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Introduction Turkiye's contemporary engagement with Africa comes from a long tradition of solidarity and mutual respect with Africa, quite different from the colonial legacies of the other global powers. The [...]

In the summer of 1627, a series of violent conflicts erupted between the papal police, colloquially called the sbirri, in Rome and soldiers and servants of the Spanish ambassador. The epicenter of this violence was the Piazza della Trinità dei Monti, the location of the ambassador’s palace that soon gave its name to the square. After the initial skirmish between the police and Spaniards took place in late June, the next months witnessed daily street battles between the two sides with the ambassador’s men patrolling the streets that opened out from the Piazza della Trinità dei Monti all the way to the Corso, a huge swath of urban territory. Calling this area, “il Quatiero degli Spagnoli” (the Spanish quarter),  the Spaniards robbed passersby and prevented the police and other papal officials from carrying out their duties in the area. The ambassador himself was quite active in defending his embassy and the surrounding area. His majordomo, his son, and other important members of his household led the attacks against the police. Moreover, he also secretly brought Spanish soldiers into Rome via the southern gate of the city and the River Tiber. This episode in Rome’s history demonstrates how important controlling its urban space was to Spanish ambassadors, especially during the Thirty Years War and the pontificate of Urban VIII, a partisan of France. Through violence, the ambassadors defended their rights and visibly asserted the will of their king. Moreover, papal government proved ineffective at quelling the violence of ambassadors as other clashes in the 1630s and 1640s reveal.

Climate change is one of the key foci of critical geopolitics in the twenty‐first century, with a proliferation of scholarship considering the international conferences, imaginaries, and securitisations of the climate crisis. Since 2019, Tuvalu has been using human bodies submerged in water – including diplomats, children, and politicians ‐ within its diplomacy to draw attention to the severity of the climate crisis. By examining contemporary Tuvaluan climate diplomacy, this article advocates for a greater engagement with feminist geopolitics to interrogate the embodied practices of climate diplomacy. It draws upon fieldwork conducted in the South Pacific in 2018 and 2019 including at the 50th Pacific Island Forum in Tuvalu. Firstly, this article explores the 2019 visit of the Secretary General of the United Nations to Tuvalu ‐ arguing the photoshoot of him wearing a formal suit in the lagoon connected the imaginary of Tuvalu as a ‘sinking island’ to a wider international community. Secondly, it considers the use of Tuvaluan schoolchildren playing in the water during the 50th Pacific Island Forum. It argues this constituted a vital territorial conjuncture that drew attention to Australia's inaction on climate change and the risk to Tuvalu's future from the rise of sea level. Thirdly, it considers the body of Simon Kofe, Foreign Minister of Tuvalu, during his addresses to COP26 and COP27 from firstly the lagoon in Funafuti and then the metaverse, to examine the shifting narratives of Tuvalu's future within its climate diplomacy. This article argues that climate diplomacy is a deeply embodied practice and human geography scholarship must be more attentive to the geopolitical work that bodies do within climate diplomacy to understand the temporalities and spatialities of diplomacy better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how silk as an aesthetic sign plays the active and efficient role of diplomatic narrative in the cultural and political communication between countries employing the historical and archaeological evidence in China. Aesthetic signs are of communicative values and cultural narrative significance. Silk is an aesthetic sign with iconic properties. The paper argues that beauty, exquisiteness, and value are the visual properties that silk as a sign vehicle presents in terms of texture, colours, patterns, and weaving techniques, recognised across all cultural contexts throughout history. The richness of favourable meanings that a sign conveys is embodied in the characteristics of its specific vehicle. The combination of silk as a sign vehicle and its designated object conveys the sign's value, thus performing the narrative function. Due to its iconic functions, silk is the most distinct and active aesthetic sign. Therefore, this paper argues that silk as a sign expresses diplomatic fraternity and harmony narrates aesthetics of unremitting pursuit of gentleness and auspiciousness, and constructs an international image of a country willing to coexist with others harmoniously and offer mutual assistance during difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2020 Israel–UAE Abraham Accords normalized these states' relations, with heavy emphasis on digital technologies. International Relations theories of recognition, however, hardly consider the role digital technologies play in establishing recognition between states. What role, then, did digital technologies play in this landmark shift in UAE–Israel recognition? This article uses three aspects of digital technologies in the UAE–Israel case—cybersecurity cooperation, cloud computing, and subsea cables—to inductively develop three