The Struggle for Reform in Iran

Since the election of the reformist President Muhammad Khatami in 1997, the conflict between the reformers and the religious conservatives has intensified. The reformers command the majority in the city councils and, more importantly, in parliament, but they have been unable to carry through their proclaimed agenda for social and political reforms. This is mostly because the conservatives, who control most of the institutions of power like the army, the security forces, and the judiciary, have blocked the reforms. They have banned most of the pro-reform newspapers, jailed newspaper editors, journalists, and secular intellectuals. They have even harassed and jailed parliamentarians. Khatami's government, however, has succeeded in improving Iran's relations with the West, Russia, China, and the Persian Gulf states. In Iran a central issue is how to increase the constitutional powers of the popularly elected president and curb the almost unlimited authority of the non-elected supreme leader.     

A Really Hard Case: Iranian Space Ambitions and the Prospects for U.S. Engagement

On 27 October 2005, the first Iranian satellite—Sinah-1—was launched. The satellite failed soon after launch, but it represented a significant technological step by the Islamic Republic, and was also a statement of intent on behalf of Iranian space ambitions. Current and projected Iranian space capabilities are highly dependent upon foreign technologies and expertise, but the Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile programmes offer a glimpse of how Iran's space programme may yet develop. This essay provides an overview of Iranian space capabilities, and places it within contemporary Iranian domestic and strategic contexts. It also offers an insight into how Iran's space programme is organized, and lastly, offers a view on how best the United States might influence Iran's space programme.     

Between deepening and widening: Role conflict in Germany's enlargement policy

Although Germany is the principal proponent of the EU's eastern enlargement, it has at times found it difficult to reconcile this aim with its desire to promote deeper EU integration. The use of role theory illustrates these conflicting priorities. West Germany's post‐war role in European politics was that of a promoter of deeper integration; the deepening of West European integration thus became part of the self‐conception of West German foreign policy‐making élites. The changed situation after 1990 placed new demands on German foreign policy makers. West Germany's traditional self‐conception as an integration deepener conflicted with the desire on behalf of unified Germany to press for EU enlargement. However, although German policy makers employed a variety of strategies in order to pursue their incongruous foreign‐policy aims, their principal concern remained with the deepening of western integration.     

Rising Israeli–Iranian tensions

Tensions between Israel and Iran have increased since 10 February, when Israel shot down an Iranian-made drone launched from Syria and attacked military targets there, including Iranian installations. Policymakers in both Israel and the United States believe that Iran's strategy is to make Syria a platform for war against Israel, and broadly favour rolling back Iran in Syria. In this light, the prospect of a regional war looms larger.     

Mongolia's evolving security strategy: omni-enmeshment and balance of influence

Abstract

With the publication of its 2010 National Security Concept and its 2011 Foreign Policy Concept, Ulaanbaatar has formalised a shift in foreign policy that has been readily apparent since 2000. Whereas Mongolia's foreign policy for the 1990s was formulated around an omni-enmeshment strategy, its foreign policy from 2000 onward is best conceptualised as an amalgam of omni-enmeshment and balance of influence. Ulaanbaatar's new foreign policy strategy implicitly identifies China as the country's largest security concern. This sense of a China ‘challenge’ is mirrored in Ulaanbaatar's post-2000 foreign policy relations.     

Voice of America and Iran, 1949–1953: US liberal developmentalism,propaganda and the Cold War

The administration of President Harry S. Truman used Voice of America radio to promote Iranian ‘liberal developmentalism’. Radio propaganda joined economic assistance, military aid, and other information programs to promote Western‐style capitalism and to repel Communist appeals in Iran. But President Dwight D. Eisenhower abandoned Truman's gradualist Iran policy in favor of covert action, a seemingly more expedient solution to perceived Iranian political instability. The US‐British engineered coup in 1953 to overthrow the nationalistic Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq revealed the shallowness of US commitments to liberal reform in Iran and highlighted Americans' willingness to undermine Iranian sovereignty in order to preserve US security interests in the Middle East.     

‘The rock that can't be moved’: China's revised geostrategies in Myanmar

ABSTRACT

Since 2011, Myanmar has undertaken a series of domestic and foreign policy reforms, including democratisation and peacebuilding, before and after the watershed November 2015 elections in the country. These reform processes have called into question whether China, which has been Myanmar's dominant great power neighbour throughout the previous era of military government in the country formerly known as Burma, would find its strategic position eroding as Myanmar further opens to the international community. However, the concept of China ‘losing’ diplomatic ground to other actors, including the West, in Myanmar implies a zero-sum game that does not adequately address Beijing's still-formidable geostrategic presence vis-à-vis its southern neighbour. China has now started to implement a more multi-faceted, ‘resilience network’-building approach to maintaining its special status in Myanmar's foreign policy, a situation which will persist as Myanmar continues its uncertain path towards further reform.     

