- I am a professor of political science in the international studies department the Catholic University of Korea. My re... moreI am a professor of political science in the international studies department the Catholic University of Korea. My research focuses on nationalism. I have worked for more than 30 years in international environments.edit
European integration functionally aims at European nation-state liberal regime stabilization. This Euro-Atlantic political high-level tactical goal does not permit minor power Bulgaria to destabilize the region through an irredentist... more
European integration functionally aims at European nation-state liberal regime stabilization. This Euro-Atlantic political high-level tactical goal does not permit minor power Bulgaria to destabilize the region through an irredentist policy toward North Macedonia. In contrast, Russia’s domestic political regime is evolving in an authoritarian populist dynamic that has intensified domestic polarization concomitantly with its escalating irredentist intervention in Ukraine. Russia is a great power. In sum, it is a state actor with a resource base that is sufficient to provide for a capability base that it needs to produce power instruments for a diplomatic bargaining base that is superior to, equal to, or very close to that of any other actor. An explication of the means by which a people submit to the authority of their state’s government serves the purpose of illustrating national morale/mobilization base in relation to resource base in capability analysis. Inferences from great power mid-twentieth century authoritarian populism are applied to the analysis of the Putin administration in Moscow. The relevance of mobilization base to power capability is also important. It is a lever toward third countries insofar as the Russian leadership perceives the European leadership as having the mobilization base to be an autonomous actor that can influence and constrain the behavior of the US. A nationalistic polity potentially has a bargaining advantage in both the short and long-term power trends, partly because of the relatively more salient and intense public predisposition to perceiving slights and dangers to the well-being and dignity of the state.
Research Interests: Russian Nationalism, Fascism, Ukrainian Studies, Nationalism, Colonialism, and 15 morePopulism, Bulgaria, European Union, Authoritarian regimes, Nazi Germany, Ukraine, Irredentism, Imperialism, Nazism, Macedonia, Japanese Imperialism, Authoritarian Populism, Nationalism and Decolonization, Irredentismo Italiano, and Russo-Ukrainian war
The process tracing of the relationship between Christianity and politics in Korea versus Kenya led to the discovery of similar trajectories that are based on two underlying conditions: a) a large portion of the country’s population is... more
The process tracing of the relationship between Christianity and politics in Korea versus Kenya led to the discovery of similar trajectories that are based on two underlying conditions: a) a large portion of the country’s population is Christian, and b) religious groups have historically invested in the democratization processes. These two conditions led to: 1) government or political parties’ desire to co-opt the religious group or leaders to increase its voting power or political influence, 2) religious leaders or churches proposing to provide stewardship or governance to the government, and 3) some mainstream churches trying to stay neutral upholding separation between the church and state in the aftermath of democratization. After democratization, a trend of church partisan political polarization has intensified. Kenya’s polarization has aggregated along interethnic/tribal fault lines. The partisan polarization of the South Korean church has intensified with left-oriented social change advocacy condemned by right-wing actors as threatening South Korean sovereignty in the face of the North Korean continuing threat. South Korean political actors utilize sectarian movements to mobilize activists and voters, while South Korean sectarian leaders in turn utilize this political relationship to legitimize their civil society existence and activity. The Kenyan and South Korean cases provide further evidence of the global resurgence of religious identity as a vehicle for political activism to direct the governance capacities of the sovereign state.
Research Interests: Religion, Christianity, Social Movements, Religion and Politics, Political Science, and 15 moreAfrica, Democratization, Cold War, Liberation Theology, Conservatism, East Asian Studies, Social Activism, Social movements and revolution, Evangelicalism, Kenya, Sectarianism, Roman Catholicism, Imperialism, Korea, and Dissent
The creation of public goods is a concomitant with constructing a primary, terminal self-identity community whose authorities in the form of the government the modal citizenry grants legitimacy. Those authorities have the rhetorical and... more
The creation of public goods is a concomitant with constructing a primary, terminal self-identity community whose authorities in the form of the government the modal citizenry grants legitimacy. Those authorities have the rhetorical and persuasive leadership capacity to create authoritative institutions and policies. The recognition of those goods as public signifies that the modal member of the public functionally views the authoritative output of the policy making process as morally acceptable. Such an observer functionally views the policy's utilitarian distribution of resources within polity and society as representing the public interest. By being functionally perceived as serving the public interest, the authorities' distribution of goods is functionally accepted as public goods. The policies are functionally or actively perceived as reinforcing the common welfare, the public interest. Public health is one of these public goods. The characterization of the political regime typifies the control relationship between the authorities and the public. Generating public goods is uniquely problematic for each polity due to their respective dynamic constellation of values, attitudes and norms that are systemically interrelated. Effective legitimation public performance requirements by state authority figures vary across polities. Acknowledgment of effective control maintenance over and mobilization of societal resources constitutes effective leadership.
Research Interests: Social Psychology, Political Psychology, Political Science, Nationalism, Stereotypes, and 15 moreConsumerism, Political Regimes, Capitalism, Nationalism And State Building, Gramsci, Social status, Social Mobility, Social identity theory, Stereotyping, Commodification, National Innovation Systems, Social Creativity, Amitai Etzioni, Institutionalization, and Ideal Type
This paper critiques the de facto equation of Europeanization with submission to U.S. hegemony. It traces the choices that allowed the EU to be equated as one of side of the same coin with NATO. France's 2009 rejoining the NATO command... more
This paper critiques the de facto equation of Europeanization with submission to U.S. hegemony. It traces the choices that allowed the EU to be equated as one of side of the same coin with NATO. France's 2009 rejoining the NATO command structure encouraged this perception. It comports with the claim that US liberal hegemony made the European integration process feasible. It highlights the consequences for conflict resolution of the Europeanization process being equated with attitudinal orientation towards accepting U.S. hegemony. Ukraine is a case study of this process on the level of indirect conflict between Moscow and Washington each seeking to contain each other. European integration's focus on developing vested economic and bureaucratic interests has tied it to U.S. hegemony. It facilitated the institutionalization of anti-Moscow influence tendencies in European integration. The paper adopts a process tracing methodological approach with a focus on the Cold War and the prevailing views that have emerged around it. The institutionalization of Euro-Atlantic integration includes the internalization of the assumption that the USSR, and later Russia, were imperialist aggressors. The US-led Euro-Atlantic community successfully, and relatively peacefully, contained it. Moscow's prevailing view does not share this problematic analysis regarding post-1945 Soviet foreign policy motivation.
Research Interests: International Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies, European integration, War Studies, Cold War, and 15 moreNationalism, American Foreign Policy, European Union, European Union Politics, Russia, Ukraine, Social identity theory, Realism, Stereotyping, Neorealism, NATO-Russian Relations, Spiral Dynamics, US hegemony, Image theory, and Classical Realism
This analysis proposes that a significant source of the systemic sources of so-called grand corruption and strategic corruption in Bulgaria lies in its long-term history of imperial and colonial subordination. It raises the... more
This analysis proposes that a significant source of the systemic sources of so-called grand corruption and strategic corruption in Bulgaria lies in its long-term history of imperial and colonial subordination. It raises the epistemological issues of the perceptual basis for the identification of corruption. Corruption is a weaponized political label favoring particular political topographic characteristics and trends that support a regional international political hierarchical order, in this case American hegemony. The Bulgarian national community's complex component community identity profile is a product of generations of external domination which this analysis highlights. This legacy includes authority legitimation challenges that contradict establishment authority claims that their domination and control provide an invisible public good in terms of social order. Institutionalized habituated attitudinal predispositions among the public emphasize functionally the state authority as self-serving in its domestic control. The national state authority represents the control interests of an external hegemony. This domestic control ultimately serves the hegemonic interests of an external power, e.g., the Ottoman sultanate, the Soviet Union, or NATO/EU. Bulgarian constituency group and individual acquisition of greater social status via social creativity in relation to the state authority displays orientations towards serving the domestic national representative of the alien imperialist/colonialist hegemon.