propositions regarding the role of digital technologies in state recognition. First, states use digital technologies—and private sector companies that own and operate them—as diplomatic lubrication: a means to navigate around and overcome difficult diplomatic relationships, building momentum towards recognition. Second, digital competition between states leads them to conform their national economic structures towards global technology companies in similar ways, thereby recognizing each other as equal participants in a global market—which we term market-oriented homogenization. Third, states involved in transnational internet infrastructure projects together develop technical working practices, interests, and dependencies that facilitate diplomatic recognition—which we term infrastructural integration. Building on these three propositions, we put forward an overall concept of 'digital recognition' to capture their common theme: the influence of digital technologies, their owners or their operators on state recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a new perspective on Ottoman-Safavid-Mughal relations in the early modern period by exploring the broader historical context of Swedish envoy Claes Rålamb's report of the advice offered by the Ottoman chief mufti (the highest-ranking legal authority) to the court in 1657. Rålamb reported that the chief mufti had advised that the Ottoman court reject a Mughal offer to form a Sunni alliance against Iran and instead urged the court to protect the Shiʿi Safavids. By examining early modern inter-imperial Sunni relations in general and diplomatic exchange among these Muslim states between 1648 and 1656 in particular, this article challenges the prevailing narrative of sectarian differences driving political conflicts. I show that in the period following the Ottoman-Safavid peace treaty of 1639, the Ottomans regarded the Safavid state as a buffer polity that helped to secure their legitimacy against potential Sunni rivals in Central Asia and India. The article explores how a shared religious identity fueled rather than discouraged competition for legitimacy and supremacy among Sunni rulers in an increasingly interconnected early modern world, leading the Ottomans to align with their sectarian rivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aḥmad al-Ghazzāl was a Moroccan scribe and litterateur who served as Sultan Muḥammad III's (r. 1757-1790) chief diplomat to Spain from 1766 to 1775. In this capacity he wrote over thirty letters to his Spanish and other foreign counterparts around the Mediterranean. We use these letters to examine how al-Ghazzāl strategically employed Middle Arabic, defined as a written variety that incorporates both classical and colloquial elements, as part of an effective diplomatic agenda. His use of Middle Arabic combined previously established norms with innovations that have up to now not been documented in this period or genre. Proposing a historical-linguistic analysis, we argue that al-Ghazzāl's innovative rhetorical strategies offer insight into both spoken and written Arabic in the early modern period and developments in diplomatic thought and practice from a North African perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diplomatic ties have deepened between China and Africa. However, unlike the friendly rhetoric at the State level, racist issues at the individual and societal levels, which are under-researched, are becoming increasingly salient in the Chinese context. Analysing 2766 posts and 13 477 comments from Weibo, this study deploys the 2021 Shadeed Abdulmateen murder case in Ningbo to investigate the online racial discourse that Chinese Weibo users construct around Black people. While thematic analysis shows that racism in China comprises a complex combination of anti-Black, anti-government, and anti-social class attitudes, critical discourse analysis identifies the discursive strategies used to construct the dichotomy between "positive Chinese" and "negative Black people". Specifically, the argumentation strategy justifies exclusionary practices against Black people in China, whereas the predicational strategy criminalises the Black community. Moreover, the nomination strategy discursively represents Black people as foreign threats and animals. Lastly, this study also reveals the orthographic manoeuvrings contrived by Weibo users to avoid censorship of racist language use on Weibo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevailing narrative from the Brezhnev era to the present holds that Moscow's relations with Tokyo failed to achieve a breakthrough due to a territorial dispute lingering from 1956. Japan had demanded the return of all four islands seized by the Soviet Union after Japan had announced its surrender, but Moscow had insisted on no islands or hinted at two. A different argument is made here: The primary culprit in the two periods when diplomacy took off was Moscow's skewed thinking about Japan. Rejecting arguments for complementarity, historical parallelism, and balance of power, Russian writings in the late 1980s and 2013–2023 saw little value in Japan. Regardless of Gorbachev's 'New Thinking' and Putin's 'Turn to the East', the intellectual groundwork for rapprochement never materialized. This was a harbinger of other negativity about Japanese history, the Japan-U.S. alliance, and Japan's 'disrespect'. Failure to assess Tokyo accurately, including its many reasons for pursuing Moscow, testifies to a warped understanding