The Human Price of Reparations

Post-1918 Germany was gripped by severe foof shortages that devastated the health of urban children in particular. German politicans and officials became increasingly convinced that a state of near famine and the accompanying scourges of social and political disorder could not be adequately addressed given the demands placed on public finances and the wider economy by the reparations regime. While the British reacted by counselling a moderation of the reparations regime, the French accused Germany of instrumentalizing domestic crisis to undermine reparations and thereby compromise the Versailles Settlement. French sanctions culminated in an invasion of the Ruhr District in January 1923, which served to create a devastating famine in the region and to intensify popular antipathy in Germany to the reparations regime. The article concludes by considering briefly links between the perceived perfidy of reparations and the subsequent resonance of Nazi ideology and policy.     

The Reparations Debate

This paper examines the reparations question from the perspective of its role in the post-1924 period. Particular attention is paid to the work of Albert Ritschl on the reparations regimes between 1924 and 1934. He stresses the competition between Germany's public and private debts and the importance of Germany's role as a sovereign debtor that could not commit national suicide by fulfilling its obligations at any social and political price but that sought to maintain its credit by giving primacy to its private obligations at the expense of reparations. There was some learning from the past after 1945. The London Debt Agreement of 1953 precluded a conflict between private and public debts by an exclusive concentration on private debts and the restoration of German credit.     

The Reparations Debate

This paper examines the reparations question from the perspective of its role in the post-1924 period. Particular attention is paid to the work of Albert Ritschl on the reparations regimes between 1924 and 1934. He stresses the competition between Germany's public and private debts and the importance of Germany's role as a sovereign debtor that could not commit national suicide by fulfilling its obligations at any social and political price but that sought to maintain its credit by giving primacy to its private obligations at the expense of reparations. There was some learning from the past after 1945. The London Debt Agreement of 1953 precluded a conflict between private and public debts by an exclusive concentration on private debts and the restoration of German credit.     

Reparations in the Long Run

This paper explores how policy-makers during the Second World War attempted to “learn the lessons” of history from the reparations settlement imposed after the First World War. It shows how these lessons were developed and articulated in the formulation of, in particular, American foreign policy, and also their consequences for foreign policy during and after the Second World War. The paper demonstrates the important role of European advisors in shaping American policy, thereby illustrating that not all American lessons of history were born in the USA. It also draws out how many of these lessons have found an echo in the historiography of German reparations that has emerged over the past fifty years. In both periods the issues of enforcement and compliance, the issues that concern us generally in this volume, dominated the debate between advisors and policy-makers.     

Sir John Bradbury and the Reparations Commission, 1920-25

This article looks at a neglected episode during the work of the Reparations Commission of 1920-25 leading up to the Dawes Plan of 1924, when the British delegate to the Commission, Sir John Bradbury, drew up a plan to reschedule German reparation payments in an attempt to take the venom out of the debate over these payments. It takes as its documentary basis the previously unpublished papers of Sir John in his role as Britain's representative on the Reparations Commission from 1920 to 1925. The article concludes that Bradbury's plan had the potential to defuse at least some of the problems encountered in the political and economic results of the reparations policy and that it made a significant contribution to the thinking that emerged in the Dawes Plan.     

J.M. Keynes and the Personal Politics of Reparations: Part 2

The second part of this article shows that John Maynard Keynes worked closely with the German Finance and Foreign ministries as a supposed neutral expert in October 1922. He supported passive resistance to the French in the Ruhr without regard to its effects on the currency, secretly collaborated in writing the German reparations note of June 1923, and then praised his own work in a weekly that he controlled. Keynes opposed the 1929 Young Plan that re-scheduled the German debt and declined to accept modern thinking on overcoming the transfer problem.     

