Content Type: Journal Article / Topic: War

101. Domestic political institutions and the initiation of international conflict in East Asia: some evidence for an Asian democratic peace

Author:: Benjamin E. Goldsmith
Publication Date:: 01-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:: Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:: There is doubt about whether the 'democratic peace' proposition applies in Asia. I theoretically deconstruct regime type into institutional components including political competition, constraint on the executive, and mass participation, and ask whether taking these as distinct causal factors gives more empirical purchase on the relationship of domestic political institutions to states' external conï¬‚ict behavior. I ï¬nd that higher levels of political competition are associated with a lower likelihood of conï¬‚ict initiation, but only when the potential target is relatively democratic. Thus, my directed-dyad analysis is consistent with a democratic peace effect in East Asia. It is also suggestive regarding the observed 'East Asian peace' that has existed since 1979, because levels of political competition have risen considerably in the region, beginning in the late 1970s.
Topic:: Politics and War
Political Geography:: East Asia

102. Recalcitrance and initiative: US hegemony and regional powers in Asia and Europe after World War II

Author:: Arthur A. Stein
Publication Date:: 01-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:: Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:: This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that US power and preferences following World War II led to bilateralism in Asia and multilateralism in Western Europe. It argues that the challenges facing the United States in both regions were similar, as were US policies meant to address them. With some lag, the United States supported the economic recovery of the regional powers it had defeated (Germany and Japan), saw the restoration of regional trade as a prerequisite, sought military bases to assure postwar security, and envisioned rearming its former foes as part of its security strategy. The outcomes in the two regions reï¬‚ected the preferences and reservations of regional actors. The critical differences between the regions were structural. The existence of middle powers was critical in Europe, the return of colonial powers to Asia precluded regional arrangements in the short term, and geostrategic differences shaped the requisites for regional security.
Topic:: Economics and War
Political Geography:: United States, Europe, and Asia

103. East Asia and international relations theory

Author:: Masaru Kohno
Publication Date:: 01-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:: Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:: East Asia now occupies a prominent place in the study of international relations (IR). This, of course, does not mean that IR scholarship in the past failed to pay due attention to East Asia. Wars, trade, and international integration in this region have been the subject of analysis in countless books and scholarly articles. However, the renewed interest in this region is not so much empirically driven (to increase East Asian coverage in the literature) as before but rather represents a theoretical inquiry pertinent to the intellectual underpinning of the scholarship itself. Today, some experts of the region harshly criticize the 'euro-centric' bias of existing IR study and seek to provide alternative conceptions based on the East Asian experience. In response, other scholars have advanced views less provocative but more nuanced about the originality of East Asia. And, there are still others who ï–‚atly reject the connotation that the logic of East Asian international relations is inherently different from that elsewhere. Thus, a diverse set of perspectives has been laid out on the table, but their strengths and shortcomings are yet to be evaluated systematically.
Topic:: International Relations, Economics, and War
Political Geography:: East Asia

104. American Views of Europe

Author:: David Calleo
Publication Date:: 02-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The International Spectator
Institution:: Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:: America's diplomacy towards Europe has passed two broad historic phases. A first, isolationist phase, determined in part by America's need to maintain its domestic multinational consensus, was replaced, after World War II and under the Soviet threat, by a policy of hegemonic engagement. The Soviet collapse opened a new era forcing a reinterpretation of America's role in Europe and the world. Four different narratives have emerged: triumphalist, declinist, chaotic or pluralist. If a unipolar American role seems unlikely to persist, American decline is all too possible. A new hegemonic replacement seems unlikely, which makes the pluralist narrative plausible and desirable. This multipolar world will require an adaptation of the Western alliance and a new way of thinking about interstate relations. Confederal Europe, for its experience in bargaining and conciliation, might have much to offer to the new plural world order.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: America and Europe

105. A New Challenge for Turkey: Civil War in Syria

Author:: Nursin Atesoglu Guney
Publication Date:: 02-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Insight Turkey
Institution:: SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:: The Arab Spring gave rise to a variety of transitions in the Middle East. Although initial developments in Tunisia and Egypt created optimism, tragic events in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and elsewhere revived fears about a return to authoritarian governments, failed states and civil war. With no foreseeable change in the UN Security Council with regard to Syria, the country's neighbors, including Turkey, face the risk of instability. Although a recent agreement between the US and Russia marked a major step toward destrying the regime's chemical stockpile, it fails to address the conflict itself. As such, spillover effects continue to threaten Syria's neighbors. This paper highlights the critical nature of the situation and the international community's role in finding a solution.
Topic:: War and Communications
Political Geography:: Turkey, Middle East, and Syria

106. The Great Rent Wars: New York 1917-1929

Author:: Peter Van Doren
Publication Date:: 03-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Cato Journal
Institution:: The Cato Institute
Abstract:: Economic shocks in an unregulated textbook world are managed through the price system. During gluts, prices fall and the least efficient firms lose wealth and exit the market. The result is that supply falls and demand increases. Eventually a new equilibrium is reached in which prices increase toward marginal cost and risk-adjusted returns to firms equal the cost of capital. During shortages, prices rise, existing firms receive rents, and new firms enter the market. The result is that supply increases and demand falls. Eventually a new equilibrium is reached in which prices decrease toward marginal cost and risk-adjusted returns to firms fall to equal the cost of capital.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: New York

107. Editorial. Militaires et engagements extérieurs : à la conquête des cours et des esprits ?

Author:: Christian Olsson and Pauline Vermeren
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Cultures & Conflits
Institution:: Cultures & Conflits
Abstract:: Au-delà des discours souvent standardisés et galvaudés sur les « nouvelles missions » militaires en opération extérieure (« Opex ») de « paix » ou de « stabilisation », ce numéro de Cultures Conflitsse propose de déplacer le regard sur ces pratiques internationales de coercition pour les éclairer par un certain nombre de problématiques historiques, politiques et sociologiques plus larges. Ce « décentrement » du regard découle ici de trois constats.
Topic:: War and Military Strategy

108. L'impact de la « participation musulmane » sur le mouvement altermondialiste en Grande-Bretagne et en France

Author:: Timothy Peace
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Cultures & Conflits
Institution:: Cultures & Conflits
Abstract:: Depuis 2001, en France comme en Grande-Bretagne, les « musulmans » et les associations qui les représentent ont été amenés à participer à plusieurs occasions au mouvement altermondialiste. On a notamment pu le constater lors des Forum sociaux européens (FSE) qui se sont tenus dans les capitales de ces deux pays. Cet engagement s'étant récemment affaibli, il est possible d'y voir un cas d'« altermondialisme oublié ». On a souvent pointé ces pays en raison de leur attitude divergente vis-à-vis de leurs minorités respectives et sur la place qu'y occupe la religion dans la sphère publique. Ces deux cas offrent donc aux chercheurs l'opportunité d'étudier comment ces différentes conceptions affectent les mouvements sociaux et leurs participants. Nous souhaitons montrer dans cet article que l'élément le plus notable de cette mobilisation musulmane est l'impact de celle-ci sur des mouvements altermondialistes euxmêmes et la manière dont elle a remis en question leur propre représentation de mouvements ouverts et « tolérants ». De nombreux spécialistes des mouvements sociauxont remarqué le fait que les acteurs de ces mouvements doivent souvent faire face à des dilemmes causés par le poids des identités religieuses et la difficulté de faire coexister celles-ci avec d'autres critères d'identification . Cet article cherche à mettre ces difficultés en avant, ainsi que les limites de la supposée « tolérance » des acteurs « traditionnels » de l'altermondialisme, confrontés à la participation des musulmans. Les FSE servent de lieu de rencontre et de discussion pour une myriade de groupes se réclamant de la mouvance altermondialiste. Cependant, l'événement en lui-même consiste à la fois en un forum officiel et en un « espace alternatif / autonome » agissant comme un événement annexe, composé de tous les groupes qui rejettent le processus officiel d'organisation. A l'intérieur du mouvement lui-même, on fait souvent référence à ce clivage en usant de l'expression « horizontaux contre verticaux », chacun des groupes ayant des conceptions opposées de la politique, des enjeux du FSE et du mouvement en general . Nous étudierons ici uniquement les forums officiels - en particulier ceux qui se sont tenus en région parisienne en 2003 et à Londres en 2004 - et nous ne traiterons donc que des acteurs « verticaux ».
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Afghanistan and France

