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Begin New Search Topic War Content Type Journal Article

161. US-Korea Relations: A Good Start

Author:
Ellen Kim and Victor D. Cha
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Comparative Connections
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The highlight of US-ROK relations was the first summit between Barack Obama and Park Geunhye in Washington where the two presidents celebrated the 60th birthday of the alliance. Obama announced his support for Park's “trustpolitik” initiative, demonstrating bilateral agreement on policies toward North Korea. The US also voiced support for the thaw in inter-Korean relations reflected in resumption of dialogue over the Kaesong Industrial Complex. Meanwhile, South Korea and the US agreed to an extension of the US-ROK civil nuclear agreement, began negotiations on a Special Measures Agreement (host nation support for US forces), and restarted discussions on a possible delay of OPCON transfer.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Washington and North Korea

162. China-Korea Relations: How Does China Solve a Problem like North Korea?

Author:
Scott Snyder and See-won Byun
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Comparative Connections
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
China-Korea relations entered an active phase of leadership exchanges during the summer of 2013 following North Korea's December 2012 satellite launch, its February 2013 nuclear test, and the passage of UN Security Council resolutions 2087 and 2094 condemning these actions. The exchanges have focused on the DPRK nuclear issue, which has been a source of unprecedented political tensions between China and North Korea. The aftermath drove continued debate on the extent of Chinese leverage and patience with Pyongyang. Beijing has reaffirmed its commitment to bring North Korea back to multilateral talks through revived bilateral exchanges with Pyongyang, including a meeting between Vice President Li Yuanchao and Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang on July 26 in commemoration of the signing of Korean War armistice, which was celebrated in Pyongyang as a “victory.” Although Beijing's frustration with its North Korean ally has expanded Chinese willingness to include denuclearization as a policy objective it shares with the US and South Korea, differences remain regarding long-term strategic interests and the preferred tools for pursuing the objective.
Topic:
Security and War
Political Geography:
China and Korea

163. Japan-Korea Relations: No Signs of Improvement over the Summer

Author:
Jiun Bang and David C. Kang
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Comparative Connections
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
South Korea-Japan relations have been frozen for some time and despite the summer heat, no thaw appears likely anytime soon. Although economic interactions continue to deepen between the two countries, and although there is a clear desire – and even a need – to coordinate policies toward North Korea and China, the two countries appear more focused on other issues as their main foreign policy priorities in the short-term. The two recently elected leaders have yet to meet for a summit, a sign that even a symbolic attempt to repair relations is proving difficult. Japanese Prime Minister Abe has grown stronger with a rousing Liberal Democratic Party victory in Upper House elections, yet a number of rhetorical controversies kept attention focused on Abe's foreign policy, particularly toward Korea and China. To date not much has changed and there is little evidence that either Seoul or Tokyo desires improved relations.
Topic:
Human Rights and War
Political Geography:
Japan, America, and South Korea

164. China-Russia Relations: Summer Heat and Sino-Russian Strategizing

Author:
Yu Bin
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Comparative Connections
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The Sino-Russian strategic partnership was in overdrive during the summer months despite the unbearable, record-setting heat in China and Russia. While the Snowden asylum issue dragged on, “Operation Tomahawk” against Syria appeared to be in countdown mode by late August. In between, the Russian and Chinese militaries conducted two large exercises, which were described as “not targeted against any third party,” a term often used by the US and its allies to describe their exercises. Welcome to the age of speaking softly with or without a big stick.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Russia, China, and Moscow

165. Ending the War in Afghanistan

Author:
Stephen Biddle
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
International forces in Afghanistan are preparing to hand over responsibility for security to Afghan soldiers and police by the end of 2014. U.S. President Barack Obama has argued that battlefield successes since 2009 have enabled this transition and that with it, “this long war will come to a responsible end.” But the war will not end in 2014. The U.S. role may end, in whole or in part, but the war will continue -- and its ultimate outcome is very much in doubt.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and Taliban