J.M. Keynes and the Personal Politics of Reparations: Part 1

Some observers still regard John Maynard Keynes’ polemic against the Treaty of Versailles as serious economic analysis. In fact, Keynes continued to play an unacknowledged partisan role in reparation diplomacy during the 1920s. He suggests in a memoir that he never saw the Hamburg banker Carl Melchior alone again after October 1919. Using German sources not exploited by Keynes’ principal biographers, this analysis shows that the intimate relationship continued. Melchior drew Keynes into the highest governing circles of the Reich. Keynes supported the 1922–1923 German hyper-inflation on political grounds and helped craft the German reparations note of June 1923.     

油价上涨对世界经济的影响

近两三年来,石油价格持续攀高。今年4月4日,纽约商品交易所轻质原油期货价格达到每桶58.28美元,突破历史纪录,为1983年该期货开始交易以来的最高收盘价。由于油价仍然对世界经济有着重大影响,此次较大幅度的油价上涨引起了世界的关注。     

国际人权公约与人权保护——国内司法实施的分析

国际人权公约设定了国家对个人的义务。在国内层面上 ,缔约国应采取立法、司法等措施履行国际人权公约规定的义务。缔约国国内层面的实施是国际人权公约实施的基础和关键。国际人权公约能否在缔约国国内法院得到直接适用 ,是由各国国内法予以决定的。按照我国法律 ,国际人权公约基本上不能在国内法院得以直接适用。     

The Elusive Ontology of Human Rights

What are human rights? After looking at the reasons why the ontology of human rights should not be reduced to the human rights legal infrastructure, and noting that the origin of human rights in “natural law” is no longer a widely persuasive answer, I shall consider a number of recently popular alternatives. My purpose in examining these is to argue that the “what” of human rights resides in philosophical claims about the value of the human person. The particular approaches considered all depend upon a “high anthropology”. I argue that contemporary accounts take this high anthropology from historical sources they no longer think viable, without giving an alternative account of why it should be held. Such an account is necessary, however, for human rights to be an authoritative political doctrine.     

试析20世纪50年代中后期日本与东南亚各国战后赔偿问题的解决

日本法西斯挑起的侵略战争给东南亚各国人民造成了巨大损失 ,日本理应给予赔偿 ,在日本战败前夕及战后初期 ,各受害国纷纷提出了赔偿要求 ,国际社会也提出日本必须予以赔偿 ,并制定了一系列有关赔偿的原则和方案。但是 ,由于冷战的出现与加剧、中国革命的胜利 ,美国对日政策发生了根本性的转变。由战后初期的铲除日本赖以发动侵略战争的经济基础、复兴周边各国的惩罚政策向扶植日本、使其充当防共“防波堤” ①的宽容和重建政策转变。赔偿问题一度搁浅。然而 ,到了20世纪50年代中后期 ,一直久拖不决的赔偿问题终于以协商的方式得以解决。那…     

The Human Security Tale of Two Europes

If the concept of human security is to be meaningful, it must be applicable to any region, developing or developed. Such was the point of departure for authors of two reports on Western and Eastern Europe that were commissioned by UNESCO as part of a series of regional reports aimed at detailing the human security situations in different regions. The present article, compiled by the co-authors of both reports, summarises the reports and critically revisits this premise. By exploring the notion that human security varies according to national, regional and local settings, thus gaining meaning from the context in which the framework is applied, it poses a number of critical questions about the universality of the concept of human security. It argues for a supple concept of human security capable of identifying vulnerabilities in a variety of settings and adapting legitimate responses to them. By exploring the applicability of human security in Eastern and Western Europe it sets out to test the limits of the concept and to contribute to ongoing debate about “broad” and “narrow” conceptions of human security and addresses the criticism of the concept as ideologically skewed. The paper first addresses the subjective question of what human security means in the Western and Eastern European contexts before outlining in broad terms the objective question of what is concretely taking place in Europe. It concludes by suggesting that human security actually lends itself equally to the developed world where mid- or large-scale physical violence is less common as a source of insecurity, concluding that many of the threats faced are of similar nature, if of varying degrees of severity.     