Comment on Donald A. Krueckeberg's “The Lessons of John Locke or Hernando de Soto: What if Your Dreams Come True?”

Abstract

Krueckeberg's critique of de Soto's paean to homeownership in Third World countries is well taken; his use of John Locke's rationale for private ownership provides support for the critique. But then Krueckeberg puts forward a proposal to extend homeowner‐ship benefits through a National Homestead Trust, with Individual Development Accounts or a tax like Social Security, to help renters accumulate a down payment. Abandoning a broader approach, Krueckeberg reverts to supporting homeownership as a central tenet of U.S. housing policy and wants to extend its real and perceived benefits to low‐income households. He recognizes the shortcomings of U.S. property law and tax policy that may leave low‐income owners with threats to shelter security.

To provide security for low‐income residents, fundamental changes are required. Attention should be paid to protection from evictions and from foreclosure; income/employment support; guarantee of services from utilities to schools; and, as needed, direct subsidies for housing.     

Iran under Rouhani: increasing constraint

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, though easily re-elected last May, faces a more confrontational United States, a more aggressive Saudi Arabia, and lower expectations of economic benefits from the nuclear deal than he did in his first term. These factors are emboldening hardliners in Iran's non-elected institutions, who are likely to constrain Rouhani's reformist agenda in both the domestic and international arenas.     

Toleration,neutrality, and exemption

ABSTRACT

I focus on some controversial features of Peter Balint’s stimulating and provocative reassessment of the place of toleration in contemporary diverse societies. First, I question his argument that we must enlarge the concept of toleration to include indifference and approval if toleration is to be compatible with state neutrality. Secondly, I suggest that his idea of active neutrality of intent risks encountering the same difficulties as neutrality of outcome, although these will be mitigated the more the state’s neutrality takes a ‘hands-off’ form. Thirdly, while accepting his claim that exemptions depart from neutrality insofar as they attribute a significance to religious and conscientious convictions that they deny to mere preferences, I argue that that departure is not arbitrary and remains within the spirit of neutrality of intent.     

Examining the immanent dilemma of small states in the Asia-Pacific: the strategic triangle between New Zealand,the US and China

ABSTRACT

Small states throughout the Asia-Pacific are confronted by a growing dilemma over how to balance their traditional security ties with the US and rapidly growing trade with China. This gives Washington and Beijing potential leverage over small states to use within their competition with one another. This article explores the implications of this for New Zealand – a small South Pacific state that prides itself on maintaining an independent foreign policy. Situated within the small state literature, it utilises a material-based strategic triangle to illustrate the fundamental facets of New Zealand's position. Relatedly, the article examines how Wellington has managed its burgeoning relations with China and the US over the past decade and critically considers New Zealand's independent foreign policy. It finds that New Zealand has adopted a mixed set of strategies to manage its position between the US and China, closely aligning itself with Washington while remaining nonaligned on some key security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. New Zealand has certainly not opted for neutrality. The article concludes that New Zealand and other small states must remain vigilant, may want to consider alternative strategies of alignment, and outlines a number of areas where additional research could prove fruitful.     

The Persian Gulf War's impact on Americans' political information

Does war increase Americans' normally low levels of political information? Data from the Center for Political Studies' Political Consequences of War Study, which plumbed Americans' information about the Persian Gulf War, suggest it does, albeit slightly. Criticisms of mass public competence to influence foreign policy lose some of their sting, but there remain grounds for concern about the quality of public opinion. Old knowledge aids in the acquisition of new, and most people were too uninformed to benefit much from intensive media coverage of the Gulf crisis.     

Domestic actors and agendas in Chinese aid policy

Abstract

As China's aid has increased, so has scrutiny by the international development and foreign policy community. Despite recognition that foreign aid policy is a result of domestic political contests, the existing literature tends to overlook Chinese debates about the purpose of aid, and how that purpose should be achieved. This paper argues that examining these debates shows that Chinese aid is not a well-considered element of an overarching strategy. Rather, where foreign aid is considered relevant vis-à-vis China's goals, its use is hotly contested. Competing actors' varying agendas, rather than any coherent strategy, underpin inchoate aid projects.     

Japan's peacekeeping policy: Strategic calculation or internalization of an international norm?

