How do we understand seemingly inconsistent behavior in foreign policy? This is the question Eleonora Mattiacci takes on in Volatile States in International Politics. In International Relations (IR) scholarship, the focus tends to be on consistent change : either towards conflict in terms of escalation or towards cooperation in terms of reconciliation. Seldom do scholars…
Tag: France
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-51 on Haglund, Sister Republics: Security Relations between America and France
It is a great pleasure for me to introduce David Haglund’s Sister Republics: Security Relations between America and France. As a citizen of both nations, and one who has done some research on the question, I find the topic fascinating. The book covers a large expanse of time, considering the evolution of the subject since…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 93: Daniels on Meijer, Awakening to China’s Rise
On both sides of the Atlantic it has become fashionable to criticize the China policies of the West over the last few decades as having been “naïve.”[1] Confronted with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s self-confident, often abrasive and confrontational style of foreign policy, the West’s hopes of “Wandel durch Handel” (change through trade)—one of the main…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay 86: Tønnesson on Moir, Number One Realist
Bernard B. Fall (19 November 1926–21 February 1967) was born in Austria, moved with his family to France after the 1938 Anschluss, lost his parents in the Holocaust, and joined the French Maquis at the age of 16. He thus earned experience with guerrilla warfare, including political mobilization and the assassination of collaborators with a…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay 85: Dieter on Meijer, Awakening to China’s Rise
Hugo Meijer has analyzed one of the most pressing issues in international relations in the twenty-first century: how do countries deal with an increasingly assertive People’s Republic of China? He examines Europe’s three most important countries: France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The author argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, these countries started to alter…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 29 on Powell, France’s Wars in Chad
On 27 February 2023, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a speech on the future of Franco-African relations. The proposed changes represented a fundamental reorientation of French activity on the continent, and would represent a major departure from French policy over the past 70 years. Among other changes, Macron pledged to drastically reduce France’s military presence,…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 67: Perlman on Bauer, Marianne is Watching
When General Georges Boulanger committed suicide on his lover’s grave in 1891, it was an ignominious end for “General Revanche,” an enigmatic, if ambitious man who had threatened the republic he once served to protect. Much has been made of Boulanger’s rise, the movement he inspired, his ultimate disgrace amid accusations of treason, and, recently,…
Review Essay 59: Nuclear France: Grandeur or Mirage?
The major theme of Cold War France’s foreign policy was the reassertion of the country’s traditional great power identity. France did not aspire to unseat the two superpowers as the most powerful states in the world, but French leaders believed that their country could and should also take a place at the global high table. …
Policy Series 2021-56: Death Grip Handshakes and Flattery Diplomacy: The Macron-Trump Connection and Its Larger Implications for Alliance Politics
Forewarned by a number of other world leaders, French President Emmanuel Macron was well-prepared for the infamous Donald Trump handshake. On 25 May 2017 at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Brussels, the two world leaders met for the first time. With cameras clicking and video rolling, President Trump praised Macron’s “tremendous victory”…
H-Diplo Roundtable XXII-25 on After the Deportation: Memory Battles in Postwar France
Philip Nord’s After the Deportation is a compelling and ambitious account of ‘deportation memory’ in France. It revises the dominant silence-to-voice story that historians have nuanced and contested, but never fully dislodged. As the story goes, the French imagined deportees as anti-fascist, patriotic victims of the Nazi regime until the 1960s and 70s, when a…