Research Interests: European integration, Nationalism, Stereotypes, Communism, Bulgaria, and 15 moreEuropean Union, Hegemony, Social Mobility, Post-Communism, Gramsci and Cultural Hegemony, Social identity theory, Imperialism, Corruption, NATO-Russian Relations, Scapegoat Theory, Social Creativity, Neocolonialism, US hegemony, USA Foreign Policy, and Social Competition
A prerequisite for a lasting ceasefire is the emergence of a prevailing view in Moscow and Kyiv that the fighting has reached a hurting stalemate. In sum, they both lose more through continuing warfare than by a ceasefire. This study... more
A prerequisite for a lasting ceasefire is the emergence of a prevailing view in Moscow and Kyiv that the fighting has reached a hurting stalemate. In sum, they both lose more through continuing warfare than by a ceasefire. This study applies social identity dynamics of nationalism to this escalatory conflict. It generates findings that imply that China as a third-party great power intervening mediator can potentially play a pivotal role. Shifting the respective prevailing views in Moscow and Kyiv of their interaction from a zero-sum foundation requires proffering powerful economic and political third-party incentives. Effective inducement would facilitate national defense, development and prestige for Moscow as well as Kyiv. China arguably has the underutilized potential power capabilities necessary to alter the respective prevailing views of strategic relationships among the great powers within Moscow, Brussels and Washington. A prerequisite for success in striving effectively towards this strategic goal is cooperation with the Beijing despite skepticism from Washington. This study utilizes a process tracing methodological approach. It highlights that the foundations of the Russo-Ukraine war lie in the institutionalization within Euro-Atlantic integration of the Cold War assumption that the USSR was an imperialist revisionist actor. Russia is the USSR's successor state. Moscow's prevailing view is that Russian national self-determination was unjustly circumscribed in the multinational Soviet totalitarian Communist system. The Euro-Atlantic community is perceived as a neocolonial imperial threat by allying with post-1991 Ukrainian nationalism at Russia's expense. The study finds that acknowledging Eurasian regional multipolarity is necessary, if not sufficient, to coopt Beijing into a global political stabilization strategy. It functionally aims to promote international balancing to lessen potentials for horizontal as well as vertical escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.
Research Interests: European Studies, European integration, Social Identity, Nationalism, European Foreign Policy, and 15 moreRealism (Political Science), Nationalism And State Building, China, European Foreign and Security Policy, War on Terror, European Union external relations, Russia, Conflict Mediation Strategies, Ukraine, Russian-Ukrainian Relations, United States, Mutually Hurting Stalemate Model, American Military Hegemony, American political hegemony, and Russo-Ukrainian war
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In this paper, I will argue that nationalism should not be seen as the 'monster' that the European Union considers it to be, but rather as a constructive instrument that can extend tolerance and cooperation within Europe.... more
In this paper, I will argue that nationalism should not be seen as the 'monster' that the European Union considers it to be, but rather as a constructive instrument that can extend tolerance and cooperation within Europe. By examining a wide range of approaches to the concepts of nations, nationalism, states, nation-states and government legitimacy, I will analyse contemporary nationalist movements, the attitude of the EU towards them and what the position of the EU is within the concepts of states and nation-states. Within this examination, globalisation plays a large role and will therefore also be extensively analysed from a historical and political perspective. The last part of this paper will show that nationalism has much to offer and can even increase the trustworthiness and legitimacy of the EU.
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The South Korean ethnic diaspora US lobby shows efficacy as an interest group in generating influence in American foreign and domestic public policy making. The persuasive portrayal of South Korea as a critical Cold War US ally reinforced... more
The South Korean ethnic diaspora US lobby shows efficacy as an interest group in generating influence in American foreign and domestic public policy making. The persuasive portrayal of South Korea as a critical Cold War US ally reinforced US amenability to pro-South Korea lobbying. Also, the South Korean US diaspora is a comparatively recent immigrant group, thus its lingering resistance to assimilation facilitates its political mobilization to lobby the US government. One source of this influence includes the foundational legacy of proselytizing Western and particularly American religious social movement representatives in Korean religiosity and society. US protestant Christianity acquired a strong public association with emerging Korean nationalism in response to Japanese imperialism and occupation. Hostility towards Japanese colonialism followed by the threat from Soviet-sponsored, North Korean Communism meant Christianity did not readily become a cultural symbol of excessive external, US interference in South Korean society by South Korean public opinion. The post-Cold War shift in US foreign policy towards targeting so-called rogue state vestiges of the Cold War including North Korea enhanced further South Korea's influence in Washington. Due to essential differences in the perceived historical role of American influence, extrapolation of the South Korean development model is problematic. US hegemony in South Korea indicates that perceived alliance with national self-determination constitutes the core of soft power appeal. Civilizational appeal per se in the form of religious beliefs are not critically significant in promoting American polity influence in target polities in South Korea or, comparatively, in the Middle East. The United States is a perceived opponent of pan-Arab nationalism which has trended towards populist Islamic religious symbolism with the failure of secular nationalism. The pronounced component of evangelical Christianity in American core community nationalism which the Trump campaign exploited is a reflection of this orientation in the US.
Research Interests: Christianity, Catholic Missionary History, Religion and Politics, South Korea, Protestant Missionaries (U.S. history), and 15 moreNationalism, Missionary History, National Identity, Nationalism And State Building, Cold War International Relations, Korea (North and/or South), Korean War, Ukraine, Irredentism, United States Foreign Policy, Soft Power and International Relations, North Korea, Catholic Church, South Korean politics, and US hegemony
The COVID-19 pandemic is an exemplar of the consequences of global economic development contributing to national crises that require supranational cooperation, collaboration, and coordination to address. Threat and use of deadly force... more
The COVID-19 pandemic is an exemplar of the consequences of global economic development contributing to national crises that require supranational cooperation, collaboration, and coordination to address. Threat and use of deadly force will fail to overcome these crises and is likely to worsen them. The nuclear setting proffers such responses as potentially suicidal. Growing awareness of economic and political interdependency is expanding de facto awareness of existing in a global polity. Complex interdependency presents opportunities to develop further these critical global polity collective capacities. Strategic neo-functionalism can promote cosmopolitan political attitudes and values via creation and promotion of vested interests in global integration. Social identity theory posits three forms of social identity management on the basis of four primary individual impulse axioms: (1) a distinctive motivation of the subject is to maintain a positive self-image; (2) subjects form in-groups vis-à-vis out-groups; (3) individuals comparatively evaluate the social status of their in-groups with significant out-groups; and (4) individuals tend to equate the comparative status of their ingroup with their self-image. If and when individuals comparatively evaluate themselves negatively within their societal contexts, then they will respond psychologically and socially, individually and collectively. Social justice movements press for the accommodation of differences to cease using them as a basis for ascriptive hierarchical community societal status differentiation. This accommodation takes the form of creation of substantive social creativity capacities that ultimately produce measurable, exploited social mobility opportunities. It aims to be policy relevant by underscoring the tasks confronting regime strategists for managing nationalism.