109. The latest shift in Spain-Latin America migration — Chile's start-up ecosystem — Mexico's aviation parts industry

Author:: Aurora Garcia Ballesteros and Beatriz Cristina Jiminez Blasco
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Americas Quarterly
Institution:: Council of the Americas
Abstract:: Latin America has historically played an important role in Spain's migratory cycles—both as a sender and as a recipient. Spanish political immigration to the hemisphere surged following the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and again after World War II, when Spaniards flocked to Latin America for economic reasons. The flow reversed with the late-1980s economic crises in Latin America. Between 1996 and 2010, Latin Americans in Spain—measured by those who obtained Spanish citizenship—grew nearly tenfold, from 263,190 to 2,459,089. Now Europe's economic crisis, which has acutely affected Spain, is causing the flows to shift again. According to data from Spain's National Institute of Statistics (INE), for the first time in this century, more people are now leaving Spain than moving to it. Net migration in 2011 was reported at negative 50,090 people, with 507,740 leaving Spain and 457,650 arriving.
Topic:: Economics, Migration, and War
Political Geography:: Latin America and Spain

110. A Swift and Decisive Victory: The Strategic Implications of What Victory Means

Author:: Chong Shi Hao
Publication Date:: 03-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: PRISM
Institution:: Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:: The national purpose driving the build-up of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) to its third generation has been the deterrence of any potential adversary and achieving victory if war does break out. Because the mission statement above serves as a guide for SAF's defense policy and also its transformation efforts, it is important to be clear about what this "victory" entails. The adjectives "swift and decisive" help to illuminate the nature of this victory that we seek to obtain. As Clausewitz puts it succinctly, "no one starts a war or rather no one in his senses ought to do so without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it."
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Singapore

111. Thanks for the Buggy Ride: Memoirs of an Ottoman Jew

Author:: Michael McGaha
Publication Date:: 02-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Insight Turkey
Institution:: SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:: This little memoir, first published in Italian in 1987, is an account of a life well lived. A proud Sephardi Jew, Victor Eskenazi (1906-1987) was fortunate to have been born and raised in Istanbul at a time when that city was still home to an extraordinarily diverse mix of ethnic and religious groups. In the book's introduction, Eskenazi's son John defines his father as Ottoman “because of his inbred cosmopolitanism, his wide vision of the world, his insatiable intellectual curiosity, his instinctive understanding and respect of other peoples, cultures, and behaviours, and when required also a determination and assertiveness that is so prevalent in the Ottoman personality and in the history of the Empire” (pp. 10-11). Although Eskenazi's formal education ended with high school, just growing up in such a city was in itself a liberal education. By the time he finished high school, he was fluent and literate in Greek, Ladino, French, Ottoman Turkish, German, and English. A bright and sensitive child, Victor clearly reveled in the rich variety of sights, sounds, and smells his native city offered him in such profusion.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Germany, Italy, and Vienna

112. Table of Contents

Publication Date:: 09-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: Ethics International Affairs is pleased to announce the publication of its fall 2014 issue.This issue features an essay by Mark Osiel on identifying the perpetrators of atrocity crimes; a centennial roundtable on climate change featuring Stephen M. Gardiner, Scott Russell Sanders, Paul Wapner, Clive Hamilton, Clare Palmer, Daniel Mittler, and Thomas E. Lovejoy; a feature article by Christian Enemark on "Drones, Risk, and Perpetual Force"; a review essay by Sir Richard Jolly on global governance; and book reviews.
Topic:: Climate Change, War, and Governance

113. "The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present"

Author:: Trygve Throntveit
Publication Date:: 09-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: “This is what happens when democracies try to take advantage of their historical advantages,” writes David Runciman. “They mess up” (p. 273). In The Confidence Trap, Runciman draws on Alexis de Tocqueville's analysis of nineteenth-century American democracy to assess the strengths and diagnose the ills that have beset mature democratic societies from the early twentieth century to the present. The result is a clear and plausible articulation of democracy's central dilemma, paired with a far less definite treatment of its implications for the conduct of public affairs, either in the past or today.
Topic:: War and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:: America

114. Can the World Afford to Condone the 'Divided States of Syria'?

Author:: Hassan Mneimneh
Publication Date:: 09-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The International Spectator
Institution:: Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:: After more than three years of corrosive wars, Syria no longer exists as a nation-state. It has been replaced by disparate entities and precarious arrangements – to the detriment of the Syrian population. The 'Divided States of Syria' are in large part the result of the survival strategy of the regime, aided by the futile pursuit of a 'political solution' by the international community. As the tragedy deepens, the recovery of Syria becomes more difficult, and the implications for regional stability increase in gravity. The West – the United States in particular – has abstained from forceful engagement. Yet, the price to pay today may in retrospect pale in light of the political, strategic and moral catastrophes that the current reserved approach is enabling.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: United States and Syria

115. Presidents and the Dissolution of the Union: Leadership Style from Polk to Lincoln

Author:: Matthew J. Dickinson
Publication Date:: 09-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Political Science Quarterly
Institution:: Academy of Political Science
Abstract:: In his study of the leadership style exhibited by six presidents, James Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Abraham Lincoln, Fred Greenstein applies the analytic scheme he first unveiled in The Presidential Difference to explain how the decisions that these men made in the critical period 1846–1861 led to the Civil War. Greenstein argues that their actions, beginning with Polk's ill-fated decision to provoke a war with Mexico, formed a funnel of causality that increasingly limited the options of their successors when dealing with the slavery issue, so that when Lincoln took office, it was impossible to keep the Union together short of military conflict. In addition to addressing a significant period in American history, Greenstein's choice of topic has the added virtue of shining a spotlight on a group of presidents who, with the exception of Lincoln, tend to be overlooked in the history books. To be sure, this is not a revisionist study; Greenstein's analysis is unlikely to change anyone's assessment of these six presidents in terms of their historical rankings (although I admit to coming away with a slightly greater appreciation for Millard Fillmore's presidency).
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: America

116. The Wisdom of Syria's Waiting Game Foreign Policy Under the Assads, Bente Scheller

Author:: Jinan Bastaki
Publication Date:: 10-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Insight Turkey
Institution:: SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:: How has the Syrian regime, being the 'odd man out' in the Middle East, survived for so many years under the Assads? Given its survival, what makes the current uprising, now nearing its third year, different? And did the Assads always act on ideological grounds? These are the central questions that scholar and foreign policy analyst Bente Scheller tries to answer in her book, The Wisdom of Syria's Waiting Game: Foreign Policy Under the Assads, by analyzing the Assads' foreign policy and the link to domestic policies and the current revolt.
Topic:: Foreign Policy and War
Political Geography:: Middle East, Lebanon, and Syria

117. International relations between war and revolution: Wilsonian diplomacy and the making of the Treaty of Versailles

Author:: Alexander Anievas
Publication Date:: 09-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Politics
Institution:: Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:: The Peace Treaties of 1919 retain a prominent place within the study of International Relations (IR).The theoretical significance of Versailles for IR can hardly be overstated. For much rests on the question of whether the post-war settlement was problematic due to its liberal nature or in spite of it. Yet, explanations as to why Versailles diplomacy was so problematic vary significantly. What were the central factors affecting policymaking at Versailles? And what does Paris Peace diplomacy tell IR theory about modern foreign policymaking processes? This article provides a critique of standard IR interpretations of Wilsonian diplomacy at Versailles, illustrating how realist and liberals' uncritical acceptance of Wilson as the quintessential 'idealist-liberal' statesman glosses over a core contradiction at the heart of Wilsonian diplomacy: the wielding of power politics to transcend power politics. In doing so, it examines the effects of the Bolshevik revolution as a paradigm-rupturing event transforming the nature and dynamics of the First World War and the post-war settlement. This traces the unique sociological patterns of uneven and combined development thrown up by the war and the geopolitical problems this created for Wilson and the Allies in forging a new international order.
Topic:: Diplomacy and War

118. Ten years later: who won the iraq war, the us or china?

Author:: Mordechai Chaziza
Publication Date:: 09-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Middle East Review of International Affairs
Institution:: Global Research in International Affairs Center, Interdisciplinary Center
Abstract:: Many news sources have announced that the answer to the question of who won the Iraq war issimple: the People's Republic of China. Was China the real winner? If so, in what ways? This study analyzes the question of who won the Iraq War in broader terms, both in retrospect and looking forward. It separates myth from reality and takes a long, hard look at the war's impact, both short andlong-term, on the economic and strategic interests of China and the U.S.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: China and Iraq

119. Unfulfilled Promises, Future Possibilities: The Refugee Resettlement System in the United States

Author:: Todd Scribner and Anastasia Brown
Publication Date:: 01-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:: Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:: World War II caused the displacement of millions of people throughout Europe. In response, the United States initiated a public-private partnership that assisted in the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of the region's displaced persons. For nearly 40 years after the War, the US commitment to refugee resettlement played out in an ad hoc fashion as it responded to emerging crises in different ways. During this period the government's involvement with resettlement became gradually intertwined with that of non-governmental resettlement agencies, which came to play an increasingly vital role in the resettlement process. The budding relationship that began in the middle decades of the twentieth century set the foundation for an expansive and dynamic public-private partnership that continues to this day. The Refugee Act of 1980solidified the relationship between resettlement agencies and the federal government, established political asylum in US law, and created the refugee resettlement program and a series of assistance programs to help refugees transition to life in the United States. This legislation marked a decisive turning point in the field of refugee resettlement.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: United States and Europe

120. Imperial Eclipse: Japan's Strategic Thinking about Continental Asia before August 1945

Author:: Frederick R. Dickinson
Publication Date:: 05-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:: Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:: As Yukiko Koshiro appropriately notes at the outset of her striking new study, the Asia-Pacific component of World War II comes with many labels, each associated with particular audiences. 'Pacific War' is the preferred term for most Americans, who focus on the fight between Japanese and American forces in the Pacific. 'Fifteen Years' War' is used by Japanese Marxists to describe a much longer series of battles begun on the Asian continent in 1931 and expanding to wider destruction through 1945. 'Greater East Asia War' is the label of choice of the Japanese right, which continues to imagine a battle for' liberation' of Asian peoples from Western imperialism.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Japan and Asia

121. Serving or Self-Serving? A Review Essay of Robert Gates's Memoir

Author:: Robert Jervis
Publication Date:: 07-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Political Science Quarterly
Institution:: Academy of Political Science
Abstract:: Robert Jervis reviews Robert Gates's recently published memoir, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War. The reviewer argues that the memoir is very revealing, but inadvertently so insofar as it shows for example Gates's failure to focus on the key issues involved in the decisions to send more troops to Afghanistan and his inability to bridge the gap between the perspectives of the generals and of the White House.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Afghanistan

122. The Federal Reserve and the Dollar

Author:: Lewis E. Lehrman
Publication Date:: 07-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Cato Journal
Institution:: The Cato Institute
Abstract:: To evaluate the history of the Federal Reserve System, we cannot help but wonder, whither the Fed? and to consider wherefore its reform—even what and how to do it. But first let us remember whence we came one century ago.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Europe

123. Preparing for Peace in Time of War: Canada and the Post-Hostilities Planning Committees, 1943-1945

Author:: Monique Dolak
Publication Date:: 06-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:: Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:: During the Second World War, as the likelihood of Allied success grew, the Canadian Department of External Affairs (DEA) looked towards the post-war world. The increasingly international posture of the Canadian government, coupled with concerns over the shape of the post-war international structure, and Canada's role within it, inspired the Department of External Affairs (DEA) to focus its efforts on post-war planning. For the first time in the DEA's short history, it began to vigorously "plan for the future". This took the form of Post-Hostilities Planning (PHP) Committees. The PHP framework was not only an exercise in post-war planning, but inter-service and interdepartmental relations. While the three Canadian military services were active participants in the work done, it was dominated by the DEA. Considerations of the military often tended toward more immediate wartime concerns. The PHP committees also served as a means of bringing the services into closer contact and communication with one another. However, political and diplomatic considerations dominated and the services were often sidelined during meetings. Thus, while the Canadian Chiefs of Staff and their representatives sat on the Committees, their ability to shape policy proved limited.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Canada

124. Syria: The Hope and Challenges of Mediation

Author:: Mahmood Monshipouri and Erich Wieger
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Insight Turkey
Institution:: SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:: The civil war in Syria continues to devastate social and political structures, precipitating floods of refugees and surging populations of internally displaced people. Syria has degenerated into sectarian- and ethnic-based warring mini-states vying for power as their country faces utter social disorder. It mass-produces a growing cadre of battle hardened foreign and domestic jihadists affiliated with the various al-Qaeda brands. The war weariness of America and the unmanageable chaos in Syria combine to create shifts in regional politics. This article seeks to put into perspective the crucial role that regional mediation can play in nudging along practical solutions. Without regional commitment and coordination among key Middle Eastern powers, namely Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, international diplomatic efforts to restore order and stability in Syria are not likely to succeed.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: America, Iran, and Syria

125. Afghanistan's Legacy: Emerging Lessons of an Ongoing War

Author:: Stephen Biddle
Publication Date:: 06-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Washington Quarterly
Institution:: Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:: In an important sense, emerging debates on the war's lessons are premature. The war in Afghanistan is not over; nor is it ending anytime soon. Nevertheless, before conventional wisdom consolidates, two observations on counterinsurgency are worth considering now: whether it can work and how to approach governance reform.
Topic:: Security, War, Governance, and Reform
Political Geography:: Afghanistan and America

126. Iran's Continuing Interests in Afghanistan

Author:: Sumithra Narayanan Kutty
Publication Date:: 06-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Washington Quarterly
Institution:: Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:: When it comes to Afghanistan's future, the United States ironically has more in common with Iran than it does with Pakistan. As Western troops draw down, a look inside Iran's enduring interests, means to secure them, unique assets, and goals that may or not conflict with other regional actors.
Topic:: Government and War
Political Geography:: Afghanistan, United States, and Iran

127. From the Editor, Summer 2014

Author:: Craig Biddle
Publication Date:: 06-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Welcome to the Summer 2014 issue of The Objective Standard. Here's a brief indication of the contents at hand.
Topic:: War

128. "The Lessons of 1914 for East Asia Today: Missing the Trees for the Forest"

Author:: Todd H. Hall and Jia Ian Chong
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Security
Institution:: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:: A century has passed since the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo set in motion a chain of events that would eventually convulse Europe in war. Possibly no conflict has been the focus of more scholarly attention. The questions of how and why European states came to abandon peaceful coexistence for four years of armed hostilities—ending tens of millions of lives and several imperial dynasties—have captivated historians and international relations scholars alike.
Topic:: International Relations, Security, and War
Political Geography:: United States, Europe, Middle East, and East Asia

129. "Domestic Coalitions, Internationalization, and War: Then and Now"

Author:: Etel Solingen
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Security
Institution:: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:: The sources of World War I are numerous and widely studied. Some scholars have argued that they are underdetermining individually but overdetermining collectively. The purpose of this article is not to fuel the battle among theories claiming complete explanatory power, but rather to examine some lessons for contemporary international relations. Much of the recent commentary on the war's centenary evokes similarities between Germany in 1914 and China in 2014, and between globalization then and now. There are crucial differences on both accounts, however.
Topic:: International Relations, Security, and War
Political Geography:: China and Germany

130. "Better Now Than Later: The Paradox of 1914 as Everyone's Favored Year for War"

Author:: Jack Snyder
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Security
Institution:: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:: One reason why Europe went to war in 1914 is that all of the continental great powers judged it a favorable moment for a fight, and all were pessimistic about postponing the fight until later. On its face, this explanation constitutes a paradox. Still, each power had a superficially plausible reason for thinking this was true.
Topic:: International Relations, Security, and War
Political Geography:: Europe

131. "Dead Wrong? Battle Deaths, Military Medicine, and Exaggerated Reports of War's Demise"

Author:: Tanisha M. Fazel
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Security
Institution:: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:: Several recent books argue that war is on the decline. In Winning the War on War, for example, Joshua Goldstein lauds the recent successes of the peacemaking community in countries such as Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory Coast. In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker writes that not only war but violence in general has become much less common, as the civilizing forces of literacy and modern government have tempered our baser instincts and allowed our "better angels" to prevail.
Topic:: International Relations, Security, and War
Political Geography:: United States, Middle East, and East Asia

132. "Delegitimizing al-Qaida: Defeating an 'Army Whose Men Love Death'"

Author:: Jerry Mark Long and Alex S. WIlner
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Security
Institution:: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:: Al-Qaida has established a metanarrative that enables it to recruit militants and supporters. The United States and its allies can challenge its ability to do so by delegitimizing the ideological motivations that inform that metanarrative.
Topic:: International Relations, Security, and War
Political Geography:: United States, Middle East, and East Asia

133. "Ethnofederalism: The Worst Form of Institutional Arrangement…?"

