Appeasing Bankers

Appeasing Bankers PDF Author: Jonathan Kirshner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
In Appeasing Bankers, Jonathan Kirshner shows that bankers dread war--an aversion rooted in pragmatism, not idealism. "Sound money, not war" is hardly a pacifist rallying cry. The financial world values economic stability above all else, and crises and war threaten that stability. States that pursue appeasement when assertiveness--or even conflict--is warranted, Kirshner demonstrates, are often appeasing their own bankers. And these realities are increasingly shaping state strategy in a world of global financial markets. Yet the role of these financial preferences in world politics has been widely misunderstood and underappreciated. Liberal scholars have tended to lump finance together with other commercial groups; theorists of imperialism (including, most famously, Lenin) have misunderstood the preferences of finance; and realist scholars have failed to appreciate how the national interest, and proposals to advance it, are debated and contested by actors within societies. Finance's interest in peace is both pronounced and predictable, regardless of time or place. Bankers, Kirshner shows, have even opposed assertive foreign policies when caution seems to go against their nation's interest (as in interwar France) or their own long-term political interest (as during the Falklands crisis, when British bankers failed to support their ally Margaret Thatcher). Examining these and other cases, including the Spanish-American War, interwar Japan, and the United States during the Cold War, Appeasing Bankers shows that, when faced with the prospect of war or international political crisis, national financial communities favor caution and demonstrate a marked aversion to war.

Appeasing Bankers

Appeasing Bankers PDF Author: Jonathan Kirshner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Appeasing Bankers, Jonathan Kirshner shows that bankers dread war--an aversion rooted in pragmatism, not idealism. "Sound money, not war" is hardly a pacifist rallying cry. The financial world values economic stability above all else, and crises and war threaten that stability. States that pursue appeasement when assertiveness--or even conflict--is warranted, Kirshner demonstrates, are often appeasing their own bankers. And these realities are increasingly shaping state strategy in a world of global financial markets. Yet the role of these financial preferences in world politics has been widely misunderstood and underappreciated. Liberal scholars have tended to lump finance together with other commercial groups; theorists of imperialism (including, most famously, Lenin) have misunderstood the preferences of finance; and realist scholars have failed to appreciate how the national interest, and proposals to advance it, are debated and contested by actors within societies. Finance's interest in peace is both pronounced and predictable, regardless of time or place. Bankers, Kirshner shows, have even opposed assertive foreign policies when caution seems to go against their nation's interest (as in interwar France) or their own long-term political interest (as during the Falklands crisis, when British bankers failed to support their ally Margaret Thatcher). Examining these and other cases, including the Spanish-American War, interwar Japan, and the United States during the Cold War, Appeasing Bankers shows that, when faced with the prospect of war or international political crisis, national financial communities favor caution and demonstrate a marked aversion to war.

Appeasing Bankers

Appeasing Bankers PDF Author: Jonathan Kirshner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691186251
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
In Appeasing Bankers, Jonathan Kirshner shows that bankers dread war--an aversion rooted in pragmatism, not idealism. "Sound money, not war" is hardly a pacifist rallying cry. The financial world values economic stability above all else, and crises and war threaten that stability. States that pursue appeasement when assertiveness--or even conflict--is warranted, Kirshner demonstrates, are often appeasing their own bankers. And these realities are increasingly shaping state strategy in a world of global financial markets. Yet the role of these financial preferences in world politics has been widely misunderstood and underappreciated. Liberal scholars have tended to lump finance together with other commercial groups; theorists of imperialism (including, most famously, Lenin) have misunderstood the preferences of finance; and realist scholars have failed to appreciate how the national interest, and proposals to advance it, are debated and contested by actors within societies. Finance's interest in peace is both pronounced and predictable, regardless of time or place. Bankers, Kirshner shows, have even opposed assertive foreign policies when caution seems to go against their nation's interest (as in interwar France) or their own long-term political interest (as during the Falklands crisis, when British bankers failed to support their ally Margaret Thatcher). Examining these and other cases, including the Spanish-American War, interwar Japan, and the United States during the Cold War, Appeasing Bankers shows that, when faced with the prospect of war or international political crisis, national financial communities favor caution and demonstrate a marked aversion to war.

Defeat and Division

Defeat and Division PDF Author: Douglas Porch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107047463
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 745

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Book Description
A definitive new history of the France at war from the war's outbreak to the invasion of North Africa in late 1942.

Trade Wars

Trade Wars PDF Author: Nils Ole Oermann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192665332
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
This book explores the causes and instruments of 500 years of armed and non-armed international trade conflicts. Nils Ole Oermann and Hans-Jürgen Wolff draw on decades of experience to examine trade wars, economic sanctions, and different types of economic warfare, investigating their history, ethics, economic driving forces, and legality under current rules. They provide a clear and accessible account of the economics of trade, of trade and financial policy since the nineteenth century, and of the effectiveness of sanctions and the 'winnability' of trade wars. The book also describes the transformation of economic warfare since 1989, namely in cyberspace and in the world financial system, and shows how China's rise challenges the Western model of democracy and free market economies. The authors conclude with a plea for improved economic statecraft and an overhaul of the current trading regime.

Austerity

Austerity PDF Author: Mark Blyth
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199389446
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
In Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, Mark Blyth, a renowned scholar of political economy, provides a powerful and trenchant account of the shift toward austerity policies by governments throughout the world since 2009. The issue is at the crux about how to emerge from the Great Recession, and will drive the debate for the foreseeable future.