166. Elusive Victories: The American Presidency at War

Author:
William G. Howell
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
American wars waged by American presidents have come at such great cost. Repeatedly, our commanders - in - chief have failed to deliver on their inflated promises when deploying troops abroad. The events of war regularly have overtaken even the most - meticulous planning, hemming in the military and frustrating civilian commanders. When choosing and then conducting wars, presidents have either ignored or misinterpreted historical precedents. Fixated on the prerequisites of victory, meanwhile, presidents have not planned adequately for the peace, and have then watched the unraveling of their wartime accomplishments acquired with so much blood and treasure.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
America

167. Star Trek: The Original Films

Author:
Ari Armstrong
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
With the latest Star Trek film, Star Trek into Darkness, coming out on DVD, now is a good time to recount the virtues of the original films, which date back to 1979 and are worth watching or rewatching, as the case may be. Viewers of the newest film, which includes many of the same characters as the original films but in an altered timeline, will notice numerous interesting parallels to the stories of the originals.Star Trek: The Motion Picture Directed by Robert Wise.Story by Alan Dean Foster.Screenplay by Harold Livingston.Starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, and Persis Khambatta.Distributed by Paramount Pictures.Released December 7, 1979.Rated PG for sci-fi action and mild language.Running Time: 132 minutes. Star Trek, the original series, first aired on television from 1966 to 1969. Due to the series's popularity in syndication, as well as the popularity of the 1977 science-fiction films Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Paramount Pictures decided to reinvigorate its major science-fiction property as a film. The result was Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Of all the Trek films, the original fits best in the genre of classic sci-fi. It is also the film with the least physical action. The story involves the crew of the starship Enterprise and its interactions with a strange being from the distant reaches of space, a machine on a quest to join its creator. This gigantic space-faring machine, surrounded by a mysterious cloud, attacks ships it regards as threatening. In an attempt to communicate with the crew of the Enterprise, the machine kidnaps and duplicates a crew member, killing her in the process. With its psychedelic portrayal of the machine's inner being (into which the Enterprise travels) and its jangling soundtrack, this film is rather dated. Thankfully, the performances make the best of the material, and Persis Khambatta creates an especially memorable character as the duplicated crew member. Thematically, the film leaves little to remember it by (although Freudians could have a field day analyzing its portrayal of a machine trying to "merge" with its creator). But the film is good, classic science fiction, and it is a work that will continue attracting the interest of science-fiction fans. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Directed by Nicholas Meyer.Story by Harve Bennett, Jack B. Sowards, and Samuel A. Peeples. Screenplay by Jack B. Sowards and Nicholas Meyer.Starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Kirstie Alley, and Ricardo Montalbán.Distributed by Paramount Pictures.Released June 4, 1982.Rated PG for violence and language.Running Time: 113 minutes. In The Wrath of Khan, released in 1982, Ricardo Montalbán-then famous for leading the television series Fantasy Island-creates the most memorable Star Trek villain, Khan Noonien Singh, a maniacal but intelligent man bent on the destruction of James T. Kirk, former captain of the Enterprise and now an admiral in Star Fleet. . . .
Topic:
War

168. War by Contract: Human Rights, Humanitarian Law and Private Contractors

Author:
Rein Müllerson
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Although the sub-title of the book indicates that the authors are not going to deal with all the legal issues arising in the context of a 'privatization' of warfare, the book, and not only the first chapter by Eugenio Cusumano on the policy prospects of regulating private military and security companies (PMSCs), throws its net wider than the title suggests. And rightly so. The privatization of warfare is a consequence and an element of the post-Cold War triumph of capitalism, and especially its neo-liberal advocates' tendency to privatize and deregulate all and everything. It is not by chance that PMSCs have mushroomed in the heartland of neoliberalism – the USA – faithfully followed by its Anglo-Saxon brethren on this side of the Atlantic. As the book specifies, in 2009 there were approximately 119,706 Department of Defense contractors in Iraq, compared with about 134,571 uniformed personnel. The authors accept the privatization of various functions of the state, including its 'monopoly of violence', to be almost inevitable. Nevertheless, they call for stronger and tighter regulation of the status and functions of PMSCs and control over their activities. They also show that though often new norms may be needed, in many cases existing laws, and their stricter and sometimes more creative application, may serve the purpose. The book concludes that 'many private military and security companies are operating in a “gray zone”, which is not defined at all, or at the very least not clearly defined, by international legal norms'.
Topic:
Human Rights and War
Political Geography:
United States and Iraq

