Alternative visions of security in Northeast Asia

Although no security structure exists yet in Northeast Asia comparable to Europe’s NATO, there is movement toward new arrangements as the century ends. Unresolved cold war disputes on the Korean Peninsula and between China and Taiwan as well as controversy over an appropriate Japanese role in the twenty-first century combine to sustain general regional support for a continued American force presence in Japan and Korea. Nevertheless, two potential developments could erode that presence over time: (1) the unification of Korea, after which U.S. troops on the peninsula might be unacceptable and (2) a change in American budgetary priorities that could significantly draw down forward deployments in the western Pacific. In anticipation of these changes, Northeast Asian states are beginning regional security dialogues.     

Are social class measures interchangeable?

This study analyzes the internal and external consistency of standard and alternative measures of stratification position. Researchers and theorists have used a number of concepts to describe individual's position within the stratification system, e.g., level of education, occupational prestige, and Marxist class position. The central issues of this paper are the degree to which each of the operationalizations of these concepts (current in the literature) are related to one another, the degree to which the operationalizations of each concept are related to the operationalizations of other concepts that measure stratification position, and the extent to which these operational measures are interchangeable. Using data collected in the SRC/CPS 1980 American National Election Study, we find the strongest relationships to exist among those indicators which measure the same concept (e.g., the NORC Prestige Scale and the Duncan SEI), although all indicators are positively related. Regression analyses employing different criterion variables as dependent variables and several measures of stratification position as independent variables reveal that these measures are not interchangeable.The authors are involved in an ongoing research project; the order in which their names appear is rotated.     

ReConceiving Masculinity: Imagining Men's Reproductive Bodies in Law

It is not just women's bodies which can pose risks to the foetus but also those of men, with the quality of sperm playing an important role in foetal health. This article assesses why male antenatal behaviour has received such scant attention. It focuses on the regulation of liability for congenital disability and foetal protection legislation and policies, in order to uncover the received understandings of male and female reproductivity which have informed the law in this area. It argues that these understandings are predicated upon a particular vision of men's and women's bodies and of a gendered division of labour following the birth of a child.     

Japanese biological warfare experiments and other atrocities in Manchuria, 1932–1945, and the subsequent United States cover up: a preliminary assessment

Japanese microbiologists and other scientists, as early as the 1930s, used humans for test purposes in their quest for a viable offensive biological warfare system. Thousands of men, women and children were tested with a host of pathogens to determine the appropriate dose required to kill. Those who survived the initial tests were subjected to other experiments. No one left the test sites alive. They were either killed in the experiments, or they were sacrificed when they outlived their usefulness. Field tests in China unleashed plagues that killed tens of thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands.American intelligence in early 1942 discovered that Japan had a large biological warfare enterprise in Manchuria and China. By the end of the war, Intelligence was in possession of a comprehensive outline of Japanese operations. American scientists at Fort Detrick, Md., home of the American biological warfare program, learned of the Japanese research. They sent emissaries to Japan to negotiate with those scientists who escaped from Manchuria and returned home. After two years of negotiations, a deal was made. The Japanese would turn over to the Americans their research data. The Americans would not prosecute the scientists as war criminals. Not one Japanese scientist under American jurisdiction was ever prosecuted, but, instead, was permitted to live a normal life in post-war Japan.The paper was presented at the University of Cologne Forum on: Medicine without Compassion-Past and Present, September 29, 1988     

The WTO's First Antitrust Case - Mexican Telecom: A Sleeping Victory for Trade and Competition

A World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute panel has decided theWTO’s first antitrust case. It resolved the matter infavour of the United States’ claim that Mexico had anticompetitivelyfacilitated exploitative prices and a cartel that raised theprice of terminating cross-border telephone calls in Mexicoand thereby harmed trade and competition. The case is Mexico– Measures Affecting Telecommunications Services (April2004) (‘the Mexican telecom case’). This essay arguesthat if the WTO’s antitrust clause was in fact triggered(which is a point of contention), Mexico’s conduct violatedits obligations. Furthermore, it argues that the GATS antitrustobligation in the telecommunications sector should be acknowledgedas occupying an important place at the intersection of trade,competition and industrial policies. Antitrust law is the otherside of the coin of liberal trade law. Antitrust law opens marketsby prohibiting private and other commercial restraints, whiletrade law opens markets by prohibiting public restraints. BeforeMexican telecom, no legal discipline was regarded as copiousor flexible enough to address combined public and private restraints.In particular, nations were allowed free rein to privilege nationalchampions that harmed competition in and out of their country,imposing costs on outsiders as well as on their own people.A positive reading of the antitrust clause helps to fill thegap.     

Human Rights, Risks, and New Strategies for Global Investment

It is often argued that the rules and practices of foreign directinvestment can threaten the protection of human rights. Thatdanger used to arise from the fact that the investors simplydismissed concern for these rights as their responsibility.This is no longer so. Major lenders and project sponsors nowregularly make commitments to human rights and to allied principlesgoverning environmental protection and health and safety. Thedanger instead arises from the way in which the two domainsare being brought together. The collision that threatens isnot over whether, but over how commercial imperatives are tobe integrated with this branch of social justice. The article aims at diagnosis of the problem and considers somepossible solutions to it. It frames the issues in terms of severalcompeting fundamental principles, and draws on concrete examplesfrom the investment contracts regulating the Baku – Tibilisi- Ceyhan (BTC) and Chad/Cameroon pipeline projects. Once theareas of potential collision between these contracts and humanrights requirements are explored, the essay considers a significantalteration to the BTC agreement, designed to open it up moreeffectively to human rights concerns. The analysis ends witha consideration of some model clauses for investment contractsin the future.