Author:: Liam Anderson
Publication Date:: 04-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Security
Institution:: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:: Critics of ethnofederalism— a political system in which federal subunits reflect ethnic groups' territorial distribution—argue that it facilitates secession and state collapse. An examination of post-1945 ethnofederal states, however, shows that ethnofederalism has succeeded more often than not.
Topic:: International Relations, Security, and War
Political Geography:: United States, Middle East, and East Asia

134. Collective evil and individual pathology: The depoliticization of violence against Afghan civilians

Author:: Harmonie Toros and Luca Mavelli
Publication Date:: 07-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Politics
Institution:: Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:: This article explores how the violence against Afghan civilians carried out by the Taliban and US 'rogue' soldiers has been accounted for as the product of, respectively, collective evil and individual pathology. These two seemingly contending explanations, it is argued, are part of the same strategy of depoliticization, which aims to provide support and legitimacy for the US-led war in Afghanistan. The article discusses how the genealogy of the discourse of collective evil surrounding the Taliban can be traced to an Orientalist political theodicy, which frames the Taliban as 'children of a lesser God' – that is, as fanatical puppets at the mercy of a violent God – and how the discourse of individual pathology surrounding the unsanctioned violence of US soldiers is instrumental to exempt military and civilian leadership from collusion and responsibility. The article challenges this latter narrative of individual blame by discussing how killing, torture and desecration of bodies are at the heart of warfare. Hence, it is concluded, the language of collective evil and individual pathology are part of the same strategy of depoliticization, which aims to silence political contestation and conceal the dehumanizing aspect of war, its structural production of violence, and the complex and dispersed nature of responsibility.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Afghanistan, United States, and Taliban

135. The 'rhinofication' of South African security

Author:: Jasper Humphreys and M. L. R. Smith
Publication Date:: 07-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Institution:: Chatham House
Abstract:: Counter-poaching operations in South Africa's so-called 'rhino wars' have seen increasing use of kinetic strategies and tactics. It can be argued that this follows the country's historical tendency to react to threats with confrontation in the first instance rather than negotiation, as leaders invoke images of 'backs-to-the-wall' isolation. During the apartheid period the National Party strongly promoted patriotism and self-sacrifice, portraying South Africa as facing 'total onslaught'; today, the rhetoric of 'rhino wars' is often framed in similar terms, not least because the person leading the rhinoceros counter-poaching campaign, Major General Johan Jooste (retired), was himself heavily involved in the 'apartheid wars' in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: South Africa

136. Waging a war to save biodiversity: the rise of militarized conservation

Author:: Rosaleen Duffy
Publication Date:: 07-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Institution:: Chatham House
Abstract:: Conserving biodiversity is a central environmental concern, and conservationists increasingly talk in terms of a 'war' to save species. International campaigns present a specific image: that parks agencies and conservation NGOs are engaged in a continual battle to protect wildlife from armies of highly organized criminal poachers who are financially motivated. The war to save biodiversity is presented as a legitimate war to save critically endangered species such as rhinos, tigers, gorillas and elephants. This is a significant shift in approach since the late 1990s, when community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) and participatory techniques were at their peak. Since the early 2000s there has been a re-evaluation of a renewed interest in fortress conservation models to protect wildlife, including by military means. Yet, as Lunstrum notes, there is a dearth of research on 'green militarization', a process by which military approaches and values are increasingly embedded in conservation practice.
Topic:: War

137. Petitioning the International: A 'Pre-history' of Self-determination

Author:: Arnulf Becker Lorca
Publication Date:: 05-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: Conventionally, self-determination is understood to have evolved in a linear progression from a political principle during World War I into an international right after World War II. The history of the right to self-determination before 1945 is thus part of 'pre-history'. This article explores that 'pre-history' and finds the conventional linear narrative unconvincing. During the first three decades of the 20th century and in particular during the interwar period, non-Western lawyers, politicians, and activists articulated international law claims to support the demand for self-government. In this process, they appropriated and transformed the international law discourse. Removing the legal obstacles that prevented self-government beyond the West – that is, by eliminating the standard of civilization – interwar semi-peripherals made possible the emergence of a right to self-determination later, when the international political context changed after the second post-war reconstruction of international law.
Topic:: International Law and War

138. Mónica García-Salmones Rovira. The Project of Positivism in International Law.

Author:: David Roth-Isigkeit
Publication Date:: 05-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: That positivism is not the promised land of legal methods has become a truism among critical international lawyers. All too often the proclaimed objectivity, neutrality and science has turned out to be intertwined with ideology and domination. In line with the historical-economic turn of the Helsinki school, Monica García-Salmones Rovira's book The Project of Positivism in International Law finds the historical roots of positivism deeply embedded in the development of a global neo-liberal economy. The economic foundations of the method are unearthed with two intellectual biographies of its founding fathers, Lassa Oppenheim and Hans Kelsen, whose life projects have so far escaped critical scrutiny. The book weaves into these two biographical studies the story of international law as a pragmatist and scientific project that freed the discipline from the tradition of natural law to become a servant of global economic interests.
Topic:: International Law and War

139. Kevin Jon Heller and Gerry Simpson (eds). The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials

Author:: Milan Kuhli
Publication Date:: 05-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: The book The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials – edited by Kevin Jon Heller and Gerry Simpson – is a compilation of 21 contributions to a conference convened in Melbourne at the end of 2010. The project aims at a scholarly recovery of accounts of war crimes trials that were ‘either neglected or under-rehearsed’ (at 1) in the discipline of international criminal law. Accordingly, the contributions tell ‘stories about familiar but under-explored and misunderstood landmarks in the conventional history of international criminal law’ as well as about trials that have been less analysed in this field (at 1). Gregory S. Gordon’s illustrative chapter on the trial of Peter von Hagenbach (chapter 2) is a story of the first kind, whereas Benjamin E. Brockman-Hawe’s comprehensive account of the Franco-Siamese tribunal for the Colonial Era (chapter 3) exemplifies the latter type.
Topic:: International Law and War
Political Geography:: Europe

140. Cosmos, chaos: finance, power and conflict

Author:: Harold James
Publication Date:: 02-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Institution:: Chatham House
Abstract:: A spectre is haunting the world: 1914. The approaching centenary of the outbreak of the First World War is a reminder of how the instability produced by changes in the relative balance of power in an integrated or globalized world may produce cataclysmic events. Jean-Claude Juncker, the veteran Prime Minister of Luxem-bourg and chair of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, started 2013 by warning journalists that they should take note of the parallels with 1913, the last year of European peace. He was referring explicitly to new national animosities fanned by the European economic crisis, with a growing polarization between North and South. Historically, the aftermath and the consequences of such cataclysms have been extreme. George Kennan strikingly termed the 1914–18 conflict 'the great seminal catastrophe of this century'. Without it, fascism, communism, the Great Depression and the Second World War are all almost impossible to imagine.
Topic:: Conflict Resolution, Communism, Economics, Politics, and War
Political Geography:: Europe

141. 1914 and 2014: should we be worried?

