Yemen and the Arab Spring: Elite Struggles,State Collapse and Regional Security

Yemen, the poorest and most populous country on the Arabian Peninsula, has long been a prime candidate to join the failed state club. After the wave of uprisings sweeping through the Middle East reached the country in early 2011, the already high levels of instability and violence reached new heights and threatened to accelerate a steady march towards collapse. Even though a variety of scenarios can be identified for the future of Yemen, the most likely paths all imply a period of prolonged instability. This will carry significant consequences for regional and international security, in particular, by providing al Qaeda's local franchise with an attractive safe haven from which to plan and launch operations.     

George F. Kennan’s Realism

Recent studies of the career diplomat and distinguished historian George F. Kennan, and particularly a little noted intellectual biography by Lee Congdon, reveal a side of this figure that has often been neglected. Despite his reputation as a critic of the Cold War, Kennan was in fact a strong anti-Communist and profoundly conservative thinker. His conventional defenders have stressed his displeasure with vocal anti-Communism in order to create an image of him that is consistent with their left-of-center politics. This has come at the expense of playing down unfashionable opinions that Kennan expressed on a wide range of issues. Many of his opinions, which he viewed as eminently “realistic,” would have been unacceptable to his mainstream admirers even fifty years ago, were it not for his stands on the Cold War and for certain isolated statements drawn from his post-World War Two speeches mentioning racial inequality and industrial waste. What is now being published on Kennan’s life, however, provides a more balanced picture. Congdon and John Lukacs have both offered this necessary corrective to earlier views about their subject in recent biographical studies. These and other commentators are now highlighting the anti-modernist perspective from which he viewed and criticized the twentieth century.     

Bridging the Gap Between the Worlds of Ideas and Action

The World War II experience of public service created a generation of scholars who devoted themselves to policy-relevant research during the early Cold War. The Vietnam War led to a split between the two groups, and scholars and policymakers today inhabit two different worlds. Fortunately, it appears as though the relationship between the world of ideas and the world of action is entering a new phase. Both the academy and the nation would be better off if scholars were more involved in topics of interest to policymakers. However, building a closer relationship between these two worlds faces challenges.     

全球信息保密管理：在网络环境下的跨境信息流

美国隐私权项目与Paul M.Schwartz教授合作形成的《全球信息保密管理：在网络环境下的跨境信息流》报告,基于一系列结构化自我报告案例研究,介绍了六家公司计划及实施跨国个人信息保护的方案,展示了私人企业中国际信息安全的巨大变革,集中表现为三个方面：规模的改变,信息处理的转变,信息管理的转变。该报告提出,要致力于将案例研究与相关信息保护法政策研究有机结合,以寻求新的解决方案,其关键在于重视各项法规的具体实施,以及如何保证强有力的执行。