Research Interests: Social Movements, International Relations, Social Identity, Human Rights, Nationalism, and 11 moreCosmopolitanism, United Nations, Populism, Social Activism, International Relations and Human Rights, Authoritarianism, Social Justice Movements, Integration, Nation-State, Complex Interdependence, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
As tension escalates between the US and China, scenarios for maintaining peace in Northeast Asia imply that secondary powers will perceive increasing incentives to reappraise their respective international roles. This analysis proposes... more
As tension escalates between the US and China, scenarios for maintaining peace in Northeast Asia imply that secondary powers will perceive increasing incentives to reappraise their respective international roles. This analysis proposes that an analysis of France's Cold War role in Europe and the world under President Charles de Gaulle provides insights into conflict management in an increasingly multipolar international political environment. Their respective interests in preventing a so-called new Cold War emerging between the US and China include avoiding its excessive economic costs, if only because China is a massive trade partner. This study engages in theoretical framework-informed process tracing of de Gaulle's role. It explicates the assumptions that functionally underpinned de Gaulle's policy of soft balancing between the US and China. The analysis explores de Gaulle's contribution to the decay of the Cold War. It illuminates de Gaulle's contribution to a regional international environment that made West German Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik strategy more feasible politically. This study applies these findings in the formulation of strategy recommendations focusing on Japan. Valid inferences regarding the predominant motivations driving American and Chinese international interaction are necessary for this task. To the extent to which the US and China have entered into a conflict spiral, Japan's hedging towards Washington is further incentivized. Tokyo would necessarily need to convince the Chinese that Japan is no longer Washington's unsinkable aircraft carrier off its coast. Tokyo, like de Gaulle's France, would maintain close relations with Washington, but it would need to project to its interlocutors its commitment to its own strategic autonomy. Tokyo's emphasis on closer relations with liberal democratic Indo-Pacific actors would potentially fit well with a commitment to strategic autonomy to defend the global liberal order.
Research Interests: Cold War, Nationalism, Stereotypes, Russian Foreign Policy, European Union, and 15 moreChina, Japan, Soviet Union (History), Hegemony, China's foreign policy, Irredentism, United States Foreign Policy, Imperialism, Charles de Gaulle, Hedging, Cross-Strait (China-Taiwan) Relations, US hegemony, Containment Policy, Nuclear deterrence, and Indo-Pacific Strategic Affairs
North Korea's development and deployment of nuclear weapons increases Pyongyang's diplomatic bargaining leverage. It is a strategic response to counteract the great expansion in US leverage with the collapse of the USSR. Post-Cold War... more
North Korea's development and deployment of nuclear weapons increases Pyongyang's diplomatic bargaining leverage. It is a strategic response to counteract the great expansion in US leverage with the collapse of the USSR. Post-Cold War American influence and hegemony is justified partly by claiming victory in successfully containing an allegedly imperialist Soviet Union. The US created and led formal and informal international institutions as part of its decades-long containment grand strategy against the USSR. The US now exploits these institutions to expedite US unilateral global preeminence. Third World regimes perceived as remnants of the Cold War era that resist accommodating to American demands are stereotyped as rogue states. Rogue regimes are criminal offenders who should be brought to justice, i.e. regime change is required. The initiation of summit diplomacy between US President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un occurred following the January 2018 Hawaiian ballistic missile false alarm. This event and its political consequences illustrate the efficacy of nuclear weapons as bargaining leverage for so-called rogue actors. North Korea is highly unlikely to surrender those weapons that were the instigation for the subsequent summit diplomacy that occurred. A broader, critical trend-focused strategic analysis is necessary to adopt a longer-term view of the ongoing Korean nuclear crisis. The aim would be to conceptualize long-term policies that increase the probability that nuclear weapons capability becomes a largely irrelevant issue in interaction between Pyongyang, Seoul, Beijing and Washington.
Research Interests: International Relations, Nuclear Weapons, Diplomatic Studies, North Korea, Hawaii, and 11 moreUSA Foreign Policy, Diplomacy and international relations, North Korean Foreign Policy, Nuclear deterrence, Nuclear War, Kim Jong Un, International Relations and Diplomacy, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, DPRK nuclear issue, Trump Administration , and North Korean Ballistic Missile Tests
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Modern Bulgarian nationalists aspired towards incorporating the self-identified Bulgarian lands into the Bulgarian state. The Treaty of San Stefano ending the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 tantalizingly achieved these so-called national... more
Modern Bulgarian nationalists aspired towards incorporating the self-identified Bulgarian lands into the Bulgarian state. The Treaty of San Stefano ending the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 tantalizingly achieved these so-called national ideals. Great Power diplomacy quickly diminished Bulgaria's borders and international legal status with the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, exacerbating nationalist grievances. Bulgaria would expand vast resources to restore the San Stefano borders until Balkan Communist authoritarian regimes eventually suppressed the Macedonian issue as a foreign policy subject. Sofia's policy towards its neighbor has been overdetermined by the efforts of successive Bulgarian governments to institutionalize post-communist Bulgaria's own national identity. Bulgaria's integration into so-called Euro-Atlantic structures, i.e., NATO and the EU, had been the primary strategic objective of the Bulgarian authorities since the end of the Zhivkov regime. North Atlantic community security policy aims in response to the earliest post-Cold War foreign policy crises in the Western Balkans framed the parameters of Bulgarian diplomacy. The stabilization of FYROM in 2001, followed by Bulgaria's 2007 EU accession, led to Bulgarian nationalist values become more salient in Bulgarian politics and foreign policy. Sofia-Skopje relations are a test case for the effects of Europeanization on interdependent Balkan ethno-sectarian nationalisms and state territorial institutional development.
Research Interests: European integration, Balkan Studies, Historiography, Nationalism, Bulgaria, and 15 morePost-Colonialism, European Union, Orthodox Christianity, Georges Dumezil, Thracian History, Macedonia, FYROM-Macedonia, Macedonian language, Silla, Communism and national question, Euhemerism, Treaty of San Stefano, Treaty of Berlin 1878, North Macedonia, and Koguryo
This paper highlights that hegemony has its foundation in the authority of the nation state, manifested clearly in the community value consensually affirmed in the value of fiat currency. State authority permits the potential for the... more
This paper highlights that hegemony has its foundation in the authority of the nation state, manifested clearly in the community value consensually affirmed in the value of fiat currency. State authority permits the potential for the existence of the so-called rule of law, both in its explicit legal forms and in its habitual patterns of behavior on the basis of mutual expectations. State regulation in enforcing property rights is critical for the real functioning of markets the outcomes of which functionally reaffirm state authority. This reaffirmation emerges both by reinforcing its material resources and also by seeking exceptions that exploit state authority while circumventing transparency. The release of the Panama, Paradise and Pandora papers reveal the arena of technically, typically legal financial market transactions. Yet they appear to violate commonly, habitually held normative assumptions in national communities, particularly in so- called developed societies. The reaction of many participants in these lightly regulated and even criminal endeavors is to challenge the legitimacy of the state authority that attempts to impose these obligations. The value of Web3 blockchains includes anonymity as a reactionary resistance to this state authority and hegemony. Cryptocurrencies are dialectical creations of national rule of law in the interstate system.
