Environmental History and International History PDF

Environmental History and International History Author(s): AKIRA IRIYE Source: Diplomatic History , SEPTEMBER 2008, Vol. 32, No. 4, SPECIAL FORUM WITH ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY (SEPTEMBER 2008), pp. 643-646 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24916005 JSTOR i...

Environmental History and International History Author(s): AKIRA IRIYE Source: Diplomatic History , SEPTEMBER 2008, Vol. 32, No. 4, SPECIAL FORUM WITH ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY (SEPTEMBER 2008), pp. 643-646 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24916005 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Diplomatic History This content downloaded from 136.176.200.19 on Sat, 15 Apr 2023 15:30:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  AKIRA IRIYE Environmental History and Int The five essays included in this volume make it may no longer ignore the physical world as the another. They share the natural environment surprising that so few historians have paid at Happily, the situation is changing, thanks to so brought the natural habitat into their work. T tant part of the broadening process of historica nation-states, in particular on their male le widened the net of their inquiry, from bringi picture to including references to the natural humans live and die. in tne study ot tne history ot U.i. foreign relations, there has been a parallel development: from a focus on the U.S. government's foreign policy to consid erations of other countries' policies toward the United States, from a preoccu pation with policymakers to a concern with wider publics, including women and ethnic minorities, from state-centered research to paying equal attention to nonstate actors such as business firms and nongovernmental organizations, and from considerations of "realities" (military power, geopolitics) to an interest in intangibles ("discourses") such as images, visions, and ideologies. The most dramatic broadening of historical study, however, has been its steadily global reach. There has been growing awareness that national histories must be internationalized in that no nation is self-sufficient or self-isolating but is part of the international society that exists at a given moment in time. Seemingly unique national developments no longer appear so exceptional when other countries' examples are put side by side. Moreover, national entities are never immutable but are constantly changing in interaction with one another. Besides nations, there are larger units that are not interchangeable with national units: races, religions, civilizations. A history that privileges the nation as the key framework is only one type of history, and such a history would be just one component in the history of the whole world. As historians began broadening national histories to embrace human beings with their diverse identities, they have rewritten the history of the world as global history, a history in which global interactions, rather than compartmentalization of humanity into nation states, emerge as the key theme. Diplomatic History, Vol. 32, No. 4 (September 2008). © 2008 The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Maiden, MA, 02148, USA and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK. 643 This content downloaded from 136.176.200.19 on Sat, 15 Apr 2023 15:30:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 644 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY And yet, nations do continue to exist, exercising powers and playing roles no other existences do. The key to understanding the development of glob history, particularly in the contemporary era, would be to see how transnati forces and national sovereignties intersect one another. The history of environment and of the environmental movement seems particularly suscept to such analysis, as these five essays demonstrate. Anna-Katharina Wöbse's essay reminds us that international organization such as the League of Nations have played important roles in bringing natio and transnational phenomena together. As she notes, environmental activi went to the League, rather than to individual states, to take the initiative combat the oil pollution of the seas that would be detrimental to seabirds. movement was thus an international one and, as could have been predicted, into resistance on the part of states that were jealously guarding their respe sovereign rights. This is a familiar story even today, but Wöbse shows that international organization can play a crucial role in translating a transnati concern into concrete action. What is particularly notable is the language transnationalism that was used by the promoters of environmentalism, th language in which words such as "humanity" and "civilization" abounded. It w a civilized thing for all humanity to protect "all living creatures." No nati entities, but all humanity and all living creatures. In such language, at UJ.W|/UV11 vj x uiv J-zvaguv v/x J. i atiwujj »» v 111UJ iinu lxxv v_*a i^iiu vy X invuvi AX uuxx>y national environmentalism, in which nongovernmental organizations, rather than governments, would play crucial roles in the movement. In the end unfortunately, the League became preoccupied with power politics in the 1930 and had little room for civilizational pursuits such as environmentalism. Culture could triumph over power, however, as graphically revealed in Lis M. Brady's essay on the natural habitat along the demilitarized zone in Korea A product of Cold War geopolitics, the demilitarized zone ironically became haven for rare birds and plants. A new "ecological regime" has replaced geopolitical space. Ironically, she shows that it is not so much war—potentially serious as the chances of its occurrence are—but industrialization, vigorously being promoted by South