Eagle's-eye View: An American Assessment of the 1973 Yom Kippur War

The United States displayed a keen interest in the nature, progress and results of the Yom Kippur War, because the fighting was thought to reflect how non-nuclear hostilities between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact (WP) would unfold on the plains of central Europe in case war broke out there. In contrast to many observers of the war, who concluded that the losses suffered by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) at the hands of Egyptian and Syrian anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons had rendered the aircraft and the tank largely impotent, thereby revolutionizing how wars would be waged in the future, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts and United States Army Training and Doctrine (TRADOC) Command officers, based upon an in-depth review of the nature, progress and results of the fighting, re-affirmed the centrality of these weapons systems on the modern battlefield. Rather than focus obsessively on technological developments, they concluded that training, leadership and tactics were ultimately the decisive elements in the Yom Kippur War.     

Value Recapture: A Rose by Another Name

The fuel crisis, increased federal funding, and urban center development and redevelopment are all increasing the pressure for rapid transit systems in urban areas. As with other publicly funded developments, such systems often lead to an increase in value of privately owned land near transit stations. This is due to the enhanced commercial, industrial, and residential development potential created by superior access and concurrent generation of intense local activity. Such an increase in value is unearned-a windfall, in essence. Arguably, it should accrue, at least in part, to the public agency which incurred substantial expenditures in developing the public facility-the cause of the value increase in the first place. Such an accrual of value could be offset against the public cost of the improvement. This article deals with several proposed methods of such “value recapture”: “excess” or “supplemental” condemnation, tax assessment, intergovernmental cooperation and air rights development.     

Restitution or compensation: The open property question

German unification brought in train the principle of restitution, that property in the east should be restored to its former owners where that property had changed hands after 1945, or between 1933 and 1945, other than through ordinary commercial transaction or gift. This essentially backwards‐looking measure was bound to come into conflict with the need to promote investment in east Germany in the present and future, as well as to overcome the profound gulf which the years of division brought. The article examines property restitution in the general context of unification, and draws comparisons with revaluation legislation in the 1920s and the equalisation of burdens in the 1950s.     

Rehumanizing Birth and Death in America

THESIS: Despite spending more on medical care than any other country in the world, the United States still boasts some of the worst patient outcomes of any developed nation. This disparity is especially true of how Americans give birth and die.  These natural human transitions have become catastrophically expensive and leave patients and their families traumatized from unnecessary interventions. This article examines the costs and outcomes associated with the medicalization of birth and death and argues that alternatives exist that improve patient outcomes while lowering costs. Access to these alternatives will require changing current regulatory and reimbursement structures and providing trained support staff to help families navigate beginning- and end-of life decisions.     

The “Indo-Pacific”—New Regional Formulations and New Maritime Frameworks for US-India Strategic Convergence

This article argues three things. First, it argues that at the conceptual level there has been a strategic rediscovery of a maritime regional framework, the Indo-Pacific. Second, it argues that at the policy level there is a significant regional security convergence, a degree of strategic balancing, between India and the United States in this Indo-Pacific. Third, it argues that at the causal level there is a common maritime challenge from China faced by India in the Indian Ocean and by the United States in the Pacific Ocean, a common Indo-Pacific strategic challenge which is generating this significant US-India naval convergence. In order to deal with such matters, the article looks at the strategic discourse employed around the concept of the Indo-Pacific, and the related maritime assets deployed in the Indo-Pacific by the United States and India.     

The Tradition Industry: Hofstadter and Santayana on Politics,Culture and Capitalism

Richard Hofstadter’s provocative interpretation of what he called The American Political Tradition has long interested students and scholars. Often read as a response to the crisis times of the depression 1930s and interventionist 1940s, the book’s origins are actually rooted in deeper cultural changes in the United States. This paper argues that George Santayana’s earlier essay, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy” (1911), anticipated several key aspects of Hofstadter’s argument and proved to more accurately foresee the ideological course of twentieth century American politics.