Research Interests: Nationalism, Rule of Law, Hegemony, Social identity theory, Corruption, and 15 moreGlobal Public Goods, Public Goods, Intellectual Property Rights and Global Public Goods, Fiat Currency, Web3.0, Complex Interdependence, Cryptocurrency, Political Polarization, Blockchain Technologies, Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Covid-19, Non-Fungible Token, Non Fungible Token, and pandora papers
The paper comparatively analyzes the extended Yugoslav crisis of the 1990s with the current Ukraine crisis, focusing on the eve of the February 24, 2022, Russian invasion. It illustrates post-1989 recurrent political behavior patterns... more
The paper comparatively analyzes the extended Yugoslav crisis of the 1990s with the current Ukraine crisis, focusing on the eve of the February 24, 2022, Russian invasion. It illustrates post-1989 recurrent political behavior patterns rooted in nationalist irredentism. The Soviet regime authorities did not permit the Russian Social Federated Republic to create its own republic-level Communist Party. The paper demonstrates that Russian internal Soviet diaspora populations in the Ukrainian republic were incentivized to self-identify with the Soviet state. De facto Russification of the Soviet state nevertheless functioned and alienated non-Russian national minorities. The disintegration of the USSR left internal Russophone diaspora identity in a comparatively fluid condition. European Union integration encouraged state building around the republic borders inherited from the Soviet era. Russophone elements within Ukraine faced inducements to self-identify with the titular nation exercising the core community function of the post-Soviet core community state. Political trend irredentist responses in the Russian polity intensified. They view the EU as fortifying the construction of a Ukrainian nation state. The analysis suggests that the prevailing view in Moscow perceived the EU is a proxy for extending US hegemony. Moscow demands great power national status equality in international diplomacy. Ukraine's partition is likely.
Research Interests: Russian Nationalism, Nationalism, Ukrainian Nationalism, European Union Politics, European Union external relations, and 15 moreGerman Nationalism, Serbian Politics, Irredentism, United States Foreign Policy, Social identity theory, Appeasement, Détente, German national identity formation, Stereotype Threat, Stereotyping, Russian national identity, NATO-Russian Relations, Containment Policy, Serbian National Identity, and Serbian Nationalism
The study highlights how authoritarian populist leaders manipulate the anti-Semitic and other stereotypes in scapegoating to overcome intra-core group polarization and mobilize political support. Alignment by two heretofore adversaries... more
The study highlights how authoritarian populist leaders manipulate the anti-Semitic and other stereotypes in scapegoating to overcome intra-core group polarization and mobilize political support. Alignment by two heretofore adversaries against a common third target as a perceived source of shared threat can generate a positive "ally" stereotype in shared mutual perception among the other former adversaries. Part of the anti-Semitic stereotype is the conspiratorial component, i.e., the advanced minority has higher socioeconomic status because of ingroup hidden manipulation of significant components of the polity. Despised lower status ethnic ingroups, stereotyped as backward and childlike by the core, are prone to be perceived as being instruments for manipulation by the envied higher status outgroup. This analysis thus shows how the Holocaust was an essential element of the wartime German regime. It mobilized societal resources around scapegoating which was part of the normative active and coercive and utilitarian control mechanisms characterizing Nazi political control. Authoritarian populist regime enthusiasts can join the coercive apparatus to gain esteem and material benefits. Normative active control utilizing racist xenophobia was a means by which to generate support internally. Inferences from Great Power midtwentieth century authoritarian populism are applied to the analysis of the US Trump phenomenon.
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Vaccine diplomacy is a manifestation of competition for political influence among great powers amidst the Covid-19 pandemic's blatant illustration of ineluctable interdependency across the global community. The reinforcement of trends... more
Vaccine diplomacy is a manifestation of competition for political influence among great powers amidst the Covid-19 pandemic's blatant illustration of ineluctable interdependency across the global community. The reinforcement of trends bolstering global polity construction intensify concomitantly with nationalist populist value and attitude expressions increasing political polarization. The interdependency graphically illustrated in the Cold War-era's mutual assured destruction incentivized competition into indirect competitive intervention in the internal politics of third actors. Indirect international influence contestations included extended, de facto challenge competitions to generate soft power on behalf of the victor, e.g., the space race. The Covid-19 pandemic has intensified this competition to offer alternative development models while intense domestic political polarization undermines the mobilizational capacities for achieving sustainable development. In contrast to multinational and multiethnic states, nation states have an inherent mobilizational advantage because of the enhanced control capabilities available to the authorities without emphasizing coercion. Control through Gramscian hegemonic mechanisms is more readily feasible in nation states through the greater feasibility of commodification of social relations by states authorities regulating and channeling social competition to encourage social mobility and creativity. The regulation of the so-called private sector serves to manage and contain social competition while channeling it to develop the institutional capacities for control and allocation of developing societal human resources. It enhances developed state control mechanisms and international influence capacities. The appeal of offers of aid and assistance to the so-called developing world becomes ever more urgent amidst Anthropocene crises including its most recent, current Covid-19 pandemic disaster.
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Bulgarian nationalism as a political force for state political reform faces formidable challenges due to the Bulgarian state’s dependent development under Communism. Nationalist communism was a comparatively effective component of the... more
Bulgarian nationalism as a political force for state political reform faces formidable challenges due to the Bulgarian state’s dependent development under Communism. Nationalist communism was a comparatively effective component of the legitimation strategy for the Communist regime. In neighboring Serbia, the Titoist regime suppressed ethnic nationalism. As the largest nationalist challenge to the Communist Yugoslav state, the Serb national community was partitioned. One-third of ethnic Serbs were placed outside of the Serb republic, and Kosovo and Vojvodina were officially subunits of Serbia but were Yugoslav federal constituent republics in all but name. Russian exploitation of opportunities for influence expansion in Serbia and Bulgaria exist but differ, reflecting this conflicting legacy of Communism in both states. Serb rejection of Communism included advocacy of Serb irredentism, which the post-Soviet/Russian nationalist regime under Vladimir Putin seeks to exploit. Bulgarian nationalist Communism associated itself closely with the USSR until the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and his reforms in the USSR in the mid-1980s. Bulgarian militant nationalism lacks societal consensus on the basic principles that constitute it. NATO-Russian competition for influence implies European Union deepening and widening occurs in opposition to postSoviet Russian state influence. Europeanization implies reducing Russian bargaining leverage within the Bulgarian polity.
