
Liberalism: Countries that trade together don’t fight each other, peace achieved through the expansion of democratic countries, if you have institutions, international organizations (EU, etc.) then prospects of peace go up
Constructivism: Importance of ideas, identity, values, norms, and culture, social processes more than strategic interaction; role of non-material & non-state actors
Offensive versus Defensive Realism
Offensive Realism: Balance of relative power; power maximization; endless power competition and risks of war
Defensive Realism: Intentions as well as power capabilities; stability is possible; security dilemma
Hierarchy and hegemony
Notion that international politics will be the most stable when there is a hegemon
When the hegemon declines does that mean that international politics has to become unstable?
Some say hegemon establishes order and the rest of the world benefits from it. Some think stakeholders will continue to uphold that structure.
Others think that the decline of the hegemon naturally weakens the order.
Tributary System
The tributary system of China - a network of loose international relations focused on China which facilitated trade and foreign relations by acknowledging China’s predominant role in East Asia. It involved multiple relationships of trade, military force, diplomacy and ritual.
Qing Empire
Last Chinese empire. Ruled China proper from 1644 to 1912. After more than a century of Western humiliation and harassment, the Qing dynasty collapsed in the early 1900s. Internal changes played a major role in the downfall of the Qing dynasty, including: corruption, peasant unrest, ruler incompetence, and population growth which led to food shortages and regular famine.
Open Door policy
The Open Door Policy was a policy between China, the US, Japan, and several European powers that stated each of those countries should have equal access to Chinese trade. It was created in 1899 by US Secretary of State John Hay and lasted until 1949, when the Chinese civil war ended.
Triple Intervention
The Tripartite Intervention or Triple Intervention was a diplomatic intervention by Russia, Germany, and France on 23 April 1895 over the harsh terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki imposed by Japan on Qing dynasty China that ended the First Sino-Japanese War. The goal was to stop Japanese expansion in China.
Liaotung (Liaodong) peninsula
A peninsula in southern Liaoning province in Northeast China, and makes up the southwestern coastal half of the Liaodong region. The peninsula was an important area of conflict during the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895). Defeat precipitated decline in the Qing dynasty which was exploited by colonial powers who extracted numerous concessions.
Port Arthur
Japanese troops entered Port Arthur at about 2:00 p.m. Upon seeing the mutilated remains of their fallen comrades, they took to killing those who remained in the town. Several accounts of the events were recorded by members of the Japanese forces, such as the following by a member of the 1st Division
The incident strained the delicate foreign relations Japan had been dealing with. The war itself hurt Japan’s relations with Britain, and threatened to hurt Japan’s renegotiation of treaties with the US. The incident coloured Western perceptions of Japan as barbarians under a thin veil of civilization. These perceptions contributed to anti-Japanese sentiments in North America in the early 20th century, which would continue through World War II.
Manchuria
After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, Manchuria was conquered by the Japanese, who renamed it Manchukuo. It was a puppet empire, headed by the former Last Emperor of China, Puyi. Japan launched its invasion of China proper from Manchukuo; it would hold on to Manchuria until the end of World War II.
Anglo-Japanese alliance
An alliance between Britain and Japan, signed in January 1902. saw an end to Britain’s splendid isolation, the alliance was renewed and expanded in scope twice, in 1905 and 1911, before its demise in 1921 and termination in 1923. The main threat for both sides was from Russia. France was concerned about war with Britain and, in cooperation with Britain, abandoned its ally, Russia, to avoid the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. However, it angered the United States and some British dominions, which were hostile to Japan
Russo-Japanese War
Fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1905 over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. The major theatres of military operations were the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria, and the seas around Korea, Japan, and the Yellow Sea. It was the first all-out war of the modern era in which a non-European power defeated one of Europe’s great powers. As a result, the Russian Empire and Tsar Nicholas II lost considerable prestige, along with two of their three naval fleets.
First and Second Sino-Japanese War
The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 1894 – 17 April 1895) was a conflict between the Qing dynasty of China and the Empire of Japan primarily over influence in Joseon Korea. After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the port of Weihaiwei, the Qing government sued for peace in February 1895. The war demonstrated the failure of the Qing dynasty to modernize its military and fend off threats to its sovereignty, compared with Japan’s successful Meiji Restoration. For the first time, regional dominance in East Asia shifted from China to Japan; the prestige of the Qing dynasty, along with the classical tradition in China, suffered a major blow. The humiliating loss of Korea as a tributary state sparked an unprecedented public outcry. Within China, the defeat was a catalyst for a series of political upheavals led by Sun Yat-sen and Kang Youwei, culminating in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution.
The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. China fought Japan with aid from the Soviet Union and the United States. After the Japanese attacks on Malaya and Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war merged with other conflicts which are generally categorized under those conflicts of World War II as a major sector known as the China Burma India Theater.The war was the result of a decades-long Japanese imperialist policy to expand its influence politically and militarily in order to secure access to raw material reserves, food, and labor. The period after World War I brought about increasing stress on the Japanese policy.