of geopolitics as well as geo-economics owing to a distorted national identity. Misjudging Japan in each period paved the way to greater hostility to the West that followed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cycle pattern of retreat and advance in the US-China relationship was replaced by a prolonged crisis. The breakdown of regular communication during the Trump presidency was blamed partially for the downward spiral. The reopening of the line of communication in the summer of 2023, however, has not reversed the prolonged crisis. Exchanging goodwill and reaffirming the importance of diplomacy, Washington and Beijing have continued pushing each other's hot buttons not because they misjudged each other's intentions but because they understood each other's red lines too well to make gains through accommodation on the fundamental issues of friction: the ideological struggle, the great power competition, and the Taiwan issue. Beijing risks overreaching and Washington risks overreaction. The two countries cannot move beyond the prolonged crisis unless their leaders find ways to overcome the fundamental roadblocks and cooperate in areas of mutual interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of the BRI on the peace processes of conflict-affected states (CAS) bordering China, namely Nepal and Myanmar. It underscores the need to assess the impact of the BRI as an iterative process: where the BRI impacts the political economy of host CAS; but also how contextual specificities of the CAS, undertaking a peace process, are reshaping the delivery of the BRI. Here, the article first outlines that the BRI is not only physically transforming host CAS through infrastructure and connectivity but also influencing the core agenda of the peace processes, notably federalism, through the uneven distribution of benefits of infrastructural development. Second, the challenges of working in the complex settings of CAS, with fragmented state authority, and political uncertainty have also brought significant changes in the delivery of the BRI and Chinese diplomacy broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to descriptions of Japan as a country that shied away from involvement in international political affairs during the Cold War, this article shows that since the 1960s, Japan has actively engaged in diplomacy to resolve conflicts in Southeast Asia. What motivated these efforts? What role did Japan play? What are the characteristics of Japan's diplomacy? Drawing on declassified diplomatic documents, these questions are addressed by investigating Japan's peace brokering in four conflicts during the Cold War era. The findings deepen our understanding of Japan's contribution to conflict-resolution and its political role in Southeast Asia during the Cold War, which was much more active than claimed in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1985, Dutch businessman Frans Lurvink created the Alerdinck Foundation and its Centre for East-West Communications. A private venture, Alerdinck set out to achieve greater understanding between Eastern and Western media to reduce Cold War tensions. An example of citizen diplomacy aimed at promoting peace, Alerdinck's story illustrates the strengths of a private initiative in creating spaces for dialogue and relationship-building, and the limitations of a non-state actor aiming to alter international relations. The article chronicles the formation, ambitions and obstacles faced by Alerdinck as it endeavoured to improve cross-bloc dialogue through its conferences, bilingual newspaper, and journalist exchange programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Italy is the only 'Big Four' European country and 'Quint' North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member ostensibly uninterested in the world's geopolitical and geoeconomic epicentre. However, a number of developments contradict the assumption that Rome overlooks the importance of the Indo-Pacific. By analysing official policies, naval deployments, new partnerships and evolving trajectories, this article reveals that Italy's strategic engagement with the Indo-Pacific is already significant and unfolding under three broad areas: (a) economy ; (b) security ; and (c) norms. It then assesses the benefits and risks of this developing foreign policy, and argues that the former outweigh the latter, a condition which is conducive to the establishment of an official Italian Indo-Pacific strategy. As the first scholarly work on the Italian role in the Indo-Pacific, this research makes a novel contribution to the literature on both Italian foreign policy and the Indo-Pacific security landscape, by investigating a complementary approach to that of existing Indo-Pacific strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of History Studies (13094688) is the property of History Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of History Studies (13094688) is the property of History Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article offers update on significant international environmental law developments from 2023 to 2024. These include application of the European Convention on Human Rights to the issue of climate change in Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz and others v. Switzerland in the European Court of Human Rights, advisory opinion on climate change by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, and diplomacy on climate change and other global environmental challenges.