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This paper critiques the portrayal of the utilization of CAP funds as forms of corruption in eastern Europe. This study analyzes the CAP from the perspective of its role in supporting European integration as a strategy for peace promotion... more
This paper critiques the portrayal of the utilization of CAP funds as forms of corruption in eastern Europe. This study analyzes the CAP from the perspective of its role in supporting European integration as a strategy for peace promotion focusing on post-Communist Europe. This New York Times investigative report illustrates certain biases regarding US politically prevailing normative assumptions regarding political economy. Despite the Trump phenomenon, they underestimate the significance of intense and increasingly salient post-Communist political polarization in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe in general. EU regional and sectoral economic cohesion policies including the CAP are vehicles to incentivize political elite network creation and cooptation to undercut potentials for militant nationalism. The rise of conservative populist nationalism in Europe and globally illustrates the intensified political challenges to peaceful integration and globalization. A consequence includes greater cultural diversification regarding the definition of private versus public interest, i.e., the nature of the state. Analysis of the challenge of corruption in Bulgaria from the CAP point of view provides an opportunity to explore deeply the conceptualization of the state as a control system. The concept of the rule of law and what it means in Bulgaria will be explored from this EU CAP perspective.
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The political theory focus of this paper is the relevance of corporatism to meet the nationalist backlash against the increasing global interdependence that elites encouraged through neoliberal strategies. The paper analyzes the Trump... more
The political theory focus of this paper is the relevance of corporatism to meet the nationalist backlash against the increasing global interdependence that elites encouraged through neoliberal strategies. The paper analyzes the Trump administration’s resistance to international cooperation to counteract the negative externalities creating vulnerability to global crises. It thereby explicates the political assumptions and prescriptions underlying national strategic models of development. Great power competition for power and influence intensifies in an international political system in which the sources of power and influence increasingly depend upon sustainable development. It explores how reactionary populism emerges from perceived threat to core cultural group traditional supremacy within the national polity. This group heretofore set the institutionalized, stereotyped norm standards of individual and constituency behavior and relations. It highlights the foundational path dependency of the American state being reflected in contemporary American white populist status grievances. They utilize the language of conservative evangelical Christian identity to mobilize their social movement political resources. American foundational colonial ideologies in early modern capitalist plantation-based slavery and legacies of de facto casteism are a symbol set. Postwar emerging transnational normative authority centers reflected in international law progressively challenge the utilitarian relevance of these traditional, stereotyped norms and ethics.
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This paper presents a political psychological analysis of culture to conceptualize it as a political value, i.e. as a causal factor shaping intra- and inter-organizational international business behavior. It highlights how culture... more
This paper presents a political psychological analysis of culture to conceptualize it as a political value, i.e. as a causal factor shaping intra- and inter-organizational international business behavior. It highlights how culture manifests itself circumstantially as a variable shaping intra- and inter-organizational collective behavior amidst rapid, crisis-level, multinational conflictual change. Internal and external contextual factors determine the intensity and the saliency of this value in an organization. Values are individual and collective active actor drives to achieve an end state. Norms are distinguished from values in that they display behavioral pattern principles that may be explicit or implicit, manifested as behavioral attitudes. The paper thereby conceptualizes the policy making relevance of difference in national cultures. It critiques economic nationalism from the perspective of organizational management. It discusses the implications for leadership of reconciling these cultural differences as national values among multinational staff members in regard to communication among personnel. Intercultural/international perceptions of other cultures, specifically stereotyping, are part of the challenge to effective leadership communication within a multicultural/multinational organizational environment. A leadership imperative is to facilitate multinational cultural organizational value integration. A response to recent survey critiques of the state of the field regarding culture and international business is presented.
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American prevailing perceptions of the Cold War serve current US national foreign policy process goals that emphasize the expansion of US global influence. The prevailing view in the American polity remains that the Soviet Union was an... more
American prevailing perceptions of the Cold War serve current US national foreign policy process goals that emphasize the expansion of US global influence. The prevailing view in the American polity remains that the Soviet Union was an aggressive, imperialist threat that the US defeated through its containment strategy. The validity of this ultimately self-serving assumption requires critique because Communist state postwar foreign and public policy behavior patterns did not conform with this prevailing position. Failure of the academy generally to predict the remarkably peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union is further evidence that this politically prevailing viewpoint was fundamentally flawed. Current dissent is in effect tied to the New Left that emerged partly as a critique to Cold War assumptions that produced the Vietnam debacle. This article analyzes the political interests that support the prevailing belief that the US nevertheless won the Cold War despite this left dissent. These interests overwhelm current critique of US global dominance that continues to rely on Cold War-era formulated hard power containment prescriptions. By accepting the validity of this assumption that the US won the Cold War, the academy weakens its ability to critique US foreign policy behavior in the so-called war on terror.
Research Interests: International Relations, Political Science, Cold War, Nationalism, Foreign Policy, and 15 moreVietnam War, Neoconservatism (American Foreign Policy), New Left, Hegemony, Howard Zinn, Stereotype Threat, Richard Nixon, Henry A. Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, President Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Colonialism and Imperialism, Donald Trump, Kent State Shootings, and jeane kirkpatrick
Conceptualization of soft power as influence deriving from attraction benefits from an application of a theoretical framework that accommodates the importance of nationalism. The drive for self-determination of national minorities often... more
Conceptualization of soft power as influence deriving from attraction benefits from an application of a theoretical framework that accommodates the importance of nationalism. The drive for self-determination of national minorities often arbitrarily placed within state borders receives support from competing great power actors, intensifying conflict. External powers are more likely to respond to local client solicitations for backing against the latter’s adversary as the local contestants strive for supremacy or separation. This pattern has intensified in the nuclear era as direct great power conflict has become too dangerous to accommodate. Ukraine is a scene for this competitive interference in the post-Cold War era. Lay media and academic publications today label this familiar pattern of intervention hybrid warfare. Hybrid warfare is an attempt at a smart power strategy, i.e., the effective application of both hard and soft power instruments to achieve state actor objectives. Pan-Slavism is an idealized symbol set that elites in Slavic polities use in transnational appeals to public opinion in justifying pursuit of policy objectives in other Slavic, targeted polities. This appeal lacks a politically significant response regarding impact on target polity foreign policy trends. Pan-Slavism is today an indicator of the decaying legacy networks of pan-Communist-era control systems.
Research Interests: International Relations, International Relations Theory, Political Science, Cold War, Nationalism, and 9 moreEuropean Union, Russia, Common Security and Defense Policy, Ukraine, Soft Power and International Relations, Common Foreign and Security Policy, Covert Operations, Pan Slavism, and Hybrid Warfare
Since 2012 Japan’s security policy toward China has changed when compared to Shinzo Abe’s first tenure in 2006. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s charismatic leadership is an important factor explaining this change. Abe faltered in his first... more
Since 2012 Japan’s security policy toward China has changed when compared to Shinzo Abe’s first tenure in 2006. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s charismatic leadership is an important factor explaining this change. Abe faltered in his first term because he failed to win public trust due to poor leadership. When he returned to power in 2012, Abe strengthened his political authority by utilizing dynamic international and domestic situations more fruitfully. Abe effectively used the conditions of changing international order, especially China’s rise that created public concerns and defense budget reduction of the United States to normalize Japan’s military power. Abe also achieved equal footing with the United States. Domestically, while Abe appointed politicians with similar views, he included several non-LDP politicians to avoid the stigma of having a “cabinet of friends.” The LDP-CGP coalition’s expanded decisional latitude combined with the Abe-centered cabinet contributed to achieving Shinzo Abe’s political aims.