高油价背景下韩国产业政策走向及对中国的启示

石油作为一种基础能源产品,目前约占全球能源消费的40%,它的价格变动牵动着经济的每个领域,2002年以来的国际高油价显出固定化特征,石油的供应趋紧将会是未来世界面临的问题,由于能源消费增长率高于经济增长率、单位GDP能耗较高;能源对石油的依赖水平高于发达国家;能源消费集中在制造业和运输业;能源的97%、石油的100%依赖于进口等问题的存在,对韩国提出了严峻挑战,给韩国的能源安全造成了极大压力。为此,韩国提出了能源自立、调整产业结构、从需求角度提高能效、从供给角度扩大新能源、再生能源等替代能源的开发和普及、大力支持环保型汽车的开发等产业政策目标。     

The Impact of Pro-Government Militias on Human Rights Violations

New data show that between 1982 and 2007, in over 60 countries governments were linked to and cooperated with informal armed groups within their own borders. Given the prevalence of these linkages, we ask how such links between governments and informal armed groups influence the risk of repression. We draw on principal-agent arguments to explore how issues of monitoring and control help understanding of the impact of militias on human rights violations. We argue that such informal agents increase accountability problems for the governments, which is likely to worsen human rights conditions for two reasons. First, it is more difficult for governments to control and to train these militias, and they may have private interests in the use of violence. Second, informal armed groups allow governments to shift responsibility and use repression for strategic benefits while evading accountability. Using a global dataset from 1982 to 2007, we show that pro-government militias increase the risk of repression and that the presence of militias also affects the type of violations that we observe.     

Human Security: The Making of a UN Ideology

Inspired by the conclusions of the United Nations Intellectual History Project, this article seeks to enrich the ongoing discussion on the role of ideas in UN activities. The focus here is on security, an issue often regarded as the organisation's raison d'être. The article argues that over the past two decades the ideology of human security has been the driving normative force behind the global policies advocated by the UN in the area of security. The first part analyses the UN's official discourse, and demonstrates the political importance that it ascribes to the concept of human security. The second section examines a set of global policies that illustrate how the world body has sought to put the principles of human security into practice. While recognising that these policies fall short of the ambitions articulated in UN rhetoric, the article suggests that they have opened a small but very real breach in the epistemic framework underlying the traditional conception of security.     

Human Trafficking: The Nadir of an Unholy Trinity

Terrorism, corruption, and international organized crime, a very “unholy trinity,” which globalization has at once enabled and encouraged, represent the most dangerous security threats to the developing democracies of Europe and the Eurasian region. While neither as lethal as the first order effects of terrorism, nor as corrosive to one’s confidence in government as state corruption, international organized crime’s trafficking of human beings can destroy the very “soul” of a state. Human trafficking – the commodification of human beings – represents a modern form of slavery, exploits and ruins women, and can kill. No nation can unilaterally defend itself against this threat.     

The 8~(th) Sino-German Seminar on Human Rights

This year’s October coincided with the 34th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Germany. Mr. Li Beihai, Vice-President of the Chinese Association for International Understanding(CAFIU) headed a delegation to attend …     

UNDP《2004年阿拉伯社会发展报告》

自2002年起,UNDP 连续三年发表了关于阿拉伯社会发展状况的报告。最新发表的《2004年阿拉伯社会发展报告》主要讲述了阿拉伯国家社会发展的现状和变化,指出当前阿拉伯社会的发展面临着广泛、深刻与复杂的危机,因此迫切需要在阿拉伯世界中进行一场完整的改革。当前,在来自方方面面的压力和利益驱动下, 阿拉伯世界全面的社会改革正在缓步推进。在所有阻碍改革的因素中,社会生活中的政治限制已经成为最突出的制约因素。未来只有充分调动阿拉伯社会中的思想上和行动上的潜力,才能够使阿拉伯世界的未来拨云见日。现在摘译部分重要内容如下: