In this article, the author answers the question: Where did America's Founders get their ideas? The essay delves deeply into the origins of the American political tradition by exploring the legacies of Medieval and Renaissance Europe and the transmission of these ideas across time and space. Of particular note is the role of “civic humanism” and “civic virtue,” ideas that can be traced to Niccolò Machiavelli and conveyed into the English political tradition by James Harrington and others. This understanding of republicanism helped to shape the views of America's Founders and those who came after them.
Tensions have long been a feature of the international relations of the Middle East. After the 2011 Arab uprisings, regional instability is being driven by a confluence of three interrelated developments. First, the weakening role of the United States as a power balancer in the Middle East, combined with the larger global context, has provided assumptions about threats and new opportunities for local and other actors to pursue strategic and foreign policy objectives that have deepened tensions and regional competition. Second, there has been a juxtaposing of power multipolarity with ideological multipolarity, itself a source of increased instability, with two of the regional powers, Iran and Saudi Arabia, fanning opposing sectarian flames to further their respective strategic objectives. Third, this strategic competition is being played out in several newly weakened or collapsing states such as Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Similarly, the regional powers’ competition in previously weakened states, such as Lebanon and Iraq, has intensified due to the acquisition of new, sectarian dimensions. These developments are likely to perpetuate instability and tensions in the Middle East for the foreseeable future.
In analyzing the “Surge” in Iraq during 2007 and 2008, the article contends that the campaign contributed greatly to Iraq's stabilizing, and did so because the “surge of ideas” facilitated crucial variables: population separation, both by U.S. forces and from ethnic cleansing; local Sunni insurgents’ reconciliation; a new, “networked” Special Operations Forces campaign, and a politically self-reinforcing impression that the United States had recommitted to Iraq. Ultimately, however, the essay concludes, the Surge needed to be more ambitious to be endurable.In January 2007 President George W. Bush announced the “new way forward in Iraq.”1 He deployed 30,000 additional troops, replaced the commander, and endorsed a new counterinsurgency strategy. The campaign that followed became known as the Surge: these five additional brigades fanned out to Baghdad and neighboring provinces; and a “surge of ideas” shifted the goal to protecting the Iraqi population, instead of transitioning responsibility for security to Iraqi forces. The strategy, President Bush announced, was to reduce the violence enough so that “daily life will improve, Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas.”2
How should foreign policy analysts understand the American response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014? Despite widespread bipartisan recognition that Eastern European states, from the Baltic States to the Black Sea, were experiencing their most severe crisis since at least the end of the Cold War, the United States responded with little military support to the region. Even though all sides agreed on the need for a larger response, the tepid reaction to the Russian invasion was due to the partisan divide over the means of addressing the issue. This divide foreclosed the two main options for the President: a redeployment of forces from the United States or a larger military and budget. This disagreement over the means, rather than the ends, counter intuitively prevented a response for which both parties expressed support.
Under the administration of Taiwan's first woman president, Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan-Japan relations are likely to deepen while relying, as far as possible, on non-governmental and quasi-governmental working relationships. This reflects the Japanese government's desire to avoid friction with China while endeavoring to protect its strategic and economic interests by partnering with Taiwan. Concern about these developments is already evident in the People's Republic of China.
China's hard line and repressive policies have often stood in the way of its acceptance on the international stage. This legacy has nowhere been more evident than with respect to its national minority policies applied in Tibet. While China long ago in the 1951 17-point Agreement agreed to provide autonomy to Tibetans it has never delivered on this promise, offering repression and assimilation instead. In nearly every diplomatic outing, as was especially evident in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China's Tibet policies have been an issue. With the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the 2008 Tibetan Memorandum on Genuine Autonomy for the Tibetan People China surely has excellent guidance for a more humane policy to meet Tibetan concerns. With reference to its historical legacy and international standards, this article encourages China to embrace such policy reform.
The contradiction between trans-boundary issues largely driven by globalisation and conventional authority based on sovereign
state leads to the problem of global governance. Regionalisation emerges as a process in which nation states within geographic
proximity take collective measures to cope with problems of global governance. With the increasing tendencies of regional
cooperation, a new issue thus arises as to the interaction among regions. In fact, the more regionalized the world, the more
necessary, enabled and willing for regions to construct connections with each other. Inter-regionalism and trans-regionalism
therefore become a further step which regional blocks take to build one layer in the hierarchy of global governance. The paper
takes the Asia–Europe Meeting as the case to analyze the above thesis. In the first section, it presents the observation that
the global system is characterized with regionalisation, then analyzes the coordination problems facing regions interdependent
upon one another and then formulates a modified framework for analysis of the Asia–Europe Meeting. In the second section of
rational design, it analyzes the process in which Europe and Asia rationally establish the cooperation structure of ASEM as
a means to tackle the coordination issues between the two regions. In the third section of governing globalisation, it discusses
the effects and implications of ASEM’s contribution towards global governance mainly in ways of rationalizing international
relations and strengthening regional identity in the era of globalisation.