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The integration of social movement, social identity, and neocorporatist state theory contributes to a framework to conceptualize political strategies for accommodating global interdependence. Cold war–era benign corporatist models focused... more
The integration of social movement, social identity, and neocorporatist state theory contributes to a framework to conceptualize political strategies for accommodating global interdependence. Cold war–era benign corporatist models focused on smaller European states dependent on international trade for their economic prosperity. The Trump administration’s hostility toward institutionalized multilateral international cooperation denies the imperative to confront the tragedy of the commons unfolding from the negative externalities causing anthropogenic climate change. Complex interdependency incentivizes the creation of international regimes. Social identity theory highlights the pitfalls and pathways in responding to the increasing salience of social movements intersecting with global interdependence. The progressive institutionalization of international human rights regimes includes sustainable development imperatives that can provide strategic opportunities to promote the pluralization and evolutionary transformation of the state. Worldwide tensions emerge from nationalist reactionary populist constituencies amid increasingly complex global interdependence. Great power competition for power and influence within the nuclear setting intensifies in a world in which the sources of power and influence depend increasingly on provision of sustainable development resources. Neocorporatist frameworks together with social identity theory offer an approach to conceptualize the impact of progressive international social movements on the evolution of the state as an ethical behavioral norm system.
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Ineluctable global interdependency shapes trends in self-identity evolution. Constituencies within national publics benefit from the individual career and prosperity benefits of globalization. Conservative populist constituency ingroups... more
Ineluctable global interdependency shapes trends in self-identity evolution. Constituencies within national publics benefit from the individual career and prosperity benefits of globalization. Conservative populist constituency ingroups react hostilely to the perceived threat to their traditional status as the core cultural community within nation states. This response produced the political victory of the 2106 Donald Trump presidential campaign. Reactionary populism emerges from perceived threat to core cultural group traditional supremacy within the national polity, heretofore setting the institutionalized, stereotyped norms of individual and constituency behavior and relations. In the US, their status grievances utilize the language of conservative evangelical Christian identity to mobilize their social movement political resources. They draw upon American foundational settler colonial ideologies with a basis in slavery and casteism. Postwar emerging transnational normative authority centers progressively challenge the utilitarian relevance of these parochial, ascriptive norms and ethics. Post-Cold-War reactionary trends displaying nationalist values have intensified globally, and the disruptions in individual and collective formal and informal institutionalized behaviors and role expectations due to the COVID-19 pandemic intensify them. These consequences foreshadow the knock-on effects of anthropogenic climate change. Liberal progressive political strategic responses can highlight transnational diaspora political activism as offering opportunities for pluralization of the American nation state. Communities marginalized as legacies of imperial expansion and settler colonialism display mobilizational capacities to promote government incentivization for corporate environmental, social and governance investment goals that support global sustainable development. This recommendation emphasizes the institutionalization of transnational supraordinate identities in alliance with global epistemic scientific communities. © Common Ground Research Networks, Benedict E. DeDominicis, Some Rights Reserved (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Permissions: cgscholar.com/cg_support ISSN: 2327-0004 (Print), ISSN: 2327-2147 (Online) https://doi.org/10.18848/2327-0004/CGP/v21i01/11-34 (Article)
Research Interests: Social Movements, Colonial America, Race and Racism, Political Science, Calvinism, and 15 moreNationalism, Populism, Nationalism And State Building, Neoliberalism, African American Studies, Classical Liberalism, American Exceptionalism, American Puritanism, Ethnic/Racial Socialization, Settler colonialism, Community Diversity, Ethnicity and Identity Politics, American Nationalism, Motivated Reasoning, and Christianity and Racism in the American South
: The neoclassical realist theoretical paradigm emphasizes the importance of analyzing the unique complexity of state polity composition to analyze foreign policy behavior. Promotion of sustainable development generates opportunities for... more
: The neoclassical realist theoretical paradigm emphasizes the importance of analyzing the unique complexity of state polity composition to analyze foreign policy behavior. Promotion of sustainable development generates opportunities for enhancing government bargaining leverage in international diplomacy by acquisition of international high-profile leadership roles in supporting global sustainable development in the midst of climate change adaptation. States acquire opportunities to increase their international influence amidst trends in global governance to address these sustainable development challenges. Promoting multilateral treaty framework initiatives and their implementation increases their bargaining leverage. Accelerating national sustainable development reflects awareness globally of economic interdependence. Prior to the Trump administration, the United States and China competed for influence partly by contending for leadership in global initiatives for sustainable development in the post-Cold War era. Indo-Pacific state political responses require the analysis of the nature of these states themselves to adequately comprehend this competition for influence. Nation-states demonstrate significantly different patterns of policy goal behavior than non-nation, multiethnic states. Most Indo-Pacific states are postcolonial, multiethnic states. Atypical Vietnam is much more resistant to Chinese claims in the South China Sea. Vietnam is a nation-state; consequently, it is more likely to perceive challenges and display nationalist behavior patterns. The Philippines have moved to improve relations with China. Relative predisposition toward nationalistic state behavior is a critical factor shaping Indo-Pacific responses to sustainable development challenges.
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The Bulgarian citizenry’s behavioral expectations that associate with post-Communist Bulgarian nationalism show comparatively weak consensus beyond joining Europe, represented by the EU. Bulgarian social movements against corruption are... more
The Bulgarian citizenry’s behavioral expectations that associate with post-Communist Bulgarian nationalism show comparatively weak consensus beyond joining Europe, represented by the EU. Bulgarian social movements against corruption are more likely to be effective with the emergence of an EU-oriented relative consensual agreement within Bulgarian society upon the social contractual meaning of Bulgarian citizenship. The EU as an external norm entrepreneur lacks a strong Bulgarian national cultural institutional interlocutor with which to negotiate to assist in translating EU ideals into the Bulgarian domestic context. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church (BOC) is comparatively politically weak as a domestic norm entrepreneur. Bulgaria lacks an organized national religious institution that effectively claims to articulate prescriptions for national wellbeing. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church is comparatively weak because of its historically dependent relationship in relation to modern Bulgarian nationalism. Relevant comparisons with Roman Catholic Poland as well as other Orthodox Slavic communities illustrate these differences.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Political Science, Bulgarian, Communism, Bulgarian Politics, and 11 moreEuropeanization, Europeanization of the Balkans, Orthodox Christianity, Postcommunism, Library and Information Studies, History of Communism, Business and Management, Democracy in the European Union, Postcommunist Transformation, Bulgarian Orthodox Church, and History of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church
The South Korean government aims to increase its bargaining leverage in international negotiations by strengthening domestic public support for the regime. South Korea’s post-1945 history includes reliance by the US occupation authorities... more
The South Korean government aims to increase its bargaining leverage in international negotiations by strengthening domestic public support for the regime. South Korea’s post-1945 history includes reliance by the US occupation authorities upon widely perceived, high-ranking Japanese collaborators in establishing the post-Japanese government. The Korean War and competition with North Korea continued while South Korea relied upon the economic institutional foundations laid under Japanese colonialism. South Korea’s renowned Cold War economic development success faces post-Cold War globalization policy challenges. These challenges include decreasing US commitment to South Korea’s defense amid rising isolationist sentiment in the United States. Rising populist sentiments in response to perceived challenges to national core group sovereignty manifest themselves through a policy focus on asserting control over education policy. A comparison with the current South Korean high school textbook controversy regarding the Japanese occupation with the US Tea Party movement’s focus on public education content provides insights into public opinion’s role in strategy. US Republican right-wing hostility to the popularity of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States parallels South Korean right-wing hostility to current South Korean textbooks that highlight the Japanese colonial occupation.