169. Confrontation of Two Blocs in the Korean War: Historical Context

Author:
Alexander Fomenko
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:
East View Information Services
Abstract:
INTHELATTERHALF of the 1940s, due to Japan's defeat in World War the political landscape in the Far East significantly changed the balance of forces seeking political domination in this part of the world. Leaders of all democratic victor nations, simultaneously but for different reasons, shifted their support from Chiang Kai-shek and his government of “reactionary” Nationalists to “progressive” Chinese Communists.
Topic:
Government and War
Political Geography:
Japan, China, and Korea

170. Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century

Author:
Perparim Gutaj
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
PAUL MOJZES is a well-informed and eminent historian of religion with a profound interest in the study of ethno-religion as the rationale for genocide. In this book, Mojzes is set to examine the Balkan genocides and ethnic cleansing during the troublesome twentieth century. He offers his readers an excellent, comprehensive and systematic, narrative of the horrific events that dominated the first and last decades of the previous century. Balkan Genocides develops the argument of how Balkan nations frequently were immersed in genocides and ethnic cleansing, mainly due to the power shifts in the region and the concept of 'cycle of revenge.' The book covers the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), World War I, the Greek-Turkish Wars, World War II, the post- World War II ethnic cleansing and genocides, and the Yugoslav Wars of disintegration during the 1990s.
Topic:
Genocide and War
Political Geography:
Turkey

171. Misunderestimating Bush and Cheney

Author:
Christian Caryl
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Abstract:
A SPECTER is haunting Washington-the specter of George W. Bush. President Obama may have spent almost five years in the White House by now, but it's still possible to detect the furtive presence of a certain restless shade lurking in the dimmer corners of the federal mansion. Needless to say, this is something of a first: usually U.S. presidents have to die before they can join the illustrious corps of Washington ghosts, and 43 is, of course, still very much alive in his tony Dallas neighborhood, by all accounts enthusiastically pursuing his new avocation as an amateur painter. Yet his spirit is proving remarkably hard to exorcise.
Topic:
Government and War
Political Geography:
United States, Washington, and Middle East

172. Breach of Logic

Author:
James Joyner
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Abstract:
Andrew J. Bacevich, Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country [5] (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2013), 256 pp., $26.00. FOLLOWING HIS graduation from West Point, Andrew J. Bacevich had a distinguished career as an army officer, retiring as a colonel and serving in both Vietnam and the Gulf War. He has since carved out a second career as an iconoclastic scholar preaching the evils of perpetual war. In numerous essays and books, Bacevich, who teaches international relations at Boston University, has ventilated his contempt and despair for America's penchant for intervention abroad, directing his ire at both the liberal hawks and neoconservatives. Throughout, his stands have been rooted in a cultural conservatism that sees America as having strayed badly from its republican origins to succumb to the imperial temptation.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
United States, America, Vietnam, and England

173. Woodrow Wilson: A Frenzied Pedagogue

Author:
Amity Shlaes
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Abstract:
A. Scott Berg, Wilson [5] (New York: Putnam, 2013), 832 pp., $40.00. WHICH PREVIOUS president does President Barack Obama resemble most? Historians have likened the forty-fourth president to the thirty-second, Franklin Roosevelt. Obama, after all, chose to open his first term with a progressive campaign that explicitly evoked FDR's progressive Hundred Days. But Roosevelt functioned in a more political and opportunistic fashion than does Obama.
Topic:
Government and War
Political Geography:
America

174. The Myth of the New Isolationism

Author:
Jacob Heilbrunn
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Abstract:
SINCE SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, the United States has damaged its reputation and national security by lurching from one war to the next. Afghanistan, which began triumphantly for the Bush administration, has devolved into a protracted and inconclusive war in which the Taliban is making fresh inroads as American and allied forces hand over security to the Afghan army. Then there is Iraq. It was purveyed by the Bush administration to the American public as a mission that could be accomplished swiftly and smoothly. Neither occurred. Since then, President Obama's self-styled humanitarian intervention in Libya has led to instability, allowing local militias, among other things, to pretty much bring the oil industry to a standstill by disrupting major export terminals. Most recently, it looked as though Syria might be Libya all over again-an American president embarks on an uncertain crusade, and Britain and France join to provide the necessary diplomatic persiflage for justifying a bombing campaign.
Topic:
Security and War
Political Geography:
Britain, Afghanistan, France, Libya, and Syria