We discuss global options for initiatives intended to ameliorate adverse impacts of visa and work permit systems used by national
governments around the world. We first describe and document some of their effects, noting the relative lack of other research
work on these issues. We then discuss proposals for a new and supplemental global visa structure which have been made as part
of the Mode 4 GATS negotiations in the WTO, suggesting that the GATS/WTO may be an imperfect institutional location for negotiating
on these matters. We then evaluate other approaches, including what realistically could be possible if a new body specifically
created for global negotiation in the area were to be used.
Inthis article a number of general principles and practical tasks awaiting South African publishers are discussed by Andries Walter Oliphant, editor of Staffrider. Some of the points discussed are:
the need for all South African publishers to underwrite non-racist democratic values;
the need for South African publishers to advocate and defend the right of the reading public to have access to all published material and information;
the need for publishers to counter the history of injustice, ignorance, racial prejudice and oppression by exposing and criticising any manifestation of it in society, the state and the media; and
to give space to subordinate classes, such as workers and gender groups, to articulate their interests and conceptions of what freedom and social justice might mean to them.
*This article is part of a project on infectious diseases, security and ethics sponsored by the Australian Research Council. For their valuable feedback on earlier versions, the author thanks Simon Rushton, Stefan Elbe and the Global Society reviewers.View all notesThe worldwide spread of drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis (TB) bacteria is out of control and incidents of harder-to-cure TB illness are rising. This article explores the present and potential impact of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB)—a deadly, contagious and virtually incurable disease—on human health and state capacity. Detected cases of XDR-TB can occasion the implementation of extraordinary control measures, because some governments are sufficiently fearful of the disease as to frame it as an issue of national security. Such framing has the potential to precipitate more financial resources and stronger legal powers to bolster public health, but it might also increase the risk that emergency response measures will be counterproductive and/or unjust. Framing XDR-TB as a security issue is empirically plausible, and doing so is a good thing provided that increased response efforts promote rather than hinder the provision of universal access to adequate TB treatment over the long term. Two disease control measures that are motivated particularly by security concerns are border control and patient isolation. This article offers an assessment of each measure by reference to public health ethics in order to differentiate good and bad securitisation. 相似文献
The ‘coordinate plane of global governance’ developed in this paper describes the trade-off between static gains and dynamic
losses associated with international policy harmonization. A simple model illustrates how potential gains result from producing
positive international spill-overs, whereas potential losses come from restricted systems competition between national policy
regimes. The solution to this model allows identifying the cut-off level between policies suitable for global harmonization
and policies which should better not be centralized. An application of the concept to selected policy fields illustrates its
relevance for decision-making on global governance.
SUMMARY In this article Michael Markovitz, chairman of the Broadcasting Commission of the Film and Allied Workers Organisation (FAWO) argues:
that present broadcasting statutes restrict access to the technological means of communication in South African society which prevails now;
that broadcasting is an issue of national and constitutional importance;
that the deregulation of broadcasting, with protection or non-profit broadcast services, could benefit the negotiation process;
that private sector domination of both the broadcasting and print media sectors would be incompatible with the extension of freedom of expression in South Africa;
that prevailing broadcasting legislation effectively prohibits community broadcasting; and
that the right to broadcast and broadcast freedom should be entrenched in a Bill of Rights.
Comparative interregionalism is often limited to the policy or panoramic dimension, reducing local differences and specificities, the “minute particulars” (Blake, William Blake’s Writings, 614, 620, 1978) of the lifeworld to their more abstract forms. This is particularly the case when the European Union (EU) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are compared: generalities remain abstractions, whereas the sharper the focus the more diffferentiated the mindscape becomes and the more the basis for the comparison is undermined. Yet, in a global knowledge networked economy (to get all the buzzwords in one phrase), comparisons are necessary if often invidious. While commentators are often reluctant to see the EU as a model for ASEAN, it is often seen as a complex of experiences to be shared. Yet what—in this domain—gets exported, transplanted and implanted elsewhere, how does this transference take place in such an internetted society, and to what end? Seen in an interregional, even global context, and including an examination of teaching Günter Grass’ Crabwalk (Im Krebsgang, 2002) in English translation to undergraduates of a contemporary European literature class at the National University of Singapore, the paper hopes to indicate some temporal and spatial contexts of transplantation and the means by which this is achieved. 相似文献
ABSTRACT The central argument of this paper is that suicide has had a long and explicit role in politics and in conflict. Turning to historical examples for insight offers many advantages to current efforts to understand and respond to suicide terrorism. In particular, it facilitates greater objectivity and a calmer consideration of the actors and circumstances than can often be the case with contemporary events. Explanations of suicide in terms of madness, brainwashing, coercion, and fanaticism ring hollow with many of the historical cases, and other explanations, causes, and processes take on greater significance. By considering a number of case examples, this article shows how improved historical awareness can provide badly needed objective insight and help reveal strategic trends and issues. The article illustrates how historical cases offer valuable material and insight which is often extremely difficult to acquire on contemporary protagonists. Lessons and issues for research and policy are highlighted.
