Reflections on the Mosul problem

Summary

It now becomes possible to summarize our conclusions on the Brussels Line:

1. It does not fulfil the object of British policy completely in that it surrenders to Turkey the control of Assyrian destinies. It does, however, provide for the establishment and security of an ‘Iraq state sufficient to assure our own security.

2. The frontier does not, and cannot, satisfy the linguistic, racial, and religious requirements of a good frontier owing to the chaotic intermixture of these elements in its vicinity.

3. It is not strategically the best frontier for ‘Iraq, but it is sufficiently defensible to guarantee the security of the ‘Iraq state. It is economically sound.

4. It satisfies the political desires of the minorities concerned, except those of the Kurd and Assyrian.

     

Reflections on Putin and the Media

A political scientist investigates the extent to which, under Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin consolidated control over the Russian media. Conceptually, a contrast is drawn between the Soviet and post-Soviet systems of media control. Data-bases are used to illuminate imbalances of television coverage of presidential candidates and public officials as well as the evolution of popular distrust of the media. Comparisons are drawn with President Alberto Fujimori's defunct regime in Peru and speculation is offered as to the fragility of the Kremlin's control over the media.     

The international conference on democratic decentralization

Abstract

From 23 to 28 May 2000, 2,762 academics, officials, and activists participated in the International Conference on Democratic Decentralization, held in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. The conference was organized by the Kerala State Planning Board as part of an attempt to evaluate the experience of four years of the People's Campaign for the Ninth Plan, Kerala's extensive experiment in local democracy and decentralized planning as mechanisms for development. The large number and range of participants made the conference much more than a local evaluation, as India-wide and international comparisons were supplemented by extensive theoretical discussions, particularly in the academic portion of the conference. While most participants came from Kerala, several attended from other Indian states and more than thirty foreign participants came from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Haiti, Brazil, Sri Lanka, England, and Sweden. The Cuban and Vietnamese ambassadors to India attended the entire conference and made comments about their nations' decentralization policies at the final plenary session.     

Report on the conference on the Baltic area in World War II

Time and space serve as key identity markers of a nation. This article focuses on the construction of historical space in Estonian history textbooks. The aim of this analysis is to follow the trajectory of post-Soviet understanding of Estonia’s location on the European map. Rejecting the Soviet idea that Estonia belongs to the Russian Civilization, the post-Soviet Estonian national elite has offered the Baltic Sea region as a plausible alternative regional identity. The present analysis suggests that the last two decades are marked by an increasing tendency in Estonian history textbooks to present the Baltic Sea region as the nation’s historical space.     

Reflections on the implications of the Vietnam Caucus

Abstract

It is revealing that a Vietnam Caucus held in March 1968 should end its meeting by beginning an evaluation of the professional “conscience” of Asian scholars. That it took this war to raise the latent problems in the profession is itself a depressing commentary on the state of the field. But the desire on the part of some individuals to create a nationwide inter-university student-faculty Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars to pose and then seek to resolve these problems fulfills one of the organizers' hopes.     

Reflections on Schurmann's theory of the state

Abstract

Were Marx alive today he might be moved to comment on how quickly the next “revolution” materialized, that is to say, how quickly certain disciples of his, like Lenin and Stalin, substituted political organization and the power of the state for the proletariat as the agency of revolution. Perhaps Marx would recognize that the state merited more attention than he gave it, for in this century it seems clear that state power has functioned more autonomously than Marx implied in order to preserve capitalism, by ameliorating its fundamental contradictions; and to put off, even pervert, that socialist revolution which originally envisioned the proletariat assuming the central, world-historical role. In recent years Marxist critics have been filling this lacuna in Marxism with a profusion of writings on the role of the state in its absolutist, capitalist, and socialist variants. It was into this milieu that Franz Schurmann stepped with his Logic of World Power, containing within it a “theory of the state” that I find both interesting and flawed, a theory that offers much to the current debate on the role of the state, and yet one that has been largely ignored by Marxists and non-Marxists alike.     

Reflections on Japan's past

Fifty years after the devastation of World War II, Japan's remarkable long‐term, export‐driven economic success is known as the East Asian development model and East Asian economies have become the engine for the world's economic growth. Yet the collapse of Japan's 1980s over‐inflated “bubble economy” has created apathy and pessimism, says former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. In May 1995, on the occasion of his seventy‐seventh birthday, after more than 45 years in the Diet, IIPS Chairman Nakasone reflects on Japan's modern history and issues a call for renewal in the following speech. Above all, he says, “Japan does have a few mavericks” and “people with true convictions [should] come forward . . . the Japanese are waiting for genuine leadership.”     

Reflections on Arzamas-16

Three German economists analyze the determinants of access to health care in rural Russia and ask whether income and ability-to-pay, emerging as the major determinants of access in urban areas, have begun to govern rural populations' access to health-care services. Using household data from a survey conducted in the year 2000 (N=321 households) in two regions of Russia—Oryol and Leningrad Oblasts—the authors examine how the reduced role of the state and the concomitant decentralization of policy-making have affected access of the rural populace to health services. Broader policy implications and suggestions for ensuring future access to services in rural areas are offered.     

Reflections on the NGO forum on women '95

Abstract

The approximately 30,000 participants in the Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Forum on Women ‘95 did more than simply give voice and attention to often invisible and silenced women's issues. They journeyed to the forum from over 185 countries to Huairou, a resort town forty kilometers outside of Beijing, the People's Republic of China, to network, exchange information, and devise innovative and determined implementation of solutions to the world's most pressing problems. The NGO forum inspired commitment to action in many forms: renewing and forging solidarity on issues and strategies, lobbying government delegates during the overlapping (4–15 September 1995) official U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, and sustaining and expanding day-to-day work in communities after participants returned home.     

Reflections on the Anniversary of the August 1991 Coup

A sociologist whose area of expertise is communism and nationalism examines the causes of Soviet and Yugoslav dissolution, with special attention to political-cultural factors. The work of Serbian and Russian intellectuals is used as the basis for examination of the different political-cultural attitudes of Russians and Serbs towards the state, historically and during the twentieth-century breakups of these multinational states     

Reflections on Environmentalism and the River Diversion Projects

In a companion paper to “Environmentalism in the USSR: The Opposition to the River Diversion Projects,” two geographers survey the current status of water transfer research after cancellation of the European and Siberian diversion projects and offer a different perspective on the debates leading to that cancellation. Implications of a demand-side approach to Centra! Asian water management problems are then assessed in light of (a) contradictory objectives of expanding irrigated hectarage and mitigating environmental deterioration in the Aral basin and (b) the problematic nature of projected water savings and costs involved in their realization. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: 052, 124, 720.