Making a Killing

Making a Killing PDF Author: Ian Michael Oxnevad
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228010012
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The international financial system is not only economic, but political. Making a Killing explores the often-overlooked world of terrorist financing and the involvement of the international banking system. In order to address the threat of terrorist organizations in a post-9/11 world – and how they are funded and financed in particular – the international community has constructed a vast architecture of counterterrorist finance laws, policies, and institutions. Connecting the fields of security studies, political economy, and finance, Ian Oxnevad argues that a bank’s institutional link to a state (as a state-owned bank or a bank with strong state connections) will protect it from any enforcement action for violations of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulations. In the face of states blocking such enforcement actions, these regulations prove ineffective in preventing the financing of terrorism, as the state’s self-interest supersedes its interest in preventing terrorist financing. Making a Killing seeks to assess how effective new laws and regulations have been, as well as to identify best practices for future attempts to counter the financing of terrorism.

The Right to Bank

The Right to Bank PDF Author: Clara Barbiani
Publisher: Ethics International Press
ISBN: 1804412376
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
The call for establishing a right to bank holds valid premises, yet this right has never been contemplated before. The book argues that introducing a right to bank under international law can offer a new route to ensure that the banking sector acts as a force for good like ethical banks currently do. The right to bank aims to address the fundamental issues that customers can experience while dealing with banks, introducing the paradigm: “get access; be respected; trust the system”. The right to bank is a right for everyone: in the transition from a financial crisis to a climate crisis, it empowers individuals to play an active role in the financial system through ethical and sustainable decision-making. It also stimulates financial institutions and governments to reflect about the fundamental role they play and to act wisely in furthering the ecological transition. The book therefore presents a proposal for establishing a right to bank, explaining the issues that this right aims to address, the benefits linked to its adoption, and the intended change it can trigger. Within this context, the author also presents the 10 Principles of Banking Social Responsibility, a new framework that the author decided to create in order to give concrete traction to the positive transition that the banking sector crucially needs to embrace in this challenging historical moment. This innovative work will be valuable for lawmakers, banking and finance professionals and researchers, governments and NGOs, including UN bodies.

The War of Words

The War of Words PDF Author: Harold James
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300263058
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
A timely call for recovering the true meanings of the nineteenth-century terms that are hobbling current political debates Nationalism, conservatism, liberalism, socialism, and capitalism are among the most fiercely debated ideas in contemporary politics. Since these concepts hark back to the nineteenth century, much of their nuanced meaning has been lost, and the words are most often used as epithets that short-circuit productive discussion. In this insightful book, Harold James uncovers the origins of these concepts and examines how the problematic definition and meaning of each term has become an obstacle to respectful communication. Noting that similar linguistic misunderstandings accompany such newer ideas as geopolitics, neoliberalism, technocracy, and globalism, James argues that a rich historical knowledge of the vocabulary surrounding globalization, politics, and economics—particularly the meaning and the usefulness that drove the original conceptions of the terms—is needed to negotiate the gaps between different understandings and make fruitful political debate once again possible.

Social States

Social States PDF Author: Alastair Iain Johnston
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400852986
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
"Constructive engagement" became a catchphrase under the Clinton administration for America's reinvigorated efforts to pull China firmly into the international community as a responsible player, one that abides by widely accepted norms. Skeptics questioned the effectiveness of this policy and those that followed. But how is such socialization supposed to work in the first place? This has never been all that clear, whether practiced by the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Japan, or the United States. Social States is the first book to systematically test the effects of socialization in international relations--to help explain why players on the world stage may be moved to cooperate when doing so is not in their material power interests. Alastair Iain Johnston carries out his groundbreaking theoretical task through a richly detailed look at China's participation in international security institutions during two crucial decades of the "rise of China," from 1980 to 2000. Drawing on sociology and social psychology, this book examines three microprocesses of socialization--mimicking, social influence, and persuasion--as they have played out in the attitudes of Chinese diplomats active in the Conference on Disarmament, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban, the Convention on Conventional Weapons, and the ASEAN Regional Forum. Among the key conclusions: Chinese officials in the post-Mao era adopted more cooperative and more self-constraining commitments to arms control and disarmament treaties, thanks to their increasing social interactions in international security institutions.

Why Wilson Matters

Why Wilson Matters PDF Author: Tony Smith
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691183481
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
How Woodrow Wilson's vision of making the world safe for democracy has been betrayed—and how America can fulfill it again The liberal internationalist tradition is credited with America's greatest triumphs as a world power—and also its biggest failures. Beginning in the 1940s, imbued with the spirit of Woodrow Wilson’s efforts at the League of Nations to "make the world safe for democracy," the United States steered a course in world affairs that would eventually win the Cold War. Yet in the 1990s, Wilsonianism turned imperialist, contributing directly to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the continued failures of American foreign policy. Why Wilson Matters explains how the liberal internationalist community can regain a sense of identity and purpose following the betrayal of Wilson’s vision by the brash “neo-Wilsonianism” being pursued today. Drawing on Wilson’s original writings and speeches, Tony Smith traces how his thinking about America’s role in the world evolved in the years leading up to and during his presidency, and how the Wilsonian tradition went on to influence American foreign policy in the decades that followed—for good and for ill. He traces the tradition’s evolution from its “classic” era with Wilson, to its “hegemonic” stage during the Cold War, to its “imperialist” phase today. Smith calls for an end to reckless forms of U.S. foreign intervention, and a return to the prudence and “eternal vigilance” of Wilson’s own time. Why Wilson Matters renews hope that the United States might again become effectively liberal by returning to the sense of realism that Wilson espoused, one where the promotion of democracy around the world is balanced by the understanding that such efforts are not likely to come quickly and without costs.