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death
—W. B. Yeats11. W. B. Yeats, “An Irish airman forsees his death.” The Poems (London: Everyman, 1919/1990).
An earlier version of this paper was presented at “Suicide Terrorism Research Conference,” October 25–26, 2004, Washington, D.C. 相似文献
This article interrogates the link between youth, security and development in Africa and argues that the central determinant in the link is ‘governance’, especially as this implies the ability of the state to harness the productive potential of youths and to meet their demands on a number of issues. The article also asserts that the reality of a youth bulge in many African countries presents challenges (as opposed to crises), as much as opportunities for national socio-economic transformation. Besides, youths in many developing countries have been the victims of developmental experiments often tele-guided by international financial and development agencies. In its conclusion, the articles argues that efforts to address the challenges posed by youths must move from platitudinous wish-list into formulation of coherent policy agenda that is consistent with the socio-economic and political realities of individual countries; in which youths themselves active agents; and one which must be incorporated into the wider governance framework of nation-states.
The issue of youth and violent conflict concerns more than youth, it is a reflection of society in crisis and hence of development itself. If a society's values, norms, customs, practices, structures and institutions are under threat and such changes in turn threaten the development of its children into youth and then adults, then that society cannot sustain itself.1?1. UNDP, Youth and Violent Conflict, p.12.View all notes The state … the economy… are predicated on notions of adulthood; they all require the participation of adults in order to function. If youth are unable to fully make this transition to the minimal conditions of adulthood, then such structures are unsustainable and will either fracture or mutate in unforeseen ways. An understanding of the intersections between youth, violent conflict and society is a way of re-examining development and developing societies. Youth, those who engage in violence and especially those who do not, are located at the junctures between development, security, peace and conflict.2?2. UNDP, Youth and Violent Conflict, p.13.View all notes相似文献
A differential equation model is proposed to explain how a persistent level of conflict might be maintained by a nation. The basic driving force in the model is the assumption that there are two interacting forces within the nation. One group benefits from high levels of conflict and as the level of conflict drops attempts to drive it upwards again. The other group benefits from the absence of conflict and as the level of conflict becomes high attempts to drive it down. These assumptions lead to a model which has the following characteristics:
If the initial level of conflict is positive the stable level is positive and intermediate between the desired positions of the nationalists and internationalists.
If the initial value is negative the behavior is unstable and infinite negative conflict results.
Introduction of a lag in the response to policy can produce the following additional behaviors:
Oscillating return to the equilibrium point.
Oscillating patterns which are virtually constant over time.
Rapid increases in conflict for short periods of time interspersed with long period of virtually no conflict.
These different patterns can be obtained with the change of a single parameter in the model.
The contemporary securitisation of underdevelopment is based on the myth of mutual vulnerability—the idea that underdevelopment and state failure pose diverse threats both to the developed world and the poor in the developing world. The mutual vulnerability thesis provides the rationale for an attempt to expand the range of both military and regulatory interventions inside the developing world. The promise of these interventions is of a synthesis between security for the developed world and solidarism with the poor. The reality is a form of chimeric governance which purports to protect the rich from a range of imagined threats and which masks an unwillingness to really address the problems of the poor.
One illusion has been shattered on 11 September: that we can have the good life of the West irrespective of the state of the rest of the world…. Once chaos and strife have got a grip on a region or a country trouble will soon be exported. Out of such regions and countries come humanitarian tragedies, centres for trafficking in weapons, drugs and people, havens for criminal organisations, and sanctuaries for terrorists…. The dragon's teeth are planted in the fertile soil of wrongs unrighted, of disputes left to fester for years, of failed states, of poverty and deprivation.1?1. Tony Blair, Prime Minister, speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet 13 Nov. 2001.View all notes相似文献