Washington Treaty system
AKA: Five-Power Treaty, signed during 1922 by the major Allies of World War I, agreeing to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction. Signed by Great Britain, the US, France, Italy, and Japan. Limited the construction of battleships, battlecruisers and aircraft carriers by the signatories. The numbers of other categories of warships, including cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, were not limited by the treaty, but those ships were limited to 10,000 tons displacement each.
WHY DID IT FAIL
- Rise fo Japanese militant nationalism and seizure of “Manchuria” in 1931
- Global economic crisis and protectionism
- Turbulence in Chine & rise of Chinese nationalism
- Exclusion of Soviet union and Germany
- Contradiction between Wilsonian Internationalism and imperialism
Kellogg-Briand Pact
multilateral agreement attempting to eliminate war as an instrument of national policy. It was the most grandiose of a series of peacekeeping efforts after World War I. violated in 1931 when Japan invaded Manchuria. Although Japan had signed the treaty. The primary problem was that the treaty provided for no means of enforcement or sanctions against parties who violated its provisions.
Acheson Line
U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson under President Harry Truman announced the so-called Acheson Line. In the announcement he made in a speech entitled “Crisis in Asia” at the National Press Club, Korea was excluded from the line stretching from the Aleutian Islands to the Philippines in the Pacific. Japan and Okinawa were included in the U.S. defense line aimed at deterring Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong’s communization of East Asia, but Korea was not.
Although there is no credible evidence that Acheson’s line helped lead to the 1950-53 Korean War by stimulating communists like Kim Il Sung, it remains a controversial concept
SEATO
The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was an international organization for collective defense in Southeast Asia created by the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, or Manila Pact, signed in September 1954. Thailand and the Philippines, United States, United Kingdom, France, New Zealand, Australia, and Pakistan
Pacific Pact
The Pacific Pact (1949-51) was the NATO of the Pacific that never was. It was a military alliance that was to include the US, Japan, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and maybe Indonesia. It never got off the ground because Australians and New Zealanders were too racist to work with Asian countries. The Pacific Pact was to be the same deal for the Pacific. There the main threat was China, which in 1949 was falling to Mao and the communists right before everyone’s eyes. But unlike NATO, the alliance would not be made up of White-majority countries only.
Yoshida Doctrine
a strategy adopted by Japan after its defeat in 1945 under Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, the prime minister 1948–1954. He concentrated upon reconstructing Japan’s domestic economy while relying heavily on the security alliance with the United States.
Sino-Soviet alliance and Sino-Soviet split
The Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance, or Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance for short, is the treaty of alliance concluded between the People’s Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on February 14, 1950.
China accused the USSR under Khrushchev of perverting socialism and betraying the revolution by making a détente with the West. Khrushchev and his successors accused Mao of distorting Marxism to make it fit in with China’s peasant society. This was one of the causes of the Sino-Soviet Split.
Sukarno
an Indonesian statesman, politician, nationalist and revolutionary who was the first president of Indonesia, serving from 1945 to 1967. Sukarno was the leader of the Indonesian struggle for independence from the Dutch colonialists
Suharto
Suharto was an Indonesian Army officer and politician, who served as the head of state and head of government of Indonesia. He was also the second and the longest serving President of Indonesia.
Northern Territories
The Northern Territories consist of four islands located off the northeast coast of the Nemuro Peninsula of Hokkaido. They are: Habomai, Shikotan, Kunashiri and Etorofu. The Northern Territories are not included in the Kurile Islands.
Japan discovered and surveyed the Four Northern Islands before the Russians arrived there. By the early 19th century at the latest, Japan had effectively established control over the four islands. In 1855, the Treaty of Commerce, Navigation and Delimitation between Japan and Russia, which was concluded in a completely friendly and peaceful manner, confirmed the already established natural boundaries, drawing the boundary between the islands of Etorofu (the northernmost island of the Northern Territories) and Uruppu. The Four Northern Islands had never been held by foreign countries.
However, nearing the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union, in violation of the Neutrality Pact that was still in force between Japan and the Soviet Union, opened the war with Japan. Even after Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration, Soviet forces continued its offensive against Japan and occupied all of the Four Northern Islands from 28 August 1945 to 5 September 1945.
Subsequently, the Soviet Union unilaterally incorporated the territories under occupation into its own territories without any legal grounds, and by 1949 had forcibly deported all Japanese residents of the Four Northern Islands (approximately 17,000 people).
Since that time, return of the Northern Territories has been the ardent wish of the people of Japan, and a deep-rooted movement among the general public for the return of the islands has developed national-wide. With this strong support from the people of Japan, the Government of Japan, under a consistent policy, has persistently called on the Soviet Union, and subsequently the Russian Federation, to conclude a peace treaty between the two countries, contingent on the resolution of the Northern Territories issue.
As a result of negotiations to date, both Japan and Russia have agreed to resolve the issue of the attribution of the Four Northern Islands and to conclude a peace treaty, and have continued vigorous negotiations. The Russian side also states that it continues to pursue a solution on the demarcation of an internationally recognized national border that is acceptable to both countries.
Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands
The Senkaku Islands are a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. They are located northeast of Taiwan, east of China, west of Okinawa Island, and north of the southwestern end of the Ryukyu Islands.
