محمدعلی موسوی

The United States’ relations with Cuba are rooted in the US intervention in the process of Cuba’s independence from Spain in the 1890s. The US preserved its interest-based approach towards Cuba during the first half of the 20th century, which culminated in the Cuba’s counter-hegemonic revolution in 1959. This revolution led to more than fifty years of hostility between two countries, which took a new form under President Obama’s administration. Indeed, Barack Obama and Raul Castro surprised the world in 2014, announcing that they would reinstate full diplomatic relations and pacify bilateral tensions. Since World War II, United States has been the hegemon of the world relying on three pillars of its liberal bloc, i.e. liberal values and culture, economic and military capabilities, and international organizations. However, during Obama’s administration, the occurrence of events such as the rise of new economic powers, Global Financial Crisis and the rise of left-turn in Latin America caused some speculations about the declining US hegemony and its transition to leadership. However, qualitative content analysis of the US Inter-American policies indicates that US hegemony in Latin America including Cuba is deeply rooted in the early decades of US formation. Moreover, the continuation of US economic embargo on Cuba and its long-lasting military presence in the island indicate that Obama’s policy did not provide a leveled playing field to resolve Cuba’s problems. Hence, US leadership in Cuba and true and equal partnership between both countries still seem unattainable. 

It has been argued and stated that the 21st century is America's Pacific Century, the century or millennium of Asia, and century or era of China, the inevitable superpower. This paper explains the essence of the new changes when the Pivot Policy was announced by President Obama in 2011. The main question discussed is therefore the following: ‘Why (and how) did President Obama adopt (and implement) the Pivot to Asia policy in 2011?’ One probable answer to this question is that President Obama intended to prevent China’s hegemony in East Asia through the Pivot Policy; however, China’s hegemony was carried out by economic and military levers. The theory applied is Joseph Nye’s “Liberal Realism,” because the Pivot as a question of foreign policy is considered to be part of Realism and Liberalism simultaneously, and can be used for analysis at both global and domestic levels. The methodology used in this research is a mix methodology of Qualitative Content Analysis and Case study. The “Pivot” or “Rebalance” to Asia is a policy based on significant changes such as the rise of China and the US relative decline, at global and domestic levels, respectively. The Pivot is a regional coherent strategy from the Indian ocean to the Americas, a strategy of cooperation and competition toward China, implemented through smart leadership, rather than hegemony by economic and military tools like modern alliances, partnerships and institutions in order to prevent “China’s hegemony” and lead it to a responsible emerging power when in the half of the millennium, 2050, it reaches its peak of progress. The U.S. tries to maintain its worldwide leadership status up to the 22th century through the implementation of the Pivot Policy in 2011.

The United States and Iran as former allies turned into adversaries after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Since then the United States has tried to contain Iran as a state considered to be a threat to the U.S. national security. The U.S. Congress has also acted in line with the administrations’ policies and in some cases directed the administration to take a tougher stance toward Iran. A review of the literature on congressional studies indicates that the power of individual actors in legislative policymaking has increased since the 1970s. Using the Bounded Rational Model in foreign policy decision making, the present paper attempts to explain the decision making behavior of congressional sanction bill sponsors for the two financial/banking sanction laws against Iran during the Obama administration. These two laws are the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act of 2010 and Section 1245 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. The method of qualitative content analysis is employed to explain the context of the bills and the sanction triggers and goals are identified through the remarks of bill sponsors. The analysis of these sanction laws using the four elements of actor, preference, structure, and decision criteria indicates that the Bounded Rational Model as it takes into account the decision makers’ cognitive limitations and the limitations imposed on them by the environment of decision making is a good model to explain the decision making behavior of banking sanction bill sponsors.

Following the independence of 1947, India adhered to a mixed model of nationalist and socialist policies in the early years, with protectionism and closed-borders attitude dominating its approach to foreign relations and global economy. In the aftermath of the economically precarious circumstances during the 1980s, and the subsequent economic crisis in the early 1990s, paradigmatic reforms, widely known as liberalization, were officially announced. However, considering Indian liberalization as a gradually evolving process, rather than a one-off project, this paper intends to take a political economy approach and employ historical analysis in order to scrutinize the pre-1991 contextual trajectory through which India underwent liberalizing its economy. The paper explicates the implemented economic approaches by studying the key primary sources, the Five-Year Plans in particular, and the relevant secondary sources. The authors propound the notion that India, since its independence till the early 1990s, appears caught in a cycle of oscillations between protective measures on one hand and attempts to move towards a liberalized economy on the other. The statist model of development that overwhelmingly disfavored interaction with the global economy at the outset was gradually replaced by a decentralized model that sought to open up the Indian economy to the world.