Cross-national integration in Northeast Asia: Geopolitical and economic goals in conflict

To shed light on conflicting views of the regional readjustment under way, this article views Northeast Asia from various geographical angles. It compares local strategies for regionalism, identifying the perspectives of six border cities, two each in China, Japan, and Russia. Problems of regionalism are treated in light of the poor fit among local strategies. The past five years have produced more conflict than cooperation, which can also be explained by differing national strategies. The article examines linkages among the region’s powers, suggesting how they affect regionalism, and concludes with an analysis of divergence in national strategies.     

Drug Abuse and Partner Violence among Women in Methadone Treatment

This study aims to (1) describe rates of lifetime and current partner abuse among women on methadone; (2) examine the relationship between partner violence and demographics, substance abuse, and drug risk behaviors; and (3) explore the association between a victim's current use of crack/cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and drug risk behavior after controlling for demographics, household composition, history of victimization and sex trading. Approximately three-fourths of the women ever experienced physical, sexual, or life-threatening abuse and slightly less than one-third experienced at least one type of abuse during the previous year. A history of childhood victimization was reported by more than half of the women and one-third witnessed her mother being abused. Risk of partner violence was associated with victim's current drug and alcohol use, visiting shooting galleries, and living with someone with drug or alcohol problems. The study discusses the implications of the findings for research and intervention.     

A Rising India's Search for a Foreign Policy

As India seeks to become a major player on the international political stage, it will face two major internal constraints. First, India will have to recognize the need to exploit the extant structure of international system to its advantage more effectively. Structural constraints are the most formidable ones a state encounters in its drive towards the status of a major power. Yet, Indian foreign policy continues to be reactive to the strategic environment rather than attempting to shape the strategic realities. While such an ad hoc response to the structural imperatives carried little costs when India was on the periphery of global politics, it holds grave risks now that India seems poised to play a significant role in global politics. Second, India must come to grips with its discomfort with the very notion of power and in particular its wariness of the use of “hard power.” Throughout history, all major powers have been required to employ the military instrument skillfully. India's reluctance to accept a more sophisticated understanding of power, in general, and military power, in particular, will continue to undermine Indian foreign and security policy.     

The Soldier, The State, and The Clash of Civilizations: The Legacy of Samuel Huntington

The major military challenge that the United States faces today is the war in Afghanistan. The U.S. military is engaged in a grueling counterinsurgency campaign against the Islamist movement known as the Taliban, which is based among Pashtun tribes in Southeastern Afghanistan and Northwestern Pakistan, who have never been permanently subdued by a foreign military force. This challenge comes in the wake of that other grueling counterinsurgency war that the U.S. military has had to conduct in Iraq, where its chief adversary was the Islamist movement known as al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Moreover, the challenge in Afghanistan comes on what could be the eve of an impending military challenge, perhaps even a war, with Iran, as that Islamist state relentlessly moves toward acquiring nuclear weapons. In its entire history of two- and-a-quarter centuries, the United States has never been engaged in an unbroken succession of three wars, in three different countries. Together, the U.S. wars with or within Islamist countries add up to what is a “long war,” indeed.     

‘Phase IV’ Operations in the War on Terror: Comparing Iraq and Afghanistan

This article identifies the obstacles and prospects of implementing President Obama's surge strategy in Afghanistan by examining four issues: (1) the origins and implementation of the Iraq surge policy; (2) U.S. counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan; (3) a comparative examination of Afghan and Iraqi tribal insurgent structures; and (4) suggestions for a counter insurgency policy more in sync with regional social and tribal structures.     

Soft Power in a Hard Place: China, Taiwan, Cross-Strait Relations and U.S. Policy

Soft power, like so much else in relations between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan, is asymmetrical and freighted with implications for U.S. policy and U.S.-China relations. For China, soft power largely serves—or strives—to reduce alarm (or at least reaction) among other states concerned about China's new-found hard power or, perhaps more realistically, the hard power that China's economic rise can underwrite. Much of the value for Beijing of soft power is—and is likely to remain for quite some time—its potential contribution to reducing the likelihood that other states will react to China's rising hard power in ways that could threaten China's interests.     

American Grand Strategy from the Cold War's End to 9/11

Grand strategy is about making sense of complexity; it is the wisdom to make power serve useful purposes. After the end of the Cold War, American policymakers sought to create a new grand strategy for the United States, but they failed in this endeavor. They failed because of difficult domestic and international circumstances. They also failed because of conceptual limitations. This article traces the efforts at strategy formulation in the administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and it analyzes their shortcomings. Bush had process without purpose; Clinton had purpose without process. The article encourages readers to think about how future strategists might improve upon this legacy with clearer and more disciplined attention to priorities, capabilities, and trade-offs. Making grand strategy in a democracy is not easy, but it is necessary. The absence of effective grand strategy in the 1990s contributed to the crises of the early twenty-first century.     

Dereliction of Duty Redux?: Post-Iraq American Civil-Military Relations

The protracted war in Iraq has exacerbated existing tensions and dysfunctional elements inherent in American civil-military relations. Many in the national security community were worried that civil-military relations were far from satisfactory well before the war.¹ For too long this dimension of “the American way of war” had been allowed to drift without resolution. The Iraq conflict could result in a further deterioration in this crucial component of strategic effectiveness due to mutual “scapegoating, blame-avoiding and willful institutional refusal to recognize and act on the sources of defeat.”² This essay explores the current precarious nature of civil-military relations in this country. It also explores the emergence of a “stab in the back” thesis among the military community, and various issues raised by the ongoing Long War. Based on this evaluation, the article concludes with some proposals to remedy or lessen the strains that exist today. These remedies seek to better define the compact and code of conduct that governs the overall relationship between the masters of policy and the dedicated servants we ask to carry out those policies.