A long-surviving tradition in Nigeria's foreign policy has to do with observing neutrality in the Arab-Israeli conflict. This neutrality, however, was tested between 1973 and 1992 when Nigeria had a sustained break in diplomatic ties with Israel. At no point did successive Nigerian governments use religion to justify either the sustained severance or eventual restoration of ties. However, religion is a non-material factor in international relations that can play out in multidimensional ways without being seen as a catalyst for an action or inaction. It is against this background that within the analytical purview of Rosenau's linkage politics theory and the bottom up theoretical approach to public opinion in foreign policy, the essay investigates the extent to which religion determined Nigeria's severed relations with Israel and its eventual restoration of ties with the Jewish nation. The essay is historical and employs the use of primary sources including materials sourced from Nigeria's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There were also personal communications with veteran diplomats, including two of the foreign affair ministers who served during the period. The essay concludes that while religion was neither the justification for the severance of relations with Israel nor the restoration of ties with the Jewish nation, religion played a role in the manner successive governments dealt with the matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown that international actors can contribute to resolving violent conflicts. In this article, we focus on conflict prevention, and argue that tools that are relatively non-invasive and rapid to deploy are effective at preventing conflict from escalating. We identify two tools that meet these criteria—rhetorical and diplomatic action, and argue that regional organizations are particularly poised to deploy these tools successfully. Drawing upon new data, we find that rhetorical and diplomatic actions deployed by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are generally associated with reductions in violent events as well as fatalities in the following month. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the main factors that helped facilitate the transformation of Kuwait from an Emirate ‘Emarah’ (a non‐state) to an internationally recognised state during the rule of Sheikh Abdullah Al‐Salem from 1950 to 1965. It identifies the soft power actions and public relations communication strategies that facilitated the transformation of Kuwait from Sheikhdom to statehood. Sheikh Al‐Salem's strategies set the foundations for Kuwait to become recognised and respected in international affairs, not only in the Middle East but also globally. Data were collected and reviewed from the academic literature, from public records, legal documents, letters, press releases and newspaper and magazine articles as well as songs and TV interviews. The evidence shows that Sheikh Al‐Salem's use of soft power actions and public relations techniques were influential in facilitating the formation of the new state and made Kuwait an important player in the international arena while maintaining Arab nationalism and Islamic values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Aim Methods Results Discussion Conclusion and implications for nursing, health, and social policy Representing half of the global health workforce, nurses are critical to health promotion, disease prevention, and the economic and social needs of populations. However, nursing expertise is underutilized in the UN System, and nurses are underprepared for roles in policy to influence global health and sustainable development. Innovative education strategies are necessary to address the sidelining of nursing expertise in these spaces and build nursing literacy in shaping global policy.This quality improvement project aimed to develop and evaluate a model to build a USA‐based school of nursing's literacy and engagement with the United Nations (UN) System.A Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) student developed an innovative educational model, the United Nations Essentials for Global Nursing Leadership, in partnership with a school of nursing (SON), to build faculty knowledge and skills on initiating and sustaining bidirectional engagement with the UN. In 2023, SON faculty piloted the model, and pre‐/post‐intervention survey data were utilized for improvement.Participants reported increased knowledge, awareness, and confidence related to the UN System and their ability to engage as policy influencers, health diplomats, and global citizens. In total, 100% of participants volunteered to hold the role of UN champion for the SON.This innovative model advances nursing knowledge and coherence in the UN System and key areas of policy, diplomacy, and global governance for meaningful UN engagement.Models that invest in closing the global nursing leadership preparation gap can raise the profession's visible UN presence and strategic policy influence at a critical time for people and the planet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the diplomatic and political efforts made by Florence to establish a significant institutional presence in Constantinople. It explores Florence's diplomatic relations with the Byzantine Empire, which are analysed in three distinct phases: the first, from the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade in 1204; the second, from 1421 to 1434, following the arrival of the Medici; and the third, from 1434, including the Ecumenical Council, to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The research aims to provide an historical narrative and a comprehensive study of the origins and development of political contacts between Florence and the Byzantine Empire, an enquiry into the Florentine privileges granted in 1439, and a critical discussion of the genuine presence of a Florentine colony in the Byzantine capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India’s rise as the world’s largest democracy and its challenge to the Western-defined global order have attracted significant scholarly, political, and media attention. Using Anderson and Prelli’s