Author:: Margaret MacMillan
Publication Date:: 02-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Institution:: Chatham House
Abstract:: A century ago this autumn the first battle of the Marne ended Germany's attempt to crush France and its ally Britain quickly. In that one battle alone the French lost 80,000 dead and the Germans approximately the same. By comparison, 47,000 Americans died in the whole of the Vietnam War and 4,800 coalition troops in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In August and September 1914 Europe, the most powerful and prosperous part of the world, had begun the process of destroying itself. A minor crisis in its troubled backyard of the Balkans had escalated with terrifying speed to create an all-out war between the powers. 1 'Again and ever I thank God for the Atlantic Ocean,' wrote Walter Page, the American ambassador in London; and in Washington his president, Woodrow Wilson, agreed.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Britain, Iraq, America, Europe, Washington, France, London, Vietnam, Germany, Balkans, and Atlantic Ocean

142. A Syrian Settlement Formula: Inter-Syrian Dialogue Supported by External Actors

Author:: Gennady Gatilov
Publication Date:: 02-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:: East View Information Services
Abstract:: On September 27, 2013, the security council of the United Nations unanimously adopted resolution 2118 in support of the decision of the organization for the Prohibition of chemical Weapons (oPcW) made on the same day in The Hague to place Syrian chemical weapons under international control and dismantle them. This was the culmination of the Ministerial Week at the 68th session of the un general assembly in New York, an event which was expected by all, but not all believed that it would happen. All, however, eventually acknowledged that it came about largely through to the efforts of Russian diplomats who, led by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, negotiated day after day with the U.S.. partners, seeking a solution which not only would avert the threat of a military strike against Syria, but would also open the way for politically resolving the most complicated crisis in the SAR.
Topic:: Politics, United Nations, War, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and International Security
Political Geography:: Syria

143. The North Korean Factor and Russia’s Positions in Asia

Author:: G. Toloraya and A. Torkunov
Publication Date:: 06-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:: East View Information Services
Abstract:: In recent years, Russia’s active and highly vigorous foreign policy in many conflict zones has become an important international factor in the hottest points (Syria being one of them). Russia achieved spectacular diplomatic results. there are, however, problem zones much closer to home. We have in mind the Korean Peninsula, the scene of the oldest and dangerous conflict. Many times in the past, the “soft underbelly” of Russia’s far east left the expert community and the public puzzled and bewildered. Throughout the decades which separate the peninsula from the “hot war” (still very much in evidence de jure and de facto), it has been living amid sluggish confrontation and dramatic developments at the domestic stage of the north and the south, two irreconcilable opponents, and between them.
Topic:: Conflict Resolution, Conflict Prevention, Foreign Policy, and War
Political Geography:: Russia and North Korea

144. Maidan: A Lesson to Be Learned

Author:: V. Surguladze
Publication Date:: 06-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:: East View Information Services
Abstract:: In Ukraine, the West demonstrated once more the efficiency of its organizational weapon and its skill in pushing states into military operations of low intensity. there is still hope that unlike Serbia, Iraq, Libya, etc. Ukraine will not degenerate into another textbook study-case and a tick in the appropriate box in the list of successes of Western political technologists and experts in political coups and “protection of democracy.” While watching what is going on in Ukraine we should demonstrate the strength of spirit and a morally healthy social atmosphere so that to stand opposed to Western ideological attacks and to develop our state, rationally and consistently. Without this, it is impossible to survive in the world where certain countries have mastered the skills of disguising their destructive foreign policy aims with high-sounding phrases about common good and “human values and freedoms” which they distort beyond recognition.
Topic:: Foreign Policy, Politics, War, and Democracy
Political Geography:: Iraq, Ukraine, Libya, and Serbia

145. Plausible Deniability: Proxy Wars in Africa

Author:: Jennifer L. De Maio
Publication Date:: 06-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Fletcher Security Review
Institution:: The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:: In the decades since independence, proxy wars have frequently threatened regional security in Africa. Many interstate and intrastate wars on the continent have become increasingly complicated by the involvement of opposing nation states using third parties as surrogates for fighting each other directly. As civil wars threaten to spill across borders and destabilize entire regions, the nature and extent of states using these wars as proxies for their own agendas needs to be studied more systematically. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union relied on proxy wars as a means of engaging the enemy indirectly and advancing their foreign policy agendas, while leaving minimal visible blood on their hands. These proxy wars between the superpowers played out across Africa, from the Horn to Angola to Mozambique. In the aftermath of the Cold War, the superpower competition for regional supremacy has been replaced by new proxy wars and trans-border alliances between African states and local armed groups. As Joseph argues, the recourse to proxy wars reflects the challenges faced by the African state and its inability to institutionalize democratic structures. But the problem is much deeper. Engaging in proxy wars is a critical strategy for state-building, and develops from calculations by state leaders to advance their policy agendas. Threatened regimes wishing to maintain their hold on power may allow and enable civil tensions to spill across borders and destabilize neighboring countries. This approach can be used as a means to consolidate power domestically and spread influence internationally. A civil war thereby becomes a proxy war between states, with the advantage that governments can distance themselves from atrocities committed by their proxies by either attributing blame to rebel factions or by just claiming that they are in fact not sponsoring any group. This essay proposes that governments have an incentive to allow civil wars to spread across borders in order to engage in proxy battles with neighboring states. Governments can utilize proxy wars to strengthen their hold on the domestic state apparatus and to gain regional superiority. This strategy can include using militarily weak countries as proxies in order to assert their regional dominance and broadcast domestic power. Proxy wars can then advance domestic and foreign policy agendas while allowing states to avoid engaging in costly and bloody direct combat. The use of proxy war as a tool of statecraft is thus calculated and controlled...
Topic:: Security, War, Proxy War, and Statecraft
Political Geography:: Africa, Soviet Union, and United States of America

146. Accounting for violence in Eastern Congo: Young people’s narratives of war and peace in North and South Kivu

Author:: Denis Bentrovato
Publication Date:: 02-2014
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: African Journal on Conflict Resolution
Institution:: The African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD)
Abstract:: In the last two decades, wars and mass violence have marked much of the life of ordinary people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In its eastern provinces of North and South Kivu, an entire generation has grown up knowing little else than conflict and deprivation. This article intends to give a voice to young Congolese in this troubled region in the heart of Africa. The article is based on the results of a survey that was conducted at the end of 2009 among nearly one thousand students. It examines the way young people in the Kivu make sense of the prevalence of violence in their home-provinces and the solutions they envision for a peaceful future. In its analysis, the article exposes a predominant role of ‘the Rwandese’ in Congolese narratives of war and peace. Influenced by fresh memories of war, various respondents exhibited Manichean views and deep-seated feelings of resentment towards those who were deemed responsible for the Congo’s recent suffering. This article argues that, unless such understandings and sentiments are acknowledged and addressed, the risk of further escalation of conflict will continue to loom on the horizon. Educational and cultural programmes targeting the youth and their views of ‘the other’ are here proposed as a promising peacebuilding measure that should complement existing efforts to promote stability in the region.
Topic:: Education, War, Culture, Youth, Violence, Peace, and Narrative
Political Geography:: Africa and Democratic Republic of the Congo

147. Safety of Women from the Perspective of Feminist Theory in International Relations: Sexual Violence as an Effective Weapon of War

Author:: Iveta Ptáčníková
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: This text aims to analyse the safety of women in armed conflicts related to sexual violence. The article is based on the Feminist Theory in International Relations, which points out the preconceptions of the traditional theories in International Relations, and tries to make women visible as social, economical and political subjects in the field of international politics. This concept uses the perspectives ingnored by the traditional theories in International Relations. In the context of theory assumming that the violence is conditioned by gender, this article will present the feminist discourse of security and masculinity in the context of sexual violence. Using the introduced perspectives, this article will outline sexual violence in armed conflict, including the reasons for this.
Topic:: International Relations, Security, and War

