Canada and the institute of pacific relations: Lessons from an earlier voyage
Woods suggests that valuable lessons can be learned from Canada's involvement in the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) which will aid and inform its current Asia‐Pacific relations. Two arguments are made in this paper: that interaction with the IPR has shaped current Canadian attitudes towards regional institutions; and that a form of 1920s track‐two diplomacy is alive today in Canada. Canadian interaction with the IPR is examined through: the impact the Institute had on the leader of the Canadian delegation to the first IPR conference, John Nelson, and his subsequent contributions to Canada's early track two diplomacy; the impact that the Canadian academic/diplomat E. Herbert Norman had on the Institute and Canada's Asia‐Pacific persona; the state‐society relationship within Canada vis‐a‐vis the IPR; and the role of American philanthropy in sustaining Canadian contributions to the Institute. Woods concludes that the belief in track‐two diplomacy is alive and well in Canada; that the utility of a broad...
Presidential Address: Reflections on Modernity and Modernization
I should like to share with you some thoughts about modernity and modernization that are drawn from notes I took during a visit in October 1992 to Hachinohe in Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan. I report from these notes mainly as a historian and partly as an amateur ethnographer without any special claim to “ethnographic authority.” On that occasion, some one thousand citizens from the region gathered in Hachinohe to celebrate the 290th anniversary of the birth of Andō Shōeki (1703–62), the provocative eighteenth-century thinker and physician who practiced in this former castletown. I had been invited to give a lecture at a symposium on “Andō Shōeki and Today” and the “sympathetic relationship between community and nature” (Najita 1993).
China and arms control: Transition in East Asia
With the Asian security environment in transition from the Cold War structure to whatever replaces it, prospects for arms control initiatives in the region and the attitudes and cooperative mechanisms to implement effective regimes are in a state of flux. Within Asia, Beijing`s conventional and nuclear defense modernization programs, combined with its active arms export program, make China a central player in present arms control regimes and any future agreements. While the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union meant that China lost much of its strategic significance, Beijing`s growing economic and military power guarantee that it will be a major source affecting regional stability - or instability - for the foreseeable future. At present, China is viewed by many as a less-than-perfect partner in efforts to achieve a more effective Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), an agreement on a comprehensive test ban (CTB) treaty before 1996 and other non-proliferation and arms control initiatives. To understand why this is so, and to appreciate how the current transition in thinking among China`s elites can help or hinder these initiatives over the long term, it is necessary to more clearly see the post-Cold War world and Asiamore » from Beijing`s perspective.« less