Abstract

With the Gulf War as a trigger, Japan began to make a humanitarian contribution by dispatching the Self Defense Forces to United Nations peacekeeping operations. Given Japan's strong hesitation for participation in the past, Japan's peacekeeping policy presents an intriguing challenge to examine the factors for a preference change and sustained compliance. By investigating Japan's peacekeeping policies towards East Timor and Haiti, this article examines how Japan's behavior and preferences were influenced by either internalized norms or cost/benefit calculations. While norm-driven behavior is considered to be incompatible with strategic calculated behavior, the article demonstrates that these two factors can co-exist.     

Targeting the suburban urbanites: Marketing central‐city housing

Abstract

This article explores target marketing as a means to identify which middle‐income suburbanites may relocate to central cities. The most targetable populations reside near central cities and lead urban lifestyles. We term such people “suburban urbanites.” Geodemography, a method combining population and location, is used to classify suburban urbanites using data from Claritas Inc., a target marketer. Claritas divides the nation's neighborhoods into lifestyle clusters by linking population density to demographic and consumptive patterns.

A case study of metropolitan Washington, DC, illustrates how target marketing works. We find that more than half the region's middle‐class, Claritas‐defined urbanites live outside the District of Columbia. Thus, a large market of potential city dwellers lives in Washington's suburbs. Target marketing enhances the statistical approaches traditionally used in policy making and may help cities understand and develop their comparative advantages.     

Against Humanitarian Impunity: Rethinking Responsibility for Displacement and Disaster in Northern Uganda

Abstract

Given that humanitarian organizations can often be responsible for enabling, prolonging or intensifying violence and conflict through their interventions into war zones, it is important that these organizations, despite their presumed neutrality and beneficence, be held accountable for the deleterious consequences of their actions. The case of northern Uganda will be used to demonstrate how humanitarian agencies have made possible the government's counterinsurgency, including its policy of mass forced displacement and internment, which has led to a vast humanitarian crisis. The Ugandan government policy will be assessed as a war crime, making aid agencies accessories to this crime. This case study is used as an example to highlight that processes which demand the post-conflict accountability of those responsible for violence may be dramatically incomplete, and unjust, if they do not include the humanitarian agencies. In conclusion it will be suggested that if humanitarian organizations built popular accountability mechanisms into their daily operations this might prevent them from being complicit with egregious violence in the first place.     

The domestic politics of international development in South Korea: stakeholders and competing policy discourses

Abstract

The paper examines the domestic politics surrounding South Korea's foreign aid policy. It delineates the institutional characteristics and strategic interests of key government and non-government stakeholders, and suggests an analytical framework to comprehend the country's aid policy regime. It suggests that two competing policy discourses exist – one emphasising ‘intellectual leadership’ and the other ‘ethical leadership’ as the key principle of aid policy. In practice, the country's political leadership promulgates a complex amalgam of these discourses in alignment with their own political imperatives and interests. The paper discusses ‘Global Saemaul Undong’ as such an example under the incumbent Park Geun-Hye administration.     

Irving in Australia

David Irving, the British revisionist historian, has recently been in Australia promoting his latest book, Churchill's War, probably his most crudely anti‐jewish work to date.     

Neoconservatism,US–China conflict,and Australia's ‘great and powerful friends’ dilemma

Abstract

Following its time-honoured ‘great and powerful friends’ foreign policy tradition, Australia has been cultivating close ties simultaneously with the United States and China. Yet, as a rivalry between the two powers apparently looms large, Australia faces an acute dilemma. While the rise of China and the question of Taiwan are often cited as main causes of US–China discord, this article argues that the American neoconservative policy on China, underpinned by a belief in both military strength and moral clarity, is integral to this growing competition and is, by extension, partly responsible for the emergence of Australia's predicament. To avoid such a difficult choice, the article suggests that Australia should strive to curb the policy influence of neoconservatism both in the United States and at home by pursuing a more independent foreign policy, making clear its strategic postures on US–China relations, and helping establish a trilateral strategic forum between Australia, the United States, and China.     

Anglo-American Intelligence and the Soviet War Scare: The Untold Story

Abstract

During the Soviet war scare of the 1980s, British intelligence shared vital information from KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky with its American partners. The US intelligence community, however, was suspicious of the message and the messenger, dismissing Soviet ‘war talk’ as disinformation. Some officials even believed that the British had tweaked their reports to influence US policy. President Ronald Reagan, however, on the advice of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, listened to Gordievsky rather than his intelligence advisors. The war scare had a profound influence on Reagan's thinking about nuclear war, Kremlin fears, and Soviet–American relations that led him to seek a new détente with Moscow and the end of the Cold War through diplomacy rather than confrontation.?Subsequent events and post-Cold War revelations vindicated Gordievsky. Reagan sought his advice on the eve of his first summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev and later expressed his gratitude during a private meeting in the Oval Office.