pentadic cartography to enhance discursive analysis in international relations, this paper looks at journalist Maithreyi Seetharaman’s interview with Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s External Affairs Minister at the GLOBSEC Forum in Bratislava, Slovakia. Depicting three interlocking maps of the symbolic landscape of the interview, we highlight the use of Seetharaman and Jaishankar’s scene-act ratio, situating India’s actions in its geopolitical contexts. Jaishankar’s dual use of materialist and idealist discourses presents India as both a reactive agent influenced by external circumstances and a proactive agent with its own distinct goals and ethical considerations. This approach offers a comprehensive understanding of international politics, balancing dominant empirical narratives in IR and emphasising a complex interplay of motives that drive state behaviour. Through this case study, we advocate for a broader application of pentadic cartography in international relations to uncover the deeper meanings and contexts that shape state actions, providing a richer, more textured understanding of geopolitics, global diplomacy and state interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops and tests two competing arguments regarding how a patron's diplomatic visits influence the military spending of protégés. One argument posits that a patron's visits will decrease allies' defense spending by producing reassurance (reassurance hypothesis). Another perspective contends that such visits will increase allies' burden sharing by fostering allied partnerships (partnership hypothesis). I test these hypotheses by analyzing US presidential visits to allies and the annual percentage changes in allies' military spending from 1950 to 2007. I find evidence supporting the reassurance hypothesis, indicating that diplomatic visits by US presidents are associated with lower military expenditures by allies the following year. Furthermore, I find that the negative effect is primarily observed when visits are made in the first 3 years of a presidential term, while visits in the final year of a presidency do not result in significant changes in allied burden sharing. The findings highlight the role of a patron's travel diplomacy in providing reassurance in military alliances, as well as its unintended consequence for protégés' foreign policy: reduced alliance contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As conflict dynamics become complex and escalate globally, especially identity-based conflicts, we are witnessing an unprecedented shift in the Conflict Analysis and Resolution and Peacebuilding field toward contextually innovative and effective community-led approaches. The inadequacies of liberal and neoliberal paradigms and the increase in identity-based conflicts, religious pluralism, and differences in communities have motivated evidence-based inter-religious community-level engagements over the past two decades. These interventions rely on the theoretical frameworks of emancipatory peacebuilding and compassionate reasoning, and reflect an in-depth sense of spirituality, longing, and the essence of human relationship building and practice. This study gathers data from primary sources (which include findings from hybrid interviews) through a semi-participatory and empirical qualitative explorative research process in order to critique the underlying philosophies of traditional paradigms and explore emerging alternatives. It also posits that inter-religious community-led interventions are founded on the emancipatory elicitive religious peacebuilding (EERPb) framework. They are adaptive to non-linear (and sometimes non-scientific) approaches and are less focused on international standards. The framework fundamentally embraces phenomenological, metaphysical, and ethical realities in peacebuilding, operationalizes the concept of just peace, and acknowledges a global approach to peace that offers the opportunity to resolve the difficulties encountered by the various CAR and peacebuilding theoretical schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attacks by the Houthis, an Iran-backed armed group from northwest Yemen and now its de facto governing authority, pose a significant threat to commercial shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, and therefore to the global economy. Washington faces a range of unpalatable options to deal with this threat. The current approach of limited American and British airstrikes is flawed, but the alternatives – no airstrikes or more airstrikes – are arguably worse. Under a more ambitious strategy, the United States would through diplomacy help rebuild the internationally recognised government of Yemen, which nominally brings together anti-Houthi factions but is in fact fragmented and weak. Only this option has a realistic prospect of modifying the balance of power inside Yemen and containing the Houthis' regional threat. Otherwise, the Houthis are likely to consolidate power, which would be a tragedy for the Yemeni people given the brutality of Houthi rule, and present a perennial danger to regional security given their ambitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractWhat determines government access to capital? Conventional explanations of state credit access rest on tenuous assumptions and fail to fully elucidate market behavior seen in recent years. This article argues that investors evaluate governments based on their diplomatic ties to the West. Specifically, diplomacy with major Western powers serves as a heuristic which signals to market actors that the debtor state is a trustworthy borrower with low default risk. Focusing on in-person diplomacy with the United States, I construct a new data set, the United States Economic Diplomacy (USED) Data, which codes over 5,000 meetings between the US President, US Treasury Secretary, and high-level foreign policymakers from 1990 to 2016. Among a sample of 110 countries, the statistical results uncover evidence of a significant but conditional “Western advantage” in sovereign bond markets. Greater diplomatic ties to the United States are associated with higher volumes of bond issuance. This