Cultural Challenges to Democratization in Russia

Three historical forces having shaped Russia—the Land, the Church, and the West. Fifteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia remains the largest country on earth, with geopolitical interests in virtually every nation on the Eurasian continent and a fast-growing economy. The Russian Orthodox Church has resumed its place at the center of Russian culture, a culture that must be considered when assessing Russia's prospects for democratization. Likewise, Russians’ understanding of the West and democracy often suffers from misapprehensions that must be overcome in order for it to be attractive to Russia to move toward its own form of democracy. For U.S.-Russian differences today are primarily cultural, not ideological.     

U.S. Aid for Foreign Justice and Police

The fundamental objective of the United States in its efforts to reform justice systems abroad has been to develop effective institutions of criminal justice that can support transitions to democratic government. Unfortunately, the United States has not been doing this as well as it might, Iraq being the most dramatic case. These efforts lack coherent Congressional oversight and strategic vision, neglect improving the normative quality of local justice systems and developing the capacity to manage by results, and subordinate local reform to the security needs of foreign countries. To remedy these shortcomings, the United States needs to develop and coordinate justice assistance programs that are context specific, recruit and deploy justice specialists from all sectors and levels of the American justice system, incorporate a developmental perspective in justice assistance programs, and formulate programs that are based on proven “best practices.”     

New Challenges for Putin's Foreign Policy

This article evaluates Russia's foreign policy after Vladimir Putin's reelection as president in March 2004. New challenges, such as the intensification of terrorist activities in the Northern Caucasus, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the destabilization of Central Asia, and the refusal by some European states to attend the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of victory over fascism hosted in Moscow became important tests of Putin's strategy of great-power pragmatism. That strategy reflected a desire for Russia to be a normal great power and focused on cooperating with Western nations on a range of economic and security issues. This course had to be defended against criticisms at home in the context of intensified efforts by Western nations, particularly the United States, to influence developments in the former Soviet states. The article concludes by reflecting on some dilemmas that Putin's strategy is likely to encounter in the future.     

Latency – Time for lawyers to get up to speed?

While latency issues have always existed in IT systems, it is only in recent years that latency has become a significant focal point for both IT suppliers and customers. This paper will provide an overview as to how latency arises in IT systems, why latency is becoming important across a variety of business sectors and then explores some of the prominent legal issues inherent in contracting for low-latency solutions.     

Foreign Influences and Shifting Horizons: The Ongoing Evolution of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

This article details how prior to the establishment of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AGIM), Meghrebis—that is, Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians and others--made up a significant percentage of the foreign fighters in the al Qaeda-led insurgency in Iraq, thus helping to build the trust networks between al Qaeda central and the Maghreb-based groups, culminating in the the 2007 formal affiliation of the Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat (GSPC) with al Qaeda. Since then, an emboldened AQIM has evolved significantly, both strategically and operationally.     

Links and copyright law

For at least 15 years, there have been question marks over the legal permissibility of connecting one web resource to another by means of links. The purpose of this paper is to assess where we stand in terms of the legal state on the threshold of the new decade. The substantive argument in this paper is that, fundamentally, there are only two sorts of links. ‘Normal’ links facilitate access to subject matter that has been made available to the public and are visible to users as ‘activatable’ references. ‘Embedding’ links, by contrast, automatically incorporate online material and cause it to become a part of the embedding document. On the grounds of the cumulative judicial custom in the member states of the European Union, this paper proposes that normal links as such should invariably be deemed not to create a state of interference with copyright law. Embedding links, however, may constitute an infringement of the exclusive right of alteration, communication or reproduction enjoyed by the copyright holder, depending on the facts and circumstances.     

Mired in a Quagmire: Popular Interpretations of the Vietnam War

For the war in Vietnam, real perspective can only come when we extricate ourselves from the historical quagmire and start evaluating the conflict as more than just a mistake that deserves our condemnation.