Modernization and counter-revolution in Thailand

Abstract

Thailand is now the linchpin in America’s Asia. As revolutionaries in Indochina continue to force a reduction of U.S. ground troops in Asia and as Washington’s commitment to Taiwan weakens, Thailand assumes increasing strategic importance for current American counterrevolutionary operations in continental Asia. This development extends a general trend which began in the early 1950s.     

The Twin Peaks of Pyongyang

The United States has been negotiating with North Korea in an effort to have it renounce its nuclear program for over a decade, since Washington negotiated an Agreed Framework in 1994. In this time, North Korea has only amassed more plutonium. The negotiations are hindered by mutual distrust and hostility, but it is doubtful whether any change in Washington's attitude toward the dprk would help solve the nuclear issue. It is the Kim regime that is the core problem. Until the regime is removed, there can be no durable peace in the region. This article suggests that with the prospect for a negotiated resolution of the nuclear issue remote, and since any attempt to remove the Kim regime militarily would entail huge costs, Washington might consider a third option: directly engaging the North Korean people.     

Deficits in Behavioral Inhibition Predict Treatment Engagement in Prison Inmates

Many inmates do not respond favorably to standard treatments routinely offered in prison. Executive cognitive functioning and emotional regulation may play a key role in treatment responsivity. During intake into treatment, inmates (N = 224) were evaluated for executive functioning, emotional perception, stress reactivity (salivary cortisol), IQ, psychological and behavioral traits, prior drug use, child and family background, and criminal histories and institutional behavior. Outcome measures included program completion, treatment readiness, responsivity and gain, and the Novaco Reaction to Provocation Questionnaire. Relative deficits in behavioral inhibition significantly predicted treatment outcomes, more so than background, psychological, or behavioral variables, and other neurocognitive and emotional regulatory measures. Future replications of these results have potential to improve assessment and treatment of offenders who are otherwise intractable.     

Tocqueville on the Good of American Federalism

If Tocqueville emphasizes, at times, the tendency of Americanfederalism toward consolidation and, at other times, its tendencytoward disintegration, this is not because he is confused butbecause he is keenly aware of the difficulty of combining theadvantages of bigness with those of smallness. Americans havesucceeded in producing such a combination, not through a simpleaggregation of institutional mechanisms but through a synthesisthat reaches to the heart of American civilization–a fusionof dynamism with comfort, of the ideology of popular sovereigntywith the practice of responsible self-government, of calculatedself-interest with spontaneous public virtue, and of enlightenmentwith tradition. Because the Enlightenment, the embodiment ofthis synthesis, provides no ground in its pure form for humandignity, Tocqueville seeks to speak on behalf of those institutionsof federalism that root the idealism of citizens in the realexperience of responsible self-government.