UNRWA’s First Years, 1949–1951: The Anatomy of Failed Expectations

The birth of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Near East Refugees (UNRWA) in 1949 represented the culmination of two years of international diplomacy to solve the Palestinian refugee problem. The United States, Britain, and the international community not only sought an agency to take charge of refugee relief, but also envisaged a body to facilitate direct programmes for public works to wean the refugees away from aid dependency whilst also contributing to the economic productivity of host Arab nations. It was hoped this would support the refugees on a self-sustaining basis and even lead to their re-settlement and re-integration into the region. This analysis examines how and why Britain, the United States, and international bodies established UNRWA and identifies why UNRWA, by 1951, was unable to fulfil the task for which it was initially conceived.     

Rage of Honor: Entente Indignation and the Lost Chance for Peace in the First World War

Why the First World War ended in 1918 and not earlier remains a major puzzle. We propose a new theory that emphasizes how honor prolongs wars beyond what rationalist theories can explain. It argues that when honor is insulted, an affronted actor will strive to punish the offender. Absent an apology, the pursuit of a satisfactory punishment leads the affronted belligerent to ignore unfavorable battlefield information, hold logically irreconcilable beliefs, process information in emotional terms, and obsess over status. We predict that wars of prevention and territorial occupation are most likely to elicit honor considerations. We test our argument against an obscure episode in the war where Germany and the United States made peace overtures in December 1916. We demonstrate that honor concerns made Entente decision makers see German aggression as an affront to their honor that only the destruction of Germany's political regime could redress.     

Window of opportunity: Reflections on an idea fashionable in the west

The essay warns about the extreme danger of the fashionable idea that the West has only a marginal role to play in Russia's integration into the world community. It does not take into account the ferocious war of ideas in post‐Soviet Moscow which all but insures that nationalist ambition ‘to return Russia to the status of a leading global power’ would come out a winner. As a result of this the window of opportunity that opened after the disintegration of the Soviet empire may well slam shut again. The only way to prevent it seems to be for the West to create its own strategy of Russia's integration in which the dominant up to now theme of economic assistance (hardware) is replaced by the theme of intellectual participation (or the software of integration). That is why the purpose of the essay is to try to offer a logical set of criteria that could provide the basis for such an intelligent strategy.