Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is a unique region, with a sharply changing political and ideological orientation from a “left turn” to a “right curve", which means it is difficult to build stable and predictable international relations with the region. At the beginning of the 21st century, we witnessed a sharp increase in interest in LAC from extra-regional powers that, due to historical, cultural, and geographical factors, traditionally did not have strong ties with the region. The 2020s is a time of competitive and systemic rivalry, when the value of each individual partnership, union, or alliance is increasing. In this regard, this wave of interest in LAC is not caused by a desire to expand trade and investment presence, but by the desire of new actors in the Americas to use the region to gain greater global geopolitical influence. This book addresses the question: What role do extra-regional actors—the US, China, the EU, and Russia—play in the new system of international relations formed in LAC at the beginning of the 21st century? Ultimately, the book opens up a new multilateral perspective on the role and place of LAC in global processes in the context of the interaction and confrontation between the worldviews of the West and the non-West.

This book studies the strategies and forms of interaction between the states of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) with leading extra-regional actors: the US, China, the EU, and Russia.

This book examines US foreign policy and global standing in the 21st Century. The United States is the most powerful actor in world politics today. Against this backdrop, the present volume examines how the foreign policies pursued by Presidents’ George W. Bush and Barack Obama have affected elite and public perceptions of the United States. By examining America’s standing from the perspective of different actors from across various regions, including China, Russia, Latin America and the Middle East, while also assessing how these perceptions interact with America’s own policies, this books presents a fresh interpretation of America’s global standing. In doing so, the volume evaluates how these perceptions affect the realities of US power, and what impact this has on moulding US foreign policy and the policies of other global powers. A number of books address the question of which grand strategy the United States should adopt and the issue of whether or not America is in relative decline as a world power. However, the debate on these issues has largely been set against the policies of the Bush administration. By contrast, this volume argues that while Obama has raised the popularity of America since the low reached by Bush, America’s credibility and overall standing have actually been damaged further under President Obama. This book will be of much interest to students of US foreign policy, US national security, strategic studies, Middle Eastern politics, international relations and security studies generally.

Analysis of China-Latin America relations is usually dominated by policy analysis in political economy, defense strategy and bi-lateral relations. While integrating these topics, this volume differs from earlier works by engaging notions of 'going out' (zou chuqu) and 'arriving in' (desembarco) as metaphors to characterize a wide range of 'new' interactions between China and Latin America: transnational flows of capital and people, adaptation in industrial production and mining, the fluidity of perceptions between China and Latin America, stereotypes and 'othering' of Latin America within China, and changing rhetorical assumptions of the leadership for the China-Latin America relationship. Unusually, this volume has several articles that consider the role of Latin America within China, as well as China's more obvious impact on Latin America. With its primary source material from Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Brazil and China, this volume offers an early contribution to the emerging body of scholarship on China and Latin America.

Put quite simply, the twin impacts of globalization and environmental degradation pose new security dangers and concerns. In this new work on global security thinking, 91 authors from five continents and many disciplines, from science and practice, assess the worldwide reassessment of the meaning of security triggered by the end of the Cold War and globalization, as well as the multifarious impacts of global environmental change in the early 21st century.

This volume analyses South American regional and international cooperation during the COVID19 crisis started in 2020. Across thirteen chapters a collection of leading experts address how regional collaboration has developed, evolved, and recoiled. The chapters explore the state of regionalism at the pandemic surge and the challenges and opportunities this situation has opened for regional and international cooperation. Authors analyze the role of extra-regional powers and traditional regional leaders during the pandemic, identifying the extent to which regional cooperation has been possible across several policy agendas. They argue that fragmented visions of regionalism, ideological polarization, and weak leadership, has prevailed from before the pandemic which, accompanied by adverse interactions among major powers, has ensured that cooperation has remained bilateral rather than regional. Ultimately all these factors have created a complex scenario in which disintegration dynamics have emerged, darkening, even more, the South American regional panorama. Regional and International Cooperation in South America After COVID will be an invaluable resource for students, scholars and policy specialists of regionalism and regional integration, Latin American studies, international relations and international political economy.

This book examines the role of external powers in Latin America in the 21st century. Non-traditional partners have significantly increased their political and economic engagement with the continent. Five key questions arise: why has this surge taken place; when has it happened; in which regions and sectors is it mostly felt; what is the Latin American perspective; and what are the actual results? The book analyses 16 case studies: the United States, the European Union, China, Russia, Japan, Canada, India, Turkey, Iran, Israel, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, the ASEAN countries, South Africa and Australia. The spectrum of existing explanations in the literature spans from neo-extractivism to South-South cooperation. This volume places them in context and proposes a more multifaceted approach, stressing a combination of systemic factors and internal dynamics both in Latin America and in the external partner countries. Geopolitics still matters and so do nation states, their interests and leaders. Ultimately, this surge in engagement has largely reproduced past patterns. Are new partners that different from the old ones?

Maritime power has been a key defining parameter of economic vitality and geostrategic power of nations. This book explores how the first decade of the 21st century has witnessed the rise of China and India as confident economic powers pivoting on high growth rates, exponential expansion of science, technology and industrial growth.

Based on research conducted in archives in six countries, An International History of South America in the Era of Military Rule: Geared for War offers a detailed account of the tensions and fears of war that engulfed South America in the 1970s, when most countries of the region were ruled by military governments. Scholars of contemporary history and international relations, graduate and undergraduate students of Latin American history, and anyone interested in issues of international history will gain from reading this book, which explores the long-standing territorial controversies that underlay international rivalries, the incidence of military thinking in them, and the multifarious effects of the international order of the Cold War in the rise of tensions in South America in the era of military rule. Since war did not break out in South America in the 1970s, the book also stands as a study of the reasons why peace prevailed, even under conditions that seemed conducive to its demise. As a study based on multiarchival research, the book offers an original narrative and analysis of a topic scarcely treated by scholarly literature on the history of South America in the twentieth century, which makes it useful and interesting for audiences in various countries of the region.

“Regional cooperation exists, but looks different in the global South than in the European Union,” claim the contributors to South American Policy Regionalism, which offers novel theory, methods, and Latin American case studies of joint governance efforts in nine international policy arenas, ranging from illegal drugs to artificial intelligence. Contrasting three major schools of thought in international relations (highlighting power, institutions, and ideas), this book introduces the idea of international policy regionalism as a framework for informed debate about international policy-sector interactions in a regional space. Beginning with a conceptual approach applicable to any world region, it includes a brief history of Western Hemisphere regionalism to aid in future cross-regional comparisons. An international group of contributors constructs rich narratives of the politics of Latin American policy sector evolution since the Cold War. Besides the aforementioned, included sectors span regional development banking, infrastructure planning, electricity distribution, migration governance, climate action, neglected tropical diseases, and food policies. This volume equips readers from various academic disciplines and the policy world to understand the relevance of core international relations theory for the analysis of policy sectors that cross national borders, both within Latin America and elsewhere, and especially throughout the global South.