advantage, however, manifests itself primarily when global capital is scarce and reverses as lower global interest rates incentivize greater risk-taking among investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's use of 'Back-channel Diplomacy' with Palestine and Saudi Arabia. The paper advances a new typology of back-channel diplomacy, which is used as an analytical framework. Those in Israel who favour the so-called 'two-state solution' have generally pursued back-channels to explore whether a two-state deal is possible, while those who favour a permanent Jewish retention of much of the West Bank have used back-channels to buy time for this project, including by making secret deals with sworn enemies of Israel's existence. Former PM Netanyahu's reliance on back-channels, both for 'doing business' with Hamas, and for contacts with Saudi Arabia, was the culmination of the second approach; a strategy intended to both appease his political base and prevent peace with the Palestinians, while seeking to tactically manage relations across the region. However, this strategy contains a fundamental tension which may be difficult to ignore for much longer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diplomacy is traditionally associated with politeness and civility. As a fundamental element of international relations, diplomacy is rooted in professional skills and codified practices. By moving diplomacy to online platforms, diplomatic statements have been accelerated, sometimes resulting in aggressiveness. The purpose of this paper is to identify outrage in diplomatic communication. Outrage can be defined as uncivil expressions evoking emotion in the audience. This concept is examined based on the tweets produced by the Russian Foreign Ministry account between 1 December 2021, and 24 April 2022 (total: 2485 tweets). Based on the framework proposed by Berry, Jeffrey M., and Sara Sobieraj (2014. The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and The New Incivility. Oxford: Oxford University Press), qualitative analysis identifies 370 outrageous tweets. Frame analysis shows how outrage acts as a narrative tool for activating (self-)representational devices. Moreover, outrage influences the diplomatic tone, international actors' characterisation, and international institutions' delegitimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the literature on the relationship between tourism and peace is extensive, these studies have not been focused on the context of Morocco???Israel relations. Additionally, although many studies examined tourism's role as a peacemaker or peacekeeper, little focus has been given to tourism as a tool for promoting normalization between governments during periods without official relations. To address this theoretical gap, this study examined the role of tourism in promoting "normalization without normalization"–the period without official relations between Israel and Morocco, from 2000 to 2020. The results show that tourism???s role in making peace between Israel and Morocco was limited but played a major role in strengthening and stabilizing unofficial relations through emotional campaign, pilgrimages, and economic growth. Thus, the empirical analysis validates the theoretical concept that tourism, as a peacekeeper, helped to nurture a positive unofficial relation between Israel and Morocco. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista UNISCI is the property of Unidad de Investigaciones Sobre Seguridad y Cooperacion International (UNISCI) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis is the property of Amsterdam University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Dados - Revista de Ciências Sociais is the property of DADOS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Summary: It may be that diplomacy is not just meeting with a more difficult international system, but that it is actually under deliberate attack. Diplomatic communication is turning conflictual. More diplomats seem to be declared personæ non gratæ. Multilateral institutions are plunged into deliberate deadlocks. Manipulations of information hollow out the diplomatic debate. Diplomatic processes are set up only to provide cover for the pursuit of military operations. In a nutshell, diplomacy has to put up with a more competitive, transactional, distrustful, fragmented and contested space. While it has been defined as 'the management of separateness', it may be faced with actors who are choosing radical separation as a political strategy. To deal with this deliberate 'brutalization', diplomacy will need hardened capabilities, but it will also need to reinvest in a number of policy issues on which it will need to perform better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: American diplomacy employs contact groups to secure the United States' national interests and fulfil its role as a superpower in several regions worldwide. This article explores three examples of contact groups formed by US diplomacy to intervene in the civil wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen. It tracks the groups' formation process, meetings' content and the US assessment of their influence on American interests and the course of the conflicts. The article concludes that the formation process was developed under sensitive compromises among the stakeholders of each conflict and led to the exclusion of some essential actors. The contact groups were influential at the tactical level and impacted the course of the conflicts in the short term, preventing humanitarian disasters, taking de-escalation steps and securing American interests, but they failed to achieve successful settlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights developments at the United Nations International Law Commission on Sea-Level Rise. Topics discussed include potential legal effects of sea level rise on the Law of the Sea, possible legal effects on statehood, exercise of sovereignty, maritime borders and rights to maritime zones, and potential legal effects on the protection of persons in areas of human rights, statelessness, migration, refugees, self-determination, diplomatic protection and consular services.

