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Abstract
Despite the unending nuclear crises and economic sanctions characterizing U.S.-North Korean relations, North Korea has adopted non-aggressive measures to establish bilateral relations with the United States and bypass U.S.-imposed sanctions without committing to denuclearization since 1990. The repatriation of the remains of U.S. soldiers who died in North Korea during the Korean War became a convenient tool for P’yŏngyang to achieve these two strategic aims, as well as the sole arena in where the two countries displayed meaningful cooperation. This article traces the return of each batch of U.S. bodies between 1991 and 2018 to analyze North Korea’s evolving prerequisites for releasing them. North Korea’s demands included ranking U.S. officials making visits, replacing the Korean War Armistice Agreement with new peace treaties, financial aid, and avoidance of any pressure to denuclearize, all of which served the regime’s goal of surviving in the post-Cold War world. Disagreement over reimbursing North Korea for its support in excavation and the inevitable connection between remains repatriation and denuclearization were major blocks to further cooperation in retrieving remains. This study analyzes the benefits and caveats of a low-risk approach to deescalating tensions in East Asia.
Abstract
This article examines the making of Chinese-French cooperation during a critical period of the Cold War. In 1964, the People’s Republic of China and France established diplomatic relations. Escaping from the restraints of the rigid Cold War alliance structure, Mao Zedong and Charles de Gaulle took the bold and extraordinary move to forge a new relationship based on the geopolitical calculations of countering American-Soviet domination of world affairs. What motivated Mao’s policy toward France? How did he view de Gaulle? How did the changes in the international system in the early 1960s affect Mao’s perceptions and calculations? What was the connection between Sino-French normalization and the Vietnam conflict? How did Washington and Taipei respond to the Sino-French rapprochement? This article uses newly released Chinese Foreign Ministry Archive files, declassified U.S. government documents, and primary sources from Taiwan (including Chiang Kai-shek’s diaries) to answer these questions.
Abstract
François Sully (1927–1971) is an underreported figure in the critical period of U.S.-South Vietnamese relations between 1960 and 1963. As one of the earliest journalists the First Republic of Vietnam expelled in 1962, his reporting introduced Vietnam to American readers, and his journalism influenced a generation of Western reporters covering the intervention of U.S. forces in Vietnam. However, despite his extensive reporting for Newsweek and other outlets, little is known about Sully or how his contentious relationship with President Ngo Dinh Diem of the Republic of Vietnam contributed to political turbulence before Diem’s assassination on 2 November 1963. This is the first article to focus exclusively on Sully’s reporting on Vietnam and the first to assess his efforts using primary sources. It argues that Vietnamese Studies and Vietnam War scholars have underestimated or overlooked his journalism due to the “Vietnamese turn” in their scholarship. In supporting this argument, this article places Sully in the broader context of the media’s coverage – both in the East and the West – of the Vietnam War, and it focuses on Sully’s role in the political divisions between Diem and U.S. authorities. As the first article to provide a historical account of Sully’s journalism, it provides a basis for a more informed understanding of his writing. Such understanding is a precondition for analyzing his biases and perceived contributions to orthodox interpretations of the Vietnam War.
Abstract
It often has been an illusion that Filipinos lack indigeneity due to the ties with the United States since 1898. Lost in these mists were the indigenous agendas that lay underneath the official narratives. The article presents a background and then examines the administration of Elpidio Quirino, president of the Philippines from 1948 to 1953, particularly his neutralist Pacific Pact initiative and the failed use of military force against the Huks. It concludes with a discussion of the rise of Ramón Magsaysay. It then examines Magsaysay, Philippine president from 1953 to 1957, beginning as defense secretary, support from the United States, the Magsaysay myth, his counterinsurgency campaign against the Huks, his election as president, international leadership, and legacies after his death. The study will show how the top-down policies of Quirino reliant on military force gave way to the unifying, reformist, inclusive, and inspirational leadership of Magsaysay, which became a kind of third force apart from the oligarchy and the Communists.