148. Full Issue

Author:: Ilan Berman
Publication Date:: 03-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Journal of International Security Affairs
Institution:: Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
Abstract:: In September of 1993, the National Institute for Public Policy published our report with the title "What Did We Get for Our $30-Billion Investment in SDI/BMD?" In it, we reviewed what had been achieved during the first decade of President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
Topic:: Cold War and War

149. Human Insecurity: Understanding International Migration from a Human Security Perspective

Author:: Todd Scribner and Francesca Vietti
Publication Date:: 01-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:: Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:: This article examines contemporary, mass migration from the perspective of human security. It tracks the development of the human security model of international relations, and compares it to the well-established state security model that has served as the dominant paradigm for international relations since the seventeenth century. The article argues that human security offers a more effective approach to many of the underlying problems and threats associated with mass migration, than does the traditional state-security model. It challenges national and international authorities to address threats to human security, in order to minimize forced migration and to create the conditions for migration by choice, not necessity.
Topic:: International Relations, Development, and War
Political Geography:: United Nations

150. Timeline: 1959-Present

Author:: Meehyun Nam- Thompson
Publication Date:: 01-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: World Policy Journal
Institution:: World Policy Institute
Abstract:: To understand the modern trajectory of Sino-Indian relations, World Policy Journal has focused on key political moments that have come to define the two countries' shared history. We begin at a pivotal moment—the Tibetan Uprising, a brief flare of conflict shortly before the Sino-Indian War, which many view as the sharpest geopolitical dispute between the two nations. Then we march through the 1960s and 1970s, when nuclear proliferation placed a heavy burden on a relationship otherwise improving under the twin pivots of regional security and financial imperatives. Our timeline shows a shift from direct military conflict to diplomatic and economic struggles for power. Though geopolitical issues, especially over critical resources like water and energy, will strain Sino-Indian relations in the future, we end our timeline with an uncertain, but promising economic trend, and new measures that may build confidence between Asia's two giants.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: China, India, and Asia

151. Coda: The Imperial Presidency Gone and All But Forgotten

Author:: David A. Andelman
Publication Date:: 01-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: World Policy Journal
Institution:: World Policy Institute
Abstract:: There was a time, in the not-too-distant past, when the Office of the President carried with it all but unprecedented powers. Not unlike the great emperors of old, a president could launch wars, proclaim peace, even change the course of history. In a democracy or an oligarchy, in political systems far removed in every other respect from the traditional dictatorship, presidents still wielded all but unfettered power. No longer.
Topic:: War

152. Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency

Author:: Benjamin H. Friedman
Publication Date:: 01-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Cato Journal
Institution:: The Cato Institute
Abstract:: The Republican Party at least has the decency not to get its civil libertarian supporters' hopes up. Bemused tolerance and the odd Ron Paul appearance are about all the encouragement they get. Democratic civil libertarians, by contrast, suffer from relevance. Like other interests large enough to matter in primary elections but loyal enough to betray later, they are seduced and then scorned, especially by presidents. Their disappointment is harsher because it is less expected.
Topic:: War

153. Calderón's War

Author:: Nathaniel Parish Flannery
Publication Date:: 05-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of International Affairs
Institution:: School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Abstract:: In December 2006, Felipe Calderón took over as Mexico's new president and made a bold decision to directly confront the drug trafficking organizations that had steadily gained power over the course of his predecessors' terms in office. He started by sending troops into his home state of Michoacán, and over the next six years Mexico's government succeeded in pushing drug-ferrying planes off its airstrips and into airfields in Guatemala and Honduras. Over the course of "Calderón's War" Mexican soldiers captured and killed dozens of high profile cartel leaders. But after more than half a decade of continuous anti-cartel operations, many of the traditional strongholds of the country's drug trafficking organizations have experienced a worrisome deterioration in security. For instance, in the state of Guerrero, as cartel leaders such as the Beltran Leyva brothers and La Barbie were taken down, a destabilizing sequence of inter-cartel competition has led to a string of disturbing violent incidents as well as complaints about robbery and extortion. Over the course of Calderón's presidency it became clear that without complementary improvements in local policing efforts, the anti-cartel strategy would not be able to bring Mexico the long-term security and stability that citizens demand. Fighting the drug cartels is not enough. Effective security policy requires the police to help protect ordinary citizens from "unorganized" crimes such as theft, carjacking, and extortion.
Topic:: Security and War
Political Geography:: Mexico

154. From the Editor

Author:: Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:: 01-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: AT FIRST GLANCE the contents of this issue of the Journal appear disparate, ranging as they do over the Israeli settlement project, Tony Blair's tenure as Quartet Middle East representative, the role of Islamic Jihad, and the effect of recent upheavals in the Arab world on the Palestinian issue. But taken as a whole they show how much the contemporary Middle East-with the Palestine question at its center-is in dialogue with its history. Although history may not repeat itself, there are nevertheless striking parallels and linkages between past and current events.
Topic:: Islam and War
Political Geography:: Middle East, Palestine, Arabia, and Egypt

155. The Palestine Question Amid Regional Transformations

Publication Date:: 01-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: For some time, the Journal of Palestine Studies' sister quarterly, Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya (MDF), has held small, open-ended roundtable discussions at the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS) headquarters in Beirut to address issues of importance to Palestine and the Arab world, with a view to publishing the proceedings. On 15 December 2012, JPS followed suit, and in cooperation with MDF organized an English-language roundtable at the IPS Beirut headquarters to consider the impact, on Palestine, of the regional changes subsumed under the “Arab Spring” rubric. Participants ranged over an array of topics, including geopolitical changes at the global and regional levels; political, social, and intellectual trends from the Maghrib to the Gulf; and internal developments in several states, as well as within Palestinian communities in historic Palestine and the Diaspora. Especially noteworthy is the grounding of current developments in a historical framework evolving since World War I. The roundtable was transcribed by JPS Editorial Assistant Linda Khoury and the transcript edited by JPS Associate Editor Linda Butler.
Topic:: Development and War
Political Geography:: Palestine and Arabia

156. Worldwide Threat Assessment

Author:: James R. Clapper
Publication Date:: 04-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Institution:: Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:: This year's threat assessment illustrates how dramatically the world and our threat environment are changing. Threats are growing more interconnected and viral. Events that at first seem local and irrelevant can quickly set off transnational disruptions that affect US national interests. It's a world in which our definition of "war" now includes a "soft" version. We can add cyber and financial to the list of weapons being used against us. And such attacks can be deniable and non-attributable.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: United States

157. The Road to D-Day

Author:: Rick Atkinson
Publication Date:: 07-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: If Operation Overlord failed, the entire Allied enterprise in World War II faced abject collapse. This new history of the events leading up to D-Day explains why, and what the preparations for success actually involved.
Topic:: War

158. The War of Law

Author:: Jon Kyl, Douglas J. Feith, and John Fonte
Publication Date:: 07-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: In the era of globalization, policymakers are increasingly debating the proper role of international law, and a group of legal scholars have embraced transnationalism, the idea that growing interconnectedness should dissolve international boundaries. But that approach is at odds with basic American principles.
Topic:: Globalization, War, and Law
Political Geography:: America

159. The Frankfurt School at War

Author:: William E. Scheuerman
Publication Date:: 07-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: War makes for strange bedfellows, and among the oddest pairings that World War II produced was that between "Wild Bill" Donovan's Office of Strategic Services and the emigre German Jewish Marxists he hired to teach Washington about the Nazis.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Washington and Germany

160. The Immigrant War

Author:: Alex Nowrasteh
Publication Date:: 10-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Cato Journal
Institution:: The Cato Institute
Abstract:: Some journalists possess a deep knowledge of political and policy debates. Their job is to follow the political developments of a certain policy, report on its effects, and write about it over the course of decades. It's only natural, after so much experience, that they would want to transform their observations and reactions into books that illuminate opaque topics. Vittorio Longhi's The Immigrant War fails at this.
Topic:: War