AbstractIn a manner almost reminiscent of the Ottoman Empire’s frantic search (late nineteenth to early twentieth century) for müstemlekat (colonies) in Africa, modern Turkey seems to have revived its imperialist dreams in contemporary Africa. Following the elaboration of a proactive African foreign policy strategy, Turkey declared 2005 the Year of Africa, and established diplomatic relations with a raft of Muslim-majority African countries (MMACs). While Ghana is not an MMAC, Turkey re-established diplomatic ties with Accra in 2010, heralding a burgeoning relationship. Drawing on the theory of sub-­imperialism in tandem with the diplomacy of architecture (DoA) framework, this work will argue that Turkey has cleverly utilised the symbolism and siting of the Ghana National Mosque Complex (GNMC) to make the most visible and audacious broadcast yet of its imperial intentions in Africa, and in record time. In unpacking the argument my primary interest will be to canvass the view that architectural imprints have become a powerful cultural weapon in the geostrategic soft-power arsenal of recent rising powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since achieving independence, Azerbaijan has employed its Islamic identity in its foreign policy to develop an international Islamic agenda concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) conflict. It has promoted the notion of Islamic solidarity and diversified its strategic interests in the conflict. The study aims to analyse Azerbaijan’s diplomatic strategies to garner comprehensive support from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, focusing on the 2020 war. The paper argues that Azerbaijan has developed Islamic diplomacy and instrumentalized religion as one of the components of its foreign policy against Armenia and the de facto Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh. During the 2020 war, Azerbaijan applied the discourse of Islamic solidarity and the Azerbaijani narratives on the NK conflict that have been introduced in the OIC during the last three decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refugee commodification, or the use of refugee hosting to extract political and economic concessions, has attracted growing scholarly attention in recent years. Yet, studies tend to focus on its international component, neglecting the domestic political space and how these extractions impact domestic political dynamics. To address this gap, we ask: how does refugee commodification influence domestic politics? Our study focuses on the Republican People's Party (CHP) in Turkey, in order to assess the political implications of refugee commodification within domestic politics. Through a mixed qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews with opposition politicians and an analysis of policy documents, we examine the nexus of international and domestic spheres, assessing how political actors beyond the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) engage in, react to, and employ refugee commodification strategies. The findings of this study have implications beyond Turkey, demonstrating the transformative effects of refugee commodification for domestic politics across Global South states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malaysia’s economic growth and democratisation since 2003 have vaulted it into the ranks of the middle powers in the international system. However, Malaysia remains hesitant about its middle power status. It has assumed a counterhegemonic or pro-multipolarity role; it has supported some new international rules and institutions; it leads regional governance institutions; and it advocates for small countries on development issues. However, these middle power behaviours are countered by a continuation of traditional Malaysia diplomacy which is inactive in shaping the emergence of superpower China as well as being disruptive and personalistic, most recently because of its embrace of radical Islam. It would require major shifts in international system structures and Malaysian national role conceptions for Malaysia to become a fully active middle power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For much of its history, Canadian policymakers conceived of Canada as operating within the North Atlantic Triangle, a descriptor of its close economic, cultural, military, and diplomatic ties with Britain and the United States. Frequently, within this triangular relationship, Canada had sought to counterbalance one side against the other. This task became increasingly difficult with the post-1940 transition of power, even as it made the counterbalancing effects of the Triangle all the more important. Examining American-British-Canadian relations in the wake of the Suez Crisis, this article traces that ongoing salience of the North Atlantic Triangle. In particular, it examines Canadian efforts to pursue their interests against the backdrop both of Britain's decline and US hegemony and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's efforts to rekindle London's 'special relationship' with Washington. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Gastrodiplomacy has a significant role and functions as soft power diplomacy. One of Indonesia's gastrodiplomacy practices is with the Netherlands through the Tong Tong Fair event. The existence of this event has a significant influence on the success of contemporary Indonesian diplomacy and has an impact on the economy of the Indonesian diaspora in the Netherlands. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of the Tong Tong festival on the economy of the Indonesian diaspora in the Netherlands in 2019-2022 Method: The method used in this research is qualitative with data collection techniques in the form of interviews and literature studies. The informants of this study are the Indonesian diaspora Results: The results of this study show that the Tong Tong Festival has a significant effect on the increasing recognition of culinary in Indonesia. This then opens up opportunities for the Indonesian diaspora in the Netherlands to open various culinary businesses ranging from catering, restaurants, to small businesses traded on social media. When the pandemic and this festival were closed, the Indonesian diaspora still sold Indonesian specialties through catering and various other culinary businesses. Conclusion: This is also supported by the Indonesian Embassy which also supports not only in legislative terms but also in terms of promoting and empowering culinary business actors in the Netherlands. The integration between the Indonesian diaspora and the Indonesian Embassy has resulted in effective gastrodiplomacy and has been able to improve the economy of the Indonesian diaspora in the Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]