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인도주의적 군사개입은 정전론의 원칙을 따라야한다. 더욱 효과적인 정치적 전략적 틀 안에서 이 원칙을 전개하는 것은 마치 인권과 같이 국가의 민족자결권의 개념화를 요구한다. 대외정책은 더욱 효과적으로 정책의 결과들을 예측할 수 있기에 윤리적으로 더욱 큰 의미가 있다. 인도주의적 군사개입에 대한 정전론적 접근은 국제사회에 의한 전략적으로 효과적인 조치를 필요로 한다. 그것은 인권위에 잔학한 행위들을 낳는 민족주의자들의 충돌을... more
인도주의적 군사개입은 정전론의 원칙을 따라야한다. 더욱 효과적인 정치적 전략적 틀 안에서 이 원칙을 전개하는 것은 마치 인권과 같이 국가의 민족자결권의 개념화를 요구한다. 대외정책은 더욱 효과적으로 정책의 결과들을 예측할 수 있기에 윤리적으로 더욱 큰 의미가 있다. 인도주의적 군사개입에 대한 정전론적 접근은 국제사회에 의한 전략적으로 효과적인 조치를 필요로 한다. 그것은 인권위에 잔학한 행위들을 낳는 민족주의자들의 충돌을 해결해야 한다. 스스로를 주권적 민족국가를 성립할 역량과 권리 모두를 갖춘 것으로 여기는 국가 공동체들은 현재의 정치적 현상을 억압적인 것으로 간주할 경향이 더 클 것이다. 외부의 개입은 더욱 그럴듯하게 민족주의자들을 독립을 얻기 위해 고군분투하도록 하면서 그들이 상대적인 힘의 역량을 자각하는데 영향을 미치는 경향이 있다. 유고슬라비아에 서양 세력의 개입으로 인한 결과중의 하나가 그것이었다. 이라크에 미국의 군사적 개입의 결과도 또한 그것이었다. 뒤이어 시리아 정권을 약화하는 아랍의 봄과 함께 계속 진행 중인 이라크의 내전은 이라크의 내전이 시리아로 확산되는 것을 야기해왔다. 국제적인 인도주의적 개입은 레반트지역과 메소포타미아 지역의 식민지 독립국가들의 구조적변경을 지원하는 지역행위자들의 지도를 따라야한다.
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Abstract: Images of the policy motivations and power capabilities of actors targeted by the initiator state that prevail politically in the latter determine the latter’s strategic policy direction. These images may tend in pathological... more
Abstract: Images of the policy motivations and power capabilities of actors targeted by the initiator state that prevail politically in the latter determine the latter’s strategic policy direction. These images may tend in pathological directions that include oversimplification of the domestic political factors driving the target polities’ foreign policy. Nation state polities such as the US and Russia are relatively more prone to perceive challenges from target state and non-state actors. They are more prone to adopt policy decisions as if perceiving their targets in accordance with regular image patterns tending towards oversimplification, i.e., stereotypes. These image stereotypes can be categorized and the strategic policy tends that would associate with them can be inferred. The national security infrastructure founded and developed during the Cold War has institutionalized established interests that promote stabilization as a strategy. This stabilization strategy is embodied in the international legal principle, uti possidetis juris, i.e., the right of self- determination applies only to communities defined by existing provincial or republic territorial boundaries. This strategy serves those powerful interests vested at the pinnacle of the regional international political status quo.
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Human resources management in government-funded non-profit multinational academic institutions face unique challenges in strategic planning. Different national stakeholder constituencies may pursue their respective aims through these... more
Human resources management in government-funded non-profit multinational academic institutions face unique challenges in strategic planning. Different national stakeholder constituencies may pursue their respective aims through these organizations in return for organizational use of the former's political influence capabilities to obtain additional financing. Constituencies with a particular national political interest may have representation through embership on the executive board of the organization as academic institutions seek to globalize. The tensions from interaction of differing constituency political objectives may be in conflict with academic ideals regarding faculty participation in shared governance due to the varying degree of political sensitivity perceived with these various interests. A consequence may be the reduction of the role of faculty representational input into institutional strategic human resources management. Established academic institutions aiming to increase the representation of expatriates among their faculty will likely face less difficulty in integrating international staff into personnel evaluation processes as part of human resources management strategic planning.
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The COVID-19 pandemic is an exemplar of the consequences of global economic development contributing to national crises that require supranational cooperation, collaboration, and coordination to address. Threat and use of deadly force... more
The COVID-19 pandemic is an exemplar of the consequences of global economic development contributing to national crises that require supranational cooperation, collaboration, and coordination to address. Threat and use of deadly force will fail to overcome these crises and is likely to worsen them. The nuclear setting proffers such responses as potentially suicidal. Growing awareness of economic and political interdependency is expanding de facto awareness of existing in a global polity. Complex interdependency presents opportunities to develop further these critical global polity collective capacities. Strategic neo-functionalism can promote cosmopolitan political attitudes and values via creation and promotion of vested interests in global integration. Social identity theory posits three forms of social identity management on the basis of four primary individual impulse axioms: (1) a distinctive motivation of the subject is to maintain a positive self-image; (2) subjects form in-groups vis-à-vis out-groups; (3) individuals comparatively evaluate the social status of their in-groups with significant out-groups; and (4) individuals tend to equate the comparative status of their ingroup with their self-image. If and when individuals comparatively evaluate themselves negatively within their societal contexts, then they will respond psychologically and socially, individually and collectively. Social justice movements press for the accommodation of differences to cease using them as a basis for ascriptive hierarchical community societal status differentiation. This accommodation takes the form of creation of substantive social creativity capacities that ultimately produce measurable, exploited social mobility opportunities. It aims to be policy relevant by underscoring the tasks confronting regime strategists for managing nationalism.
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Bulgarian nationalism as a political force for state political reform faces formidable challenges due to the Bulgarian state’s dependent development under Communism. Nationalist communism was a comparatively effective component of the... more
Bulgarian nationalism as a political force for state political reform faces formidable challenges due to the Bulgarian state’s dependent development under Communism. Nationalist communism was a comparatively effective component of the legitimation strategy for the Communist regime. In neighboring Serbia, the Titoist regime suppressed ethnic nationalism. As the largest nationalist challenge to the Communist Yugoslav state, the Serb national community was partitioned. One-third of ethnic Serbs were placed outside of the Serb republic, and Kosovo and Vojvodina were officially subunits of Serbia but were Yugoslav federal constituent republics in all but name. Russian exploitation of opportunities for influence expansion in Serbia and Bulgaria exist but differ, reflecting this conflicting legacy of Communism in both states. Serb rejection of Communism included advocacy of Serb irredentism, which the post-Soviet/Russian nationalist regime under Vladimir Putin seeks to exploit. Bulgarian...