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

181. A Far Cry From Failure

Author:: Michael O'Hanlon
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Stephen Biddle and Karl Eikenberry are outstanding public servants and scholars, but their respective articles on Afghanistan (“Ending the War in Afghanistan” and “The Limits of Counterinsurgency Doctrine in Afghanistan,” September/October 2013) convey excessively negative assessments of how the war is going and of Afghanistan's prospects. Their arguments could reinforce the current American malaise about the ongoing effort and thereby reduce the odds that the United States will continue to play a role in Afghanistan after the current NATO-led security mission there ends in December 2014. That would be regrettable; the United States should lock in and solidify its gains in Afghanistan, not cut its losses.
Topic:: NATO and War
Political Geography:: Afghanistan and United States

182. Mind vs. Money: The War between Intellectuals and Capitalism

Author:: Richard M. Salsman
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: If, like most candid students of history, you recognize that capitalism (to the extent it has been instituted) has brought liberty, peace, and prosperity, but you wonder why the system has been so despised, this is the book for you. In Mind vs. Money: The War between Intellectuals and Capitalism, Alan S. Kahan points out that in only one century out of the past twenty-five—the Enlightenment (1730–1830)—did leading intellectuals speak well of money, lending, profit making, and commerce (i.e., capitalism). The vast majority of intellectuals, over the vast majority of time, have detested capitalism and all it stands for. The worst hostility dates from the mid-19th century: “For over 150 years, Western intellectuals have been at war with capitalism,” writes Kahan, and “the consequences have often been disastrous for all concerned” (p. 3)—the consequences including tyrannies and policies that sap economic vitality.
Topic:: War

183. "Train as You Fight" Revisited: Preparing for a Comprehensive Approach

Author:: Sebastiaan Rietjens, Paul C. Van Fenema, and Peter Essens
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: PRISM
Institution:: Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:: In 1973 General William F. DePuy, first commander of the u.S. army's training and Doctrine Command (tRaDOC), emphasized that it was necessary to expose soldiers to realistic battlefield conditions before they experienced actual combat.1 Doing this should improve the soldiers' preparation and thereby, in the long run, their effectiveness and efficiency. DePuy's belief was widely shared and led to the development of new training methods and a training philosophy that is often referred to as “train as you fight”. ever since, military training programs have continuously been improved and better shaped towards the real threats that soldiers were facing in the theater. a clear example reflecting the new philosophy was the establishment of the uS Combat training Centers (CtCs). the five pillars upon which the CtC program is based, require (1) that participating units be organized as they would for actual combat, (2) a dedicated, doctrinally proficient operations group, (3) a dedicated, realistic opposing force (OPFOR), (4) a training facility being capable of simulating combat conditions, and (5) a base infrastructure.2 this suggests that the main focus in training is to develop a combat ready force that is physically and psychologically prepared to fight and win wars.3 the dominant focus on combat readiness is also mentioned in a 2006 RaND report reviewing for the united States army its leadership development. the authors concluded that whereas changes in operational environment were identified (e.g. “operations other than war”), “adaptation has centered largely on the more tangible elements and mechanics of war.”
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: United States

184. Regime Change Without Military Force: Lessons from Overthrowing Milosevic

Author:: Gregory L. Schulte
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: PRISM
Institution:: Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:: After a decade of war in afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has adopted a new defense strategy that recognizes the need to limit our strategic ends in an era of increasing limits on our military means.1 the strategy calls for armed forces capable of conducting a broad range of missions, in a full range of contingencies, and in a global context that is increasingly complex. It calls for doing so with a smaller defense budget. Opportunities for savings come from reducing the ability to fight two regional conflicts simultaneously and from not sizing the force to conduct prolonged, large-scale stability operations. Seemingly missing from the new defense strategy are the types of wars we fought in afghanistan and Iraq. Both started with forcible changes in regime – the armed ouster of the taliban and Saddam Hussein from their positions of power. In each case, the rapid removal of leadership was followed by lengthy counterinsurgency operations to bring security to the population and build up a new government. the duration and difficulty of these operations and their cost in deaths, destruction, and debt were not understood at their outset.
Topic:: NATO and War
Political Geography:: Afghanistan and Iraq

185. The Uneasy Relationship Between Economics and Security

Author:: Alexander Ferguson
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: PRISM
Institution:: Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:: The most publicly discussed link between economics and security is the relationship between economic performance and power. the underpinnings for this relationship come from the philosophical approach that sees political power stemming from economic power. espoused at least since the 17th century by english Civil War philosopher James Harrington, these ideas saw their most well known expression in the philosophy of Karl Marx, who saw economic change driving political change. If economic structures determined politics then the link with security is clear. Carl von Clausewitz's likened war to other areas of conflict within developed societies, such as commerce and politics: “It is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that is it different from others.”
Topic:: Security and War
Political Geography:: United States, Iran, and Germany

186. Sri Lanka's Rehabilitation Program: A New Frontier in Counter Terrorism and Counter Insurgency

Author:: Malkanthi Hettiarachchi
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: PRISM
Institution:: Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:: The liberation tigers of tamil ealam (ltte), sometimes referred to as the tamil tigers, or simply the tigers, was a separatist militant organization based in northern Sri lanka. It was founded in May 1976 by Prabhakaran and waged a violent secessionist and nationalist campaign to create an independent state in the north and east of Sri lanka for the tamil people. this campaign evolved into the Sri lankan Civil War.1 the tigers were considered one of the most ruthless insurgent and terrorist organisations in the world.2 they were vanquished by the Sri lankan armed forces in May 2009. 3 In order to rehabilitate the 11,6644 tigers who had surrendered or been taken captive, Sri lanka developed a multifaceted program to engage and transform the violent attitudes and behaviours of the tiger leaders, members and collaborators. 5 Since the end of the ltte's three-decade campaign of insurgency and terrorism, there has not been a single act of terrorism in the country. Many attribute Sri lanka's post-conflict stability to the success of the insurgent and terrorist rehabilitation program.
Topic:: War and Insurgency
Political Geography:: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sri Lanka

187. Decade of War: Enduring Lessons from a Decade of Operations

Author:: Elizabeth Young
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: PRISM
Institution:: Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:: The year 2001 began with the inauguration of a U.S. President deliberately aiming to shift the use of the military away from the numerous humanitarian and peacekeeping interventions of the 1990s toward responding to and defeating conventional threats from nation-states. The mood was optimistic, with the new U.S. national Security Strategy, recently put in place by the departing Clinton administration, citing widespread financial prosperity and conveying no sense of an imminent threat to the homeland.2 But this situation proved fragile: the events of a single day, September 11, 2001, altered the trajectory of the United States and the way it used its military over the next decade. a nation focused on countering conventional threats was now confronted by an enemy that attacked the homeland with low-tech means in asymmetric and unexpected ways—individuals armed with box-cutters using hijacked civilian aircraft.
Topic:: Security and War
Political Geography:: United States

188. Military Leaders and Global Leaders: Contrasts, Contradictions, and Opportunities

Author:: Anthony J. DiBella
Publication Date:: 09-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: PRISM
Institution:: Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:: Leadership has long been a focal point of human curiosity but has recently gathered even more attention. As globalization becomes increasingly the dominant force in political, social, and economic affairs, leaders far and wide are being called upon to take on new roles and address emergent challenges. This trend may be most prominent in the arena of national security. In particular, military leaders must now interact with a broader range of social communities as engagements span national and cultural boundaries. While in the past, national militaries or their forces or branches acted alone, most of today's engagements involve coalitions, “partners”, or joint forces. How do the traditional traits and characteristics of military leaders align with this new environment? This paper will examine several traits or characteristics of military leaders, compare them to those of other global leaders, and suggest ways to prepare military leaders for global leadership roles that go beyond parochial interests.
Topic:: Globalization and War
Political Geography:: United States

189. From Multilateral Champion to Handicapped Donor–And Back Again?

Author:: Nancy Birdsall
Publication Date:: 09-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: PRISM
Institution:: Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:: The global financial crisis triggered by the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and its aftermath in the subsequent five years has made visible and telling two new realities of the 21st century. First, the United States and its western allies no longer represent the single canonical example of the economic and political model of a free market democracy that other countries ought to strive to imitate. The crisis was triggered in the United States in part by a failure of monetary and financial regulatory policy; many emerging market economies, including China, India and Brazil, recovered relatively quickly from the global crisis in part due to so-called heterodox policies inconsistent with the U.S. model. Second, the global economy is no longer dependent on growth in the traditional western democracies; it is growth in China and other emerging market economies that has fueled the global recovery. For the first time in over 100 years, there is convergence between the per capita incomes of the richest and at least some large developing countries.
Topic:: War and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:: United States, China, and India

