US Policy and the Nuclear Weapons Ambitions of the “Axis of Evil” Countries*

This article examines US policy as it pertains to the nuclear weapons objectives of what the Bush administration identified as the countries making up the “axis of evil,” pre-war Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Having drawn the same conclusion as that appearing in the 2000 report of the Project for the New American Century, which alleged the involvement of these countries in illicit activities relating to nuclear weapons, the Bush administration initiated an overtly hostile and accusatory policy toward each of these nations after 9/11.Undeterred by the paucity of evidence and the failure to find a nuclear weapons program (or any weapons of mass destruction) in Iraq, the Bush administration has remained relentlessly focused on the nuclear weapons ambitions of North Korea and Iran, all the while ignoring or minimizing diplomatic efforts that are not hegemonic and confrontational. This paper stresses that for the past several years the Bush administration has not hesitated in using questionable and uncertain information relating to the nuclear weapons objectives of the “axis of evil” countries, even though it has demonstrated no interest in eliminating US nuclear weapons as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligates it to do.     

Patronage and empowerment in the central Amazon

The shift from modern to post‐modern politics in the Central Amazon is critically evaluated. While considerable empowerment of previously marginalised. Amerindians, rubber tapers and frontier peasants has occurred, patronage networks remain top down in their decision‐making process, significant horizontal political mobilisation between different social actors has not emerged and grassroots political organisation has been stymied by authoritarian politics at the state level. Consequently, as empowerment is supposed to lie at the heart of building sustainable livelihoods in the Amazon, by this line of logic, the future of the region would seem to be seriously compromised.     

Learning from Contemporary Conflicts to Prepare for Future War

Recent and ongoing wartime experience has discredited much of the thinking that underpinned the “Defense Transformation” effort in the 1990s. If we are to be prepared for future conflict, it is vital that we learn from experience and adjust our thinking about war. It is time to develop idealized visions of future war that are consistent with what post-9/11 conflicts have revealed as the enduring uncertainty and complexity of war. These concepts should be “fighting-centric” rather than “knowledge-centric.” They should also be based on real and emerging threats, informed by recent combat experience, and connected to scenarios that direct military force toward the achievement of policy goals and objectives. We must then design and build balanced forces that are capable of conducting operations consistent with the concepts we develop.     

Kant's Perpetual Peace and Its Hidden Sources: A Textual Approach

The problem of Kantâ‐?s sources in Perpetual Peace has never before been dealt with in a systematic fashion. As some commentators have already noticed, Kant seldom quotes his sources in Perpetual Peace and in quite a number of other works. The purpose of the present research note is to analyze the Kantian text and to find philological traces of the various authors that we believe have been important to Kantâ‐?s work in the field of political philosophy. With this in mind, a methodology has been elaborated which includes three aspects: a textual and comparative analysis, a consistency analysis and a contextual analysis. These three approaches combined should allow us to systematically shed light on the key role played by Emer de Vattelâ‐?s famous book The Law of Nations (1758) and, more unexpectedly, by the Federalist Papers, in particular articles No. 10, 14 and 51 written by Madison.