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The success of the League was widely seen as depending on its formulating a scheme for international disarmament. Lloyd George had this in the back of his mind when offering a security treaty to Paris. Lord Esher, his man on the League's Temporary Mixed Commission, was pushed aside by Cecil, whose appointment had been arranged by H. A. L. Fisher, the British representative on the Council. Cecil hoped to repair Anglo‐French relations, which had rapidly deteriorated after Poincaré came to power, by agreeing with the French representatives a plan which would formally link security and disarmament. Once this had been adopted at Geneva, Cecil hoped to impose it on the British government, which he had himself joined when Stanley Baldwin became Prime Minister in May 1923. However, he was on bad terms with Curzon, who remained Foreign Secretary. The league did not endorse the Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance, and the consensus in the Conservative Cabinet was strongly against it.

After successfully blocking United States economic aid to Spain for some time, President Harry S. Truman finally authorized credit for Spain, whittled down from the original proposal of $100 million to $62.5 million. United States military and commercial interest in Spain was now undisguised, and Truman's stance on the issue was ever more isolated in the context of current formulation of American foreign policy as a whole. Since the beginning of 1949, the State Department had been conducting detailed negotiations with France for base rights in French territory in Mediterranean and North African areas. Agreements signed in September 1953 were a series of twenty-seven accords or pacts covering Defense, Economic Aid, and Mutual Defense Assistance. This chapter examines Britain's reaction to the military bases agreements signed by the United States with other countries, the rise to power of the Conservative Party in British politics, and the aftermath of the base agreements.

Batista's response to the increasing tension was to get even tougher. He closed all the public secondary schools and discouraged an effort by Roman Catholic bishops in Cuba to create a national unity in government. This effort at national unity died when Castro declined the offer. Stiff-arming the U.S. request to punish police officers and military officials known for severe brutalities, Castro instated a new chief of police and a new SIM chief. Looking for methods to influence Batista to lessen regime violence and to silence the furor due to Castro's rebellion, the State Department decided to enforce the disregarded terms of the 1952 Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement.

In Chapter 7, the author describes the various sources of supply available to the French forces, including local production and procurement, purchases on the world market, and the delivery of supplies from France and the French Union. Special attention is devoted to the military aid to the French in Indochina provided by the United States.

This chapter describes the major legal developments of the period 1920–45, the content of which establishes the basic norm of the illegality of forcible self-help in the modern law. The accumulation of treaties containing obligations of pacific settlement of disputes provides the necessary background to the developments considered in this chapter. The final form of Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance is reported. The draft Protocol had the same object as the Treaty of Mutual Assistance. The treaties concluded at the Locarno Conference are significant for their effect on the development of arbitration and conciliation in the practice of states. In addition, the Resolutions of the League Assembly in 1925 and 1927, and the Resolution of the Sixth International Conference of American States are provided. The role of general treaty for the Renunciation of War, signed on August 1928, in State Practice is demonstrated. It also discusses the Anti-War Treaty of Non-Aggression and Conciliation, the Seventh International Conference of American States, and the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace. Moreover, an evaluation of the State Practice of the Period 1920–45 is presented.

This is the first of four chapters focusing on America’s perceptions of China’s capabilities, and dwelling on the correspondence between those perceptions and the projected consequences. It presents an analysis of the rise and fall of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance, which was signed in February 1950, and represented one of the most significant alliances of the post-war period. The focus is on US perceptions of Chinese power during successive phases in the Sino-Soviet relationship: the perceived impact of the alliance on China’s capabilities and levels of security; the effects of its demise on Beijing and on the socialist bloc generally; and finally, the consequences of its eventual replacement in the 1970s by a tacit alignment between China and the United States.

This chapter outlines how Gorbachev encouraged the fraternal regimes of CEE to convene their respective conferences, so that these parties would align with CPSU perestroika and establish party unity as factionalism grew. By shedding new light on the role of the conference in Gorbachev's controlled liberalisation strategy, the chapter demonstrates that Gorbachev expected the fraternal parties to adopt this policy in the spirit of ‘socialist internationalism’. Archival documents suggest that Gorbachev intended to maintain the Soviet Union's ‘outer empire’ under proposed quasi-market conditions rather than democratisation and the severing of Soviet ties with these states. At the domestic level, the fraternal conferences were designed as a show of solidarity for Gorbachev's perestroika, and leadership renewal in these states was to cement perestroika in the fraternal parties. This process of modernisation was intended to make the one-party state more efficient and improve its image, both at home and abroad, which would in turn increase its appeal with the aim of preserving the socialist model.

Having looked at the foundations of the customs union, we now turn, briefly, to some of the legal instruments and administrative arrangements at the heart of it. On 1 May 2016 the UCC became the basic source of EU customs law along with the accompanying secondary legislation. Before then, the basic source was the CCC and its associated implementing legislation. The CCC will, however, remain relevant for a long time yet.

The US policy of collective security against the Soviet Union led to the pursuit of the Middle East Defense Organization, which was undermined by Nehru’s success in persuading Egypt to follow his example of remaining nonaligned. Nehru failed, however, to prevent the 1954 Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement between the United States and Pakistan, which tilted the balance of power in the subcontinent away from India—although Mountbatten weighed in to provide advanced British aircraft and averted an incipient deal between New Delhi and Moscow. Subsequently, Nehru was confirmed in his belief that the United States was determined to build up Pakistan and build- down India.

This chapter examines internationalization, which is always seen as essential in fostering a country’s long-term economic growth. Based on the concept of comparative advantages, cross-border trade of goods and services is expected to generate positive welfare effects. However, not all countries have been conducive to internationalization. In particular, centrally planned economies failed to benefit. The system of central planning hindered participation in world markets. Due to the autarkic nature of ‘forced industrialization’, the countries had to rely on barter deals and bilateralism. This impeded internationalization, both within the Eastern bloc as well as between the communist ‘East’ and the market-oriented ‘West’. After the collapse of communism in 1989, the opening up of the economy became pivotal in the transition to a full-fledged market economy. Transition strategies have nonetheless been quite different and by no means implied a severely marginalized role for the state. On the contrary, state capitalism has emerged as a viable outward-looking alternative.

Article 135 EC Within the scope of application of the Treaties, the European Parliament and the Council, acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, shall take measures in order to strengthen customs cooperation between Member States and between the latter and the Commission.

This chapter aims to provide a different approach to the development of regional IOs since World War II, by singling out non-democratic tendencies in regionalism from a historical perspective. It explores differences between the functioning of DROs and NDROs over the last 70 years—from coerced organizations such as COMECON to modern alliances of autocrats. The chapter argues that the twenty-first-century NDROs (e.g. SCO) are different from those of the last half of the twentieth century (e.g. COMECON) in terms of membership composition, governance structure, and the characteristics discussed in earlier chapters. While historical NDROs were driven by ideologies such as Communism, in the main modern NDROs lack an ideological foundation (with the exception of ALBA and the Islamic world). The ideological foundation of Islamic ROs has changed—from pan-Arabism in the 1940s and 1950s to the dominance of various forms of political Islam and a focus on specific political institutions (e.g. the conservative rule of Gulf monarchies in the GCC).