Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Friday, July 06, 2007

Political culture and foreign policy

Dominique Moisi, a founder and Senior Advisor at the French Institute for International Relations, is currently a Professor at the College of Europe in Natolin, Warsaw. He offers an interesting analysis of how the political cultures in Russia and China appear to influence foreign policy making.

Would your students find evidence to support or contradict Moisi's arguments?

China and Russia in the New World Disorder

"Can Kosovo achieve independence without the tacit consent of Russia, and can there be a humanitarian and political solution to the tragedy in Darfur without the active goodwill of China? The two crises have nothing in common, but their resolution will depend in large part on whether these two permanent members of the United Nations Security Council use their veto power...

"Superficially, Russia and China may give the impression that they are pursuing the same path when they both proclaim with pride that they are “back” on the world stage. But this boast means different things for each country.

"For China, a deeply self-confident country, to be “back” simply means regaining the country’s historical centrality in the world after an absence of more than two centuries...

"By contrast, the Russians remain insecure about their status in the world... Because they know they are less potent, particularly in demographic and economic terms, Russians feel they have to do 'more.' For them, to say 'Russia is back' means that the humiliating Yeltsin years are over, and that they now must be treated as equals, particularly by the United States..."


Labels: , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home