190. Response to the Decade of War

Author:: James Dobbins
Publication Date:: 09-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: PRISM
Institution:: Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:: Last summer, in response to a directive from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey, the Joint Staff issued a short summary of lessons learned from the past decade of military operations. The document, entitled Decade of War, Volume 1 frankly and cogently acknowledges mistakes made over this period, and particularly during the first half of the decade, that is to say between the invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 and the surge of troops into Iraq in early 2007. Among the admitted deficiencies were the failure to adequately grasp the operating environment, a reliance on conventional tactics to fight unconventional enemies, an inability to articulate a convincing public narrative, and poor interagency coordination. The document is testimony to the capacity of the American military for self-criticism and eventual correction, albeit not always in time to avoid costly setbacks.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Afghanistan, Iraq, and America

191. The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War

Author:: Jeff Rice
Publication Date:: 09-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: PRISM
Institution:: Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:: Fred Kaplan's The Insurgents is a highly successful and compelling intermingling of three stories: the rise and eventual fall of General David Petraeus; the intellectual history of counterinsurgency; and the broadening of the learning culture within the United States Military during the Iraq war. Indeed, the heroes of the book are the “insurgents” within the U.S. Army who all but overthrew the dominant paradigm of kinetic warfare in favor of ideas derived from England and France during the end of the colonial era.1 Kaplan's book picks up on the story told by Tom Ricks in The Gamble2 about how this intellectual insurgency transformed the way the U.S. fought the war in Iraq, preferring the counterinsurgency (COIN) approach to protecting civilians from insurgents and lowering their casualty rate, and building alliances in order to reduce the number of insurgents. For Kaplan this is nothing short of a profound alteration of the American way of war, one that caused enormous consternation amongst certain sectors of the military who were wedded to a more conventional approach to war.
Topic:: Government and War
Political Geography:: Afghanistan, Iraq, and America

192. The Liberation of Rome, 1944: Did Hitler Know?

Author:: Thomas Patrick Melady, Ph.D.
Publication Date:: 10-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Institution:: Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:: I arrived in Rome in October 1945. I was drafted shortly after graduating from high school the previous June. It was a whirlwind experience that included four months of basic infantry training at Camp Blanding, Florida, a few weeks in Virginia, and then I was on the boat for Italy. The second time I arrived was almost half a century later. It was August 1989. I was nominated by then-President George H.W. Bush to be the United States Ambassador to the Vatican. As I walked amongst the historic relics from Roman antiquity, my curiosity reemerged about the peaceful liberation of this city that took place so long ago. I was still perplexed by the narrative of how Rome managed to elude the nightmare of being a battleground while so many of Europe's other historic sites fell victim to the horrors of the world's second greatest war. It is a question that has intrigued me to this day.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: United States and Europe

193. The NATO Operation in Afghanistan: Results and Possible Scenarios for Russia

Author:: M. Konarovsky
Publication Date:: 10-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:: East View Information Services
Abstract:: The joint American and NATO campaign in Afghanistan which has been going on for over a decade now became the Alliance’s largest and most expensive operation. It has already sucked in over $1 trillion, claimed over 3 thousand lives (over half of them American) and left over 100 thousand wounded. As the hardest psychological test for NATO it triggered talks about its systemic crisis.
Topic:: Conflict Resolution, NATO, War, and Budget
Political Geography:: Afghanistan

194. A Proxy War in Syria

Author:: Sargon Hadaya
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:: East View Information Services
Abstract:: The regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has been demonstrating a relatively high level of tenacity amid the proxy war raging in the country for over two years now. Indeed, the authoritarian regime in Tunisia folded up in two weeks; the Mubarak regime in Egypt, in slightly over four weeks; the Colonel Qaddafi regime collapsed after six months of NATO strikes. Russian expert Prof. Edouard Ozhiganov has offered a methodologically exact comment: “Any political regime can be described as stable to the extent to which it can neutralize inside and outside pressure using its own resources and instruments.”
Topic:: NATO, Civil War, Politics, War, International Security, and Authoritarianism
Political Geography:: Libya, Syria, and Tunisia

195. Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change.

Author:: Rachael Bryson
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:: Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:: In Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change Williamson Murray differentiates between innovation and adaptation. Innovation, the focus of a previous book (with Allan R. Millett, 1998), includes peacetime advancements and learning. In contrast, adaptation is comprised of wartime changes and battlefield lessons. Murray argues that militaries able to adapt to battle conditions have a higher probability of ending the conflict as the victor. He expands on this point, writing that the United States has demonstrated a lack of adaptability in recent conflicts, and therefore the purpose of this study is to glean lessons about adaptability that may be applied to the US military.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: United States

196. Millett, Allan R. and Williamson Murray, eds. Military Effectiveness, 3 volumes. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Author:: Keith Hann
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:: Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:: Cambridge University Press has seen fit to re-release this seminal three-volume work, produced under the stewardship of Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray and originally published by Unwin Hyman in 1988. This work, covering the armies of most of the major powers in the First World War (volume one), the Interwar Period (volume two), and the Second World War (Volume three), contains essay from a veritable who's who of military historians: Earl F. Ziemke, Brian Sullivan, MacGregor Knox, Paul Kennedy, Holger H. Herwig, and many more. Well regarded upon its original release, it has been cited again and again by scholars over the past twenty-five years, both by those looking to understand the nature of military effectiveness as well as by those seeking deeper insight into a particular nation's armed forces, and a reissue is more than welcome.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: New York

197. The Crisis of Europe

Author:: Timothy Garton Ash
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: After World War II, Europe began a process of peaceful political unification unprecedented there and unmatched anywhere else. But the project began to go wrong in the early 1990s, when western European leaders started moving too quickly toward a flawed monetary union. Now, as Europe faces a still-unresolved debt crisis, its drive toward unification has stalled -- and unless fear or foresight gets it going again, the union could slide toward irrelevance.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Europe

198. From Cold War to Hot Peace: The Habit of American Force

Author:: Richard K. Betts
Publication Date:: 09-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Political Science Quarterly
Institution:: Academy of Political Science
Abstract:: WHEN THE UNITED STATES BECAME MORE SECURE, it became more forceful. Since the Cold War ended, it has spent far more than any other country or coalition to build armed forces; it has sent forces into combat more frequently than it did in the era of much bigger threats to national security; and it has done so much more often than any other country. The United States has been, quite simply, “the most militarily active state in the world.” To many in the mainstream of American politics, this is as it should be, because the United States has the right and responsibility to lead the world—or push it—in the right direction. To others, more alarmed by the pattern, U.S. behavior has evolved into “permanent war.”
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: United States

199. Partisan Balance: Why Political Parties Don't Kill the U.S. Constitutional System

Author:: Paul Frymer
Publication Date:: 09-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Political Science Quarterly
Institution:: Academy of Political Science
Abstract:: The Constitution of the United States provides the federal government with 536 elected officials who come from 536 different electoral districts. David Mayhew asks whether this constitutional system is democratically fair. Given the 536 differently constituted and independent electoral bases, there is a real potential for what Mayhew labels both "dissonance" and "skew" in terms of which voters are represented by government activity.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: United States

200. Francis Lieber on Public War

Author:: Rotem Giladi
Publication Date:: 11-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Institution:: The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Abstract:: This paper examines Francis Lieber's concept of modern war as “public war” — in the Code he drafted for the 1863 Union Armies and in his earlier writings. Though Lieber was not the first to engage the distinction between private and public war, his treatment of modern war as exclusively public nevertheless deserves special attention. It became, in time, a foundational concept of the 19 th Century effort to modernize and humanize the laws of war. Today, it remains embedded, albeit implicit, in contemporary international humanitarian law and its paradigmatic interstate war outlook.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Germany

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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS