FOREIGN RELATIONS
Year:2013 | Volume:4 | Issue:4 (16)|Papers Count:8

Diplomacy is one of the most important instruments used by states to achieve national goals and interests. Therefore, diplomacy and diplomatic policy making are significant preoccupations of nation-states in the international relations area. But given the characteristics of international system, especially its cycle of power, linkage between diplomacy and cycle of power gains more importance. Of course, this subject is most relevant to regional diplomacy of revisionist states. In this respect and given the systemic cycle of power along with order patterns and its turning points, a question rises on opportunities and restrictions of revisionist states and their impact on diplomacy of such states. This article argues there is a direct linkage between the cycle of power and diplomacy due to the realistic nature of world system.There are different patterns of order in power cycle including hegemonic, controlling, concert and non-structure Nation states undergo transition from one turning point to another to achieve a higher position. Therefore, they face different challenges that can be conceptualized in the Cold War framework.The author believes that the network model of diplomacy can be helpful.This article tries to depict a model of network diplomacy in transition stages of power cycle by revisionist states.

China has experienced a spectacular economic growth during the last decade and it is predicted that this trend will continue in the future decades. The U.S. has serious concerns about the fact that China's increasing economic growth can be instrumental in building up its military force and transforms China into a hegemonic power in Asia with the potentiality for becoming a global hegemonic power. Given this, the U.S interests and those of its allies would be seriously threatened in Asia-Pacific zone. The U.S. has adopted a cooperation-confrontation approach towards China to remove or at least reduce these concerns. According to the new U.S military strategy, this country intends to strengthen its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, and tries to strike a balance through political, economic, cultural and military containment of China.

Alireza Koohkan Assistant Professor of Allameh Tabatabaei University The U.S. foreign policy is formulated as a complicated interaction between interest groups, lobbies, politicians and decision makers in which the role of lobbies are very significant. Therefore, most interest groups have lobbies in the U.S., but Iranians lack a powerful lobby. The main question of this article is why there is not an effective Iranian lobby in the U.S. Two possible answers can be given to this question; one is related to the difficulties of Iranians residing in the U.S. and the other concerns the performance of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The first part of the article is a research carried out based on a library study and the second part is a survey conducted using interviews with senior Iranian officials. Based on the results of this research, most barriers on the way of establishing a powerful Iranian lobby which can pursue Iran's interests in the U.S. could be overcome by having a sound planning and a coherent structure and thereby moving towards changing U.S. policy regarding Iran.

The recent political crisis in Syria has forced international actors to adopted different policies toward the Syrian regime based on their own national interests. Meanwhile, continuous efforts of some international and regional actors to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s regime are one of the most complicated aspects of the Syrian crisis.This paper explores the main incentives of the most important regional and international actors seeking regime change in this country. Accordingly, the purposes and approaches of the U.S. as the most important international actor, and Saudi Arabia and Turkey, as the most influential regional actors, have been examined. The hypothesis of the paper is that these countries have a high level of common interests in relation to Syria. The U.S.intends to weaken the Iran-led axis of resistance in favor of the Zionist regime, while Saudi Arabia seeks to expand its influence sphere and challenge the Iranian geopolitical and ideological influence in the Middle East. Finally Turkey is seeking to play a more influential role in Islamic countries in general and the Middle East in particular. Limiting the Iranian influence in the region is the common interest of these countries.

The rise of China and its emergence as an influential international actor has become an undeniable fact in past several decades.China's new status has not only changed regional and international equations, but also made the U.S. face with a new situation. Along these lines, this article tries to explore the impact of China's rising power in difficult fields in international arena and especially, on its relations with the U.S.? This research tries to test the hypothesis that China's rising power in the 21st century has created an imbalance between its increasing power and its limited role and has led to important political and economic challenges between this country and the U.S. To do this, the authors used power and role cycle theory and presented extracted curves based on statistical data related to the U.S. and China's national capabilities. Results show if the U.S. refuses to accept China's role in the international scene, dispute between these two powers will be inevitable and thus the decline of U.S. power will be accelerated. This article while comparing the indices of rise and fall analyzes the status of both countries based on the adopted theory and finally evaluates options available to the U.S. to confront this new situation.

Following the U.S.-led coalition military attack against Iraq in 2003, a series of violence, ethnic-religious clashes and terrorist actions have taken place in this country. This article tries to study the consequences of Iraq's war using theories of realism and feminism. It aims to find how these theories explain the consequences of Iraq's occupation and which one can give a better explanation in this regard. The authors after studying vies related to both theories, concluded that realistic approach enjoys a higher explanatory power in areas such as "rationalism" (benefit and cost), "regional balance of power" after occupation and "the U.S. power and interests" in Iraq's war. Also, feminism relying upon its own "ontology" and "methodology" centers on the role of individuals and ethnic-religious groups as well as subjects like "gender" and " mortality". Therefore, it can explain those consequences of Iraq's war which have been neglected by realists.

Increasing economic woes and pressures exerted from international organizations forced Egyptian presidents Sadat and Mubarak to adopt economic neo-liberal policies. To realize these policies, educating professionals by universities was necessary. This led to the development of higher education in Egypt necessitating the expansion of modern communications instruments. Sadat and Mubarak, in fact, expanded anew middle class with growing influence. This article tries to examine the role played by the new middle class in Egypt's social movement? The authors advance the hypothesis that the most important actors in the formation and continuation of Egypt's social movement were the declining middle class which resumed its growth by adopting open market policies.These policies did not make the middle class (in its western concept) more powerful; rather they strengthened the declining middle class enjoying cultural, political and economic status. As a result, leading to a social movement that demanded freedom and justice and improvement of economic and political status represented by the declining middle class.

The importance of the formulation of a religious theory for international relations has raised the question of how a consistent religious theory based on authoritative sources and scientific methodologies accepted by religious scholars can be achieved. This theory is also meant to meet the expectations of international relations scholars. However, this is overshadowed by great influence exerted by secular thought in this scientific discipline and ambiguities resulting from the scientific concepts and position of religious theories. This article as an introduction to the formulation of a religious theory for international relations tries to answer two essential questions. First, why the world can no longer rely on existing international theories? And second, what is the nature of a religious theory of international relations in terms of a scientific discipline? To answer these questions, the author tries to describe the status of this kind of theorization in social sciences and its relations to other fields of knowledge, Islamic knowledge and the disciplinary nature of a religious theory of international relations through distinguishing between such theories and its feasibility and explaining the importance and necessity of these two levels of a scientific activity.