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This analysis demonstrates that the instruments and personnel inherited from containment have been adapted to the post-Cold War environment to expand state influence. Their tactics include reliance on local clients in third states that... more
This analysis demonstrates that the instruments and personnel inherited from containment have been adapted to the post-Cold War environment to expand state influence. Their tactics include reliance on local clients in third states that major powers patronize to engage in indirect, often obscured competition for control within the broader nuclear setting. This paper outlines the reverberations of US-Soviet clandestine competitive interference within the internal politics of third parties, including disinformation campaigns. This competitive interference contributed to the contemporary vulnerability of nationalist public opinion constituencies to conspiratorial stereotyping, embracing so-called fake news. This examination of the nature of propaganda illustrates the implications of the lack of transparency in the external sources supporting, advocating and utilizing public diplomacy initiatives. A study found the Balkans to be most vulnerable to the propagation of fake news which inclu...
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This paper shows that international social media disinformation campaigns reflect the emergence of the nuclear era ending war as a viable deliberate policy option for great powers towards each other. They instead engage in competitive... more
This paper shows that international social media disinformation campaigns reflect the emergence of the nuclear era ending war as a viable deliberate policy option for great powers towards each other. They instead engage in competitive interference within the polities of third actors as well as targeting not only one another, but their own national public opinion. They aim to empower their respective local political allies at the expense of the perceived local confederates, witting or unwitting, of the other great power competitor. The paper explains that the rise of nationalism increased local resistance and thereby increased the political costs of overt external intervention. Postwar international human rights norms came to include national self-determination, making covert intervention abroad politically preferable by governments as well. The paper demonstrates that these propaganda operations are labelled as disinformation because their external state instigation is therefore pur...
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East Asian liberal intergovernmental integration is unlikely to occur without formal engagement by the United States. An Asian Union is therefore improbable. The European Union model is not transferrable to East Asia in that the former is... more
East Asian liberal intergovernmental integration is unlikely to occur without formal engagement by the United States. An Asian Union is therefore improbable. The European Union model is not transferrable to East Asia in that the former is a multilateral organization that has emerged that can claim authoritatively to speak for Europe. The Cold War context for European liberal intergovernmental integration included US policies constituting the strategy of containment towards the USSR. US incentives to coordinate west European policies towards the Communist bloc targeted mid-range power allies. These European nation states were roughly equal in their national power capabilities. The USSR did not have the hard or soft power capabilities to claim irrefutable membership in the same European club. Even traditional Russian allies such as Bulgaria have sought affirmation of their European identity through accession to the EU. A similar US-led containment strategy towards China is unlikely. C...
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The institutionalization of any WAC program requires conscious adaptation to the program’s societal context. This evident truth is particularly clear in an American university set in a European community in the midst of revolutionary... more
The institutionalization of any WAC program requires conscious adaptation to the program’s societal context. This evident truth is particularly clear in an American university set in a European community in the midst of revolutionary change—our circumstance at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG). The challenges inherent in the ongoing process of “globalization,”—to students, to faculty, to a multinational post-secondary institution— are not unique but rather are much more obvious in Southeast Europe. From a political science perspective (Ben has taught political science at AUBG since 1994), globalization involves the growing awareness of interdependencies transcending national boundaries while an actor makes policy decisions. From the perspective of a writing program director (Tracy served as writing program director and writing center director at AUBG 1997-2000) functioning within an American-style post-secondary institution in the Balkans, WAC is a “global” phenomenon in th...
The goal of this paper is to critique European integration noting political psychological dynamics relative to current policy trends that shape the EU’s effectiveness as a peace strategy. EU capabilities for conflict prevention include... more
The goal of this paper is to critique European integration noting political psychological dynamics relative to current policy trends that shape the EU’s effectiveness as a peace strategy. EU capabilities for conflict prevention include opportunities it offers to procure national security and prosperity for established states. The EU enjoys an advantage in competition with Moscow for influence in southeastern Europe. The EU is a multinational political entity that effectively projects an image of not being under the national dominance of a particular member state, i.e. Germany. The EU’s institutional policy-making complexity and authority dispersion suppress perceptual patterns suspecting it as a vehicle for neo-colonial projection of the power of a member state or coalition of states. The EU’s conditionality for loans to address the sovereign debt crisis is thus less prone to be seen as erasing the national sovereignty of a debtor state through capitulation to particular natio...
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The Cold War and its end had a powerful impact on the social sciences and the educational socialization of succeeding generations of international relations scholars. The assumption of successful US containment of an expansionist USSR is... more
The Cold War and its end had a powerful impact on the social sciences and the educational socialization of succeeding generations of international relations scholars. The assumption of successful US containment of an expansionist USSR is supported by the vast network of vested bureaucratic organizational interests created during the Cold War. Their command over extensive research, educational and career resources promotes this view of recent world history. It also serves as a justification for the global expansion and institutionalization of American hegemony into regions hitherto divided into US and Soviet spheres of influence. The assumption of the benignity of this hegemony is problematic because of US opposition to some nationalist movements challenging their regional political status quo. Specific US evaluation of these movements depended largely on their perceived role in facilitating Cold War "containment" of Soviet imperialism. Some nationalist movements, such as Z...
The political circumstances of Korean reunification will significantly determine the political environment for future public administration. This paper argues this context will create parameters for governments to implement the exercise... more
The political circumstances of Korean reunification will significantly determine the political environment for future public administration. This paper argues this context will create parameters for governments to implement the exercise of sovereignty over the united Korean peninsula. Pan-Korean nationalism will be exploited as a political mobilization resource for creating the foundations for reintegrating a pan- Korean state and society. A reunited national community will be upon shared historical commonalities. They will serve to mobilize political cooperation after nearly 70 years of separate development under radically opposed political and economic regimes. The North’s vestiges will likely remain in the form of organized crime networks in a post-reunification state. Peace strategists should prepare to respond to the political tendency to manipulate and exploit anti-Japanese symbolic appeals by Korean political entrepreneurs. The latter will do so to mobilize prospective supp...
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South Korean diplomatic bargaining leverage is enhanced through South Korea acquiring global leadership positions in promoting sustainable development. Global governance trends in addressing the greenhouse gas emission causes of climate... more
South Korean diplomatic bargaining leverage is enhanced through South Korea acquiring global leadership positions in promoting sustainable development. Global governance trends in addressing the greenhouse gas emission causes of climate change create opportunities for South Korea to benefit in terms of its power capabilities. They include diplomatic bargaining leverage deriving from South Korean representatives’ high profile in supporting global multilateral treaty initiatives and their implementation organizations. South Korea benefits diplomatically from increasing global awareness of political economic interdependence for national sustainable development. Competition for influence by the United States and China in the post-Cold War international environment includes vying for leadership in global sustainable development initiatives. South Korea’s geographic and institutional location at a nexus where US and Chinese focus their competition creates greater opportunities as well...
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Humanitarian military intervention should follow the precepts of just war doctrine. Developing this doctrine in a more effective political strategic direction requires a conceptualization of national self-determination as a human right. A... more
Humanitarian military intervention should follow the precepts of just war doctrine. Developing this doctrine in a more effective political strategic direction requires a conceptualization of national self-determination as a human right. A foreign policy is more ethically significant to the extent that it more effectively predicts the consequences of the policy. A just war approach to humanitarian military intervention requires strategically effective action by the international community. It should resolve the nationalist conflicts that produce human rights atrocities. National communities that see themselves as having both the right and the capability to achieve sovereign nation statehood will more likely view the political status quo as oppressive. External intervention is likely to affect their relative power capability self-perception, making nationalist striving for independence more probable. It was one of the consequences of Western intervention in Yugoslavia. It also has bee...