175. Redcoat Leaders Weren't All Dolts

Author:
William Anthony Hay
Publication Date:
08-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Abstract:
Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 480 pp., $37.50. THE VICTORS in wars may write the history of those wars, as the cliché says, but history usually manages to delve into the perspectives, interests and exploits of the defeated as it pieces together, over time, a complete picture. A vast literature on the Napoleonic wars, the Civil War and both world wars includes such explorations of the defeated to explain how events unfolded and what factors drove them. But no similar body of literature has emerged to survey the British side of the American Revolution. British historians neglected a defeat that complicated the story of their country's rise to imperial greatness, while Americans operated within the prejudices and assumptions of nineteenth-century patriotic writers. Later attempts to debunk their accounts rarely challenged the overarching-and overly deterministic-narrative of how the United States gained its independence.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
United States and America

176. Defense on a Diet

Author:
Melvyn P. Leffler
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The United States is now in a period of austerity, and after years of huge increases, the defense budget is set to be scaled back. Even those supporting the cuts stress the need to avoid the supposedly awful consequences of past retrenchments. “We have to remember the lessons of history,” President Barack Obama said in January 2012. “We can't afford to repeat the mistakes that have been made in the past -- after World War II, after Vietnam -- when our military policy was left ill prepared for the future. As commander in chief, I will not let that happen again.” Similarly, then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Congress in October 2011, “After every major conflict -- World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the fall of the Soviet Union -- what happened was that we ultimately hollowed out the force. Whatever we do in confronting the challenges we face now on the fiscal side, we must not make that mistake.”
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
United States, Soviet Union, Vietnam, and Korea

177. Cyberwar and Peace

Author:
Thomas Rid
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Cyberwar Is Coming!” declared the title of a seminal 1993 article by the RAND Corporation analysts John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, who argued that the nascent Internet would fundamentally transform warfare. The idea seemed fanciful at the time, and it took more than a decade for members of the U.S. national security establishment to catch on. But once they did, a chorus of voices resounded in the mass media, proclaiming the dawn of the era of cyberwar and warning of its terrifying potential. In February 2011, then CIA Director Leon Panetta warned Congress that “the next Pearl Harbor could very well be a cyberattack.” And in late 2012, Mike McConnell, who had served as director of national intelligence under President George W. Bush, warned darkly that the United States could not “wait for the cyber equivalent of the collapse of the World Trade Centers.”
Topic:
Security and War
Political Geography:
United States

178. Bridge to Somewhere

Author:
Jose W. Fernandez
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
International development has moved beyond charity. Gone are the days when the United States would just spend its seemingly bottomless largess to help less fortunate or vanquished countries, as it did after World War II. International development has reached a new, globally competitive stage, bringing with it enormous strategic and economic implications for the United States in the years ahead.
Topic:
Development and War
Political Geography:
United States

179. The Spoils of War

Author:
Max Hastings
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
For decades, World War II suffused the hearts and minds of the American generation that experienced it as “the good war,” in which Allied virtue eventually triumphed over fascist evil. Today, Western societies are mature enough to adopt a more nuanced perspective. There remains no doubt that “our side” deserved to win; terrible consequences would have befallen the world following an Axis victory. But the Allied cause was morally compromised by the need to enlist the services of Joseph Stalin's tyranny in order to defeat the forces of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Hideki Tojo.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
America

180. Border Battle

Author:
Enrique Krauze
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico. By Amy S. Greenberg. Knopf, 2012, 344 pp. $30.00 (paper, $16.95). Every country sooner or later confronts the sins of its past, though rarely all at once. In recent decades, historians of the United States have revealed and explored the sins of American imperialism, recounting in detail Washington's interventions in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Yet they have largely overlooked American meddling in Mexico. Consequently, few in the United States recognize that the Mexican-American War (1846–48) was Washington's first major imperialist venture. Fewer still would understand why future U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, who fought in Mexico as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, would come to see it as the country's most “wicked war.”
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
United States, Washington, Middle East, Latin America, Mexico, and Southeast Asia