Korea, that might yet destroy this haven. The ess makes an important contribution to international history understood as in pa environmental history. As she states so eloquently, "Preserving the DMZ as a internationally recognized and supported symbol for peace and conservation would indeed be a fitting tribute to the costs Korea and its people suffered as result of the ideological competition and conflict of the Cold War." It would b the task of scholars in the fields of environmental, international, and trans tional history to document such efforts at preserving not just the demilitariz zone but other natural sanctuaries as well. The contribution by 'lorn Robertson is more tocused on one nation, th United States, as it waged cold war and also promoted global environmental consciousness. His essay argues that the environmental movement "exploded" i the 1960s, just when the Cold War reached a climax in that decade, as exem This content downloaded from 136.176.200.19 on Sat, 15 Apr 2023 15:30:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  Environmental History and International History : 645 plified by the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam War, and other developments. The dynamic and dialectical relationship between geopolitics and environmen talism, and between the nation's military strategies and the growth of nonstate actors in support of nonmilitary (environmental) objectives, is spelled out. As is clear from the article, U.S. foreign relations can be fully understood only when all these factors are brought into the picture. Particularly interesting is Robert son's observation that environmentalism represented a critique of modernity, so that environmentalism was not just a response to the destruction of the physical world through nuclear and chemical weapons but that it also raised fundamental questions about the direction of modern American (and, by extension, global) transformation. Ironically, just as the Cold War came to abate in the 1970s, Third World countries began to focus on economic development, which in the long run may prove to have been even more destructive of the environment than the Cold War. We are still living in a world in which geopolitics, economic growth, and environmentalism must somehow find a precarious balance. In that connection, Jacob Darwin Hamblin's careful study of the "environ mental regime" around the time of the UN Stockholm Conference of 1972 shows that environmentalism, by then a well-supported agenda by most coun tries and international organizations, nevertheless remained buffeted by often conflicting national agendas and private interests. Although the world was com mitted to environmental protection, its realization depended on specific policy decisions by governments, business firms, and nongovernmental organizations. The role of scientists in this connection is particularly well documented in the essay. Although they might have pushed for truly transnational environmental programs, Hamblin shows that many of them, for instance those in Britain and France, staved close to their resnecrive povernments. We have here a storv nor so much of "what one clerk said to another" but of "what one scientist said to another," and the record is not all that reassuring, particularly with respect to oceanic pollution. So many countries, their respective electorates, and business interests had a stake in any international regime to limit the marine dumping of wastes that very little specific was accomplished in the wake of the Stockholm Conference. It is disheartening to read, for instance, that the very day the conference adjourned, countries belonging to the European Nuclear Energy Agency resumed their dumping operations into the ocean. Such practice shows, as the author concludes, "how existing ocean dumping policies survived virtually unchanged despite an extraordinary rise in environmental consciousness, politi cal action, and diplomatic negotiation." One can only hope that transnational environmental consciousness will in time come to trump national consciousness, but that would be a story for future historians to tell. J. Brooks Flippen's contribution, because of the very fact that it focuses on "modern American environmental diplomacy," helps move our inquiry onto the transnational stage. Based primarily on the reading of the published and unpub lished papers of Russell E. Train as well as on interviews with him and other officials who worked with him on environmental issues during the Nixon admin This content downloaded from 136.176.200.19 on Sat, 15 Apr 2023 15:30:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 646 DIPLOMATIC HISTORY istration, the article notes that the early history of international environmentalism States became officially cognizant and sup not usually associate Richard M. Nixon w shows, he was sensitive to international c tic political trends. This sensitivity, co initiative on behalf of the movement, en only welcome the historic Stockholm con several key treaties and agreements to pro the same time. It is good to be reminded most diplomatic historians associate with the United States and the Soviet Union a tion in the field of environmental protec pollution in the two countries. Unfortuna little for the environment, only how hi power." The world since the early 1970s, equally (if not more) for the environment transnational historians today view the 1 dawn of the twenty-first century as it wer and nation-centric considerations began worldwide phenomena of climate change tion (voluntary and involuntary), and cr traffic in drugs and arms. Old geopolitica the new age, nor would a nation-centric United States would remain a great po reshaping its diplomacy by identifying forces shaping the world, and nowhere w the environmental sphere. 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