美国在伊拉克战争中的法律战教训

在伊拉克战争“结束”两年之后,从武装冲突法的角度检讨美国发动和进行的这场战争,我们发现,它全面违反了武装冲突法关于使用武力、作战行动、人道保护的规则,犯下了严重的战争罪行。尽管美国取得了军事上的“胜利”,但在政治上特别是在国际法上漏洞百出,破绽很多,引起了国际社会的强烈不满和谴责,为其推行单边主义和霸权主义设置了新的障碍,值得引起注意。     

美国宪法解释方法论之辨思

自美国宪法诞生至今,关于宪法解释方法存在着各种方法论流派,大致可以把它们概括为解释主义与非解释主义、原意主义与非原意主义、积极主义与消极主义、历史主义、德沃金主义和基础主义等。不同的方法,具有各自不同的理论体系。宪法解释方法论之梳理与辨思,在于揭示其内在法理及差异,为正确解释宪法文本提供理想之途。     

IMF职能改革：美国的观点及其评析

金融危机的频繁发生对于国际货币基金组织及其职能提出了挑战,国际社会对于IMF改革的呼声日益高涨。美国关于IMF职能改革的主流观点是要进一步强化其危机预防和管理职能,反对为克服金融危机而提供大规模援助。这一观点既具有合理性,也存在明显的缺陷和不足。国际货币基金组织的改革应遵循公平、公开的原则,要加快制度创新和完善治理结构,其职能应随国际经济环境变化及时加以调整和不断完善。     

美欧关系

21世纪初的国际体系从根本意义上讲是单极体系,美国作为唯一的超级大国,凭借其超强的经济、军事实力主导国际事务。在未来的10-20年内,这一单极体系仍将维持下去,多极体系的形成尚待时日。美欧双方虽然在意识形态、文化上具有很大同质性,但随着国际形势的新发展,美欧分歧会越来越多,但直接冲突的可能较小。     

透过经济危机看社会主义制度的优越性

经济危机是资本主义制度的危机,它源于资本主义的基本矛盾。中国在这场危机中也受到不同程度的影响。得益于社会主义制度的优越性,中国迅速走出了危机的阴霾,实现了经济的复苏。透过经济危机,中国特色社会主义制度优越性已经初步显现,随着优越性的不断发挥,中国特色社会主义前途无限光明。     

Farm transmission and the commercialization of agriculture in northern Maine in the second half of the 19th century

The transition to capitalism has been one of the most discussed issues in the historiography of the rural United States in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the typology, and the “market revolution” construed upon it, are problematic. The article explores some of these problems by examining the commercialization of eastern Canadian agriculture, which was a prolonged process starting in the beginning of the 19th century in the St. Lawrence–Great Lakes axis and ending during the 1960s in the outlying parts of Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritime Provinces. It is difficult to identify clear trends in the numbers yielded by evidence from this region for the time period in question. Highly commercial farms were more likely than the others to transfer all their property to their children. Deficit farmers were much more likely than the others to transfer all their property to outsiders. But the data do not support the view that farmers who were keen on turning their farms into moneymaking businesses adopted property transmission practices that were markedly different from the others. And before the 1830s, there was really no need to have strategies in place because land was plentiful.     

Looking from South Africa to the World: A Story of Identity for our Times

The article is a consideration of the question of identity in South Africa, and also in a global context. Just as South Africa has looked to the world in order to understand its place, so too the world might look to South Africa to illuminate patterns less immediately visible elsewhere. Far from being unrepresentative in the apartheid period, South Africa was the ‘state of exception’ that incarnated and concentrated global realities; equally in the current era the reciprocal relations between the South African and the global evoke haunting concerns. The article begins with a consideration of the ‘classic’ generation of anti-apartheid activists, including figures such as Nelson Mandela and Bram Fischer, as they fashioned a new sense of South African identity. Yet it goes on to consider what happens when the classic period is over, and older definitions and oppositions are no longer available. Here the navigations of fiction, both in South Africa and elsewhere, become significant, and the article examines the work of writers from Gordimer, Coetzee and Ndebele, to Caryl Phillips and W. G. Sebald. It ends with a contemplation of the current period, nearly twenty years after the democratic transition in South Africa. In the era of the Marikana massacre and other pressing developments, both music and fiction open up some of the ambiguities and obligations. Drawing on Agamben, I suggest the intrinsic mutuality of the ‘home’ and the ‘foreign’ in establishing a more promising—and challenging—sense of belonging and identity both in South Africa and the world.     

Coping with U.S. and EU's challenges? Strategic confusion in the Czech foreign and security policy

This article traces developments in the Czech political elite's thinking about structural changes that the region and the country have experienced during the last several years. It is argued that two parallel, external structural constraints have significantly shaped decisions of the Czech political elite as the country has, once again, proven to be an ostensibly “reactive state”. These structural constraints have been the ongoing U.S. recalibration of its grand strategy as well as the financial crisis with a systemic challenge to the European political project in which fiscal and monetary issues have largely replaced previous criticism of the Constitutional Treaty and then the Reform Treaty. It is argued that these developments have posed a notable problem for two predominant ideological convictions present in the Czech political thinking – Atlantism and Europeanism, as neither of them has offered readily answers to deal with such a challenge. As will be shown, this mutually reinforcing dual challenge has further exacerbated previously existing Czech government's lack of political vision, and resorted to a political mentality which has contained elements of denial, rationalization, and political resignation.     

Science,security and spies

Abstract

The national research and development (R&D) base has in the post-cold war era gained increased importance in order to fill new security demands. There is a broadening of the search for security relevant science and technology involving more organizations and interests, scientific disciplines and nations. The question discussed in this article is if the premises of international, free and open R&D will be(come) compromised? Will we see more scientists, in their normal scientific activities, being accused of spying? The article suggests that such risks are not unrealistic to expect. Spy cases in less democratic countries could have consequences for scientists also in other countries. Outcomes depend on, among other things, the relative strengths of academic freedom and a political Identification Friend and Foe (IFF) component. United Nations and European Union resolutions restricting science education for students from Iran and North Korea in an attempt to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons illustrate a strong IFF component. Difficulties with regard to the implementation of these resolutions and other findings are presented in the final section of the article.