Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
Going beyond the mainstream thinking, the negative images of Americans living abroad, alternative social spaces fostering radicalization and using the wrong targeting approach against a terrorist network could be considered important catalysts leading to radicalization and terrorist violence.
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
The Pakistan government's peace negotiations with the TTP appear to be an exercise in futility as the group and its allies are anti-democratic, fighting to overthrow the system. This is further complicated by the government's confusing and over-simplistic approach and the disconnect between the government and the military leadership.
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
Colombia has witnessed an unprecedented turn of events since 2012; never has the government gone so far in peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), better known as FARC. Yet, never have the Colombian public been so sceptical about these ongoing negotiations.
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
The 2013 hostage sieges in Kenya and Algeria indicate that African jihadist groups are cooperating with one another even as their leaderships wage internal power struggles. Recent events in Iraq are likely to accentuate this trend, by prompting younger commanders to carry out glory-seeking operations in defiance of their chain of command.
This paper examines American policy regarding regional security arrangements (RSAs) in Asia. It argues that it is American perceptions of regional interest in such RSAs and of the compatibility of the goals of regional partners with those of the United States, which eventually shape American policy. After discussing the potential value and cost of RSAs, it suggests that actual policy choices are shaped largely as a reaction to regional states' motivations and policies. Since in Asia, there was limited functional pooling effect to be gained from RSAs, changes in American policies reflected much more a reaction to changes in regional interest in such arrangements. This interaction is demonstrated through a review of post-Cold War developments regarding US RSA policy, distinguishing between the early years of transition to unipolarity and the erosion of unipolarity since the late 1990s. These are also compared to earlier American policy regarding RSAs during the Cold War.
Why do citizens support democracy under an authoritarian regime that has been waging a protracted civil war? This paper explores the attitude toward democracy expressed by urbanites who were protected by the incumbent, by employing the Asia Barometer survey data collected during the Nepali civil war. Our empirical finding is that citizens' favorable attitude toward democracy is fostered by economic downturn and deterioration in security. In Nepal, civil war weakened relations between the capital's residents and rural peasants as the rebels extended their influence in the countryside and shrank the urban economic sectors. Rebel infiltration into Kathmandu furthermore posed a great threat to the residents.
What explains patterns in North Korea's own coverage of nuclear issues? The conventional wisdom assumes that North Korea focuses its attention on the United States and that changes in the administrations in the United States and South Korea influence such rhetoric, yet this remains largely untested. Content analysis using daily English news reports from the Korean Central News Agency from 1997 through 2012 provides an explicit base for how the regime attempts to frame nuclear issues for a foreign audience. References to the United States positively correlate with nuclear reference while findings regarding US and South Korean administrations conflict with the conventional wisdom. References to the Kims also negatively correlate with nuclear references with variation after Kim Jong Il's death. More broadly this analysis suggests the possible leverage of analyzing North Korea's own materials.
Why did Japan begin scientific whaling, a policy that benefits few domestically and alienates many around the world? In this essay, I argue that Japan's scientific whaling regime was formed as a result of a 'two-level game' between President Reagan and Prime Minister Nakasone. Although Reagan was faced with a unified, anti-whaling Congress, he himself was not much concerned about the issue. Nakasone was also not particularly concerned about whaling, and he initially was faced with a Diet that was divided on how to deal with whaling (although it became less divided over time). Ultimately, these circumstances led Japan to develop the scientific whaling regime that persists to this day.
This book by Kent Calder successfully demonstrates the growing geopolitical ties between oil and gas producers and consumers around the central Eurasian continent, which spreads from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and the former Soviet Union to India, China, South Korea and Japan; this vast area he terms the New Silk Road. According to Calder, these ties are being institutionalized, a development he terms the 'new continentalism'. This is brought by a series of critical junctures in geopolitics and the growing economic needs of oil and gas producers and consumers in the region. These junctures signify major policy changes caused by international or domestic factors, such as, the oil crises of the 1970s; Deng Xiaoping's Four Modernizations in China, which started in 1978; India's financial crisis, which led to economic reforms from 1991; the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991; and the rise of Vladimir Putin in 1999. These subsequently brought about a series of politico-economic realignments; nationally, regionally, and internationally, a pre-requisite to the rise of the new continentalism.
Japan's nationalization of the Diaoyu Islands in 2012 reignited the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute that had been relatively quiet since the 1970s,making news headlines yet again. Renewed attention to the dispute prompted the publication of a number of books in Japan and China, including this book, claiming to be 'the first academic book in more than a decade focusing exclusively on the Senkaku issue....'While Eldridge's book has some positive points, such as addressing declassified information relating to the Diaoyu Islands in the period between the San Francisco Peace Treaty (SFPT) in 1951 and the Reversion Treaty in1971, the book has some critical shortcomings.