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Begin New Search Political Geography America Content Type Journal Article Publication Year within 25 Years

101. The future of US–Brazil relations: confrontation, cooperation or detachment?

Author:
Peter Hakim
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
US-Brazilian relations sunk to one of their lowest points ever following last year's exposure of the US government's massive surveillance of the South American giant-including the correspondence of President Rousseff and the business operations of Brazil's national oil company, Petrobras. Brazilian authorities responded angrily. The Brazilian president called off a highly valued state visit to Washington, denounced the US for violations of sovereignty and human rights, and proceeded to bypass the US to purchase nearly $5 billion worth of fighter aircraft from Sweden. In fact, US-Brazil ties have not been constructive for more than a generation. Yes, relations are mostly amiable, but with limited cooperation, considerable discord and some open clashes. Washington views Brazil primarily as a regional actor, and wants its cooperation mainly on inter-American issues. For Brazil, regional collaboration means working with other Latin American nations-not the United States. Brazil usually wants the US to keep a distance from the region. The US is no more enthusiastic about Brazil assuming a global role; differences over some of the world's most dangerous political and security challenges have made Washington uneasy about Brazil's engagement in international affairs and critical of its foreign policy judgements. Relations will probably improve, but they could get worse. The two governments need to acknowledge that their relationship is fragile and troubled, and take steps both to rebuild trust and to avert further deterioration and new confrontations. They have to be more careful with each other.
Topic:
Government, Human Rights, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
America, Washington, and Brazil

102. Africa's choice of partners

Author:
Nicholas Westcott
Publication Date:
10-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Summits with Africa are in fashion: in August, President Obama hosted America's first; in April, the European Union staged the fourth EU-Africa summit in Brussels; the BRICS countries–Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa–held one in Durban in March last year; and in June 2013 Japan hosted its five-yearly conference on African development in Yokohama. Next year will see the sixth China-Africa summit. South America, South Korea and Turkey, which have all held summits with African leaders in recent years, have pledged return matches in Africa.
Political Geography:
Africa, America, and Europe

103. Full Text Issue

Author:
Michael Miklaucic
Publication Date:
12-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
The hardest call during my first year in the Senate was my vote to authorize military force in Syria to punish President Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons against his citizens. When I was sworn in on January 3rd, 2013, I expected difficult votes. But I did not anticipate such a profound vote within my first nine months. Only the 18 Senators who serve on he Foreign Relations Committee had to take that vote on September 4, following President Barack Obama's decision to ask Congress to formally authorize a military response. But as tough as the vote was, I am glad the President brought it to Congress instead of proceeding on his own.
Political Geography:
America

104. Israel Lobby in the US and Iran-P5+1 Negotiations

Author:
Alireza Ahmadi
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Center for Strategic Research (CSR)
Abstract:
The Israel lobby in Washington is a network of organizations and community groups dedicated to influencing American policy towards the Middle East. Their success and access has made them the model for lobbies on Washington's Capitol Hill and US Government. Long known for successfully influencing American policy towards the Middle East, the lobby now faces its strongest challenge in history at a time when it is also facing what it considers a historically significant issue. The interim accord between Iran and members of the P5+1 have led to turmoil in Washington over the wisdom and plausibility of President Obama's diplomatic approach and about the softening of the current US posture towards Iran. In this debate, powerful conservative groups, a number of key Democrats, and the Israel lobby have been pit against progressive groups and Democratic elected officials in the Senate and the White House. In this article, I will briefly look at the history of the Israel lobby in America and explore its evolution as well as investigate the factors that, over time, caused it to take on a hard-line posture and drift towards the right. I will explore the tactics and strategies that the Israel lobby-the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in particular-has undertaken to influence the outcome of events and undermine the possibility of diplomatic conflict resolution. Finally, I will examine the pitfalls and challenges hard-line pro-Israel groups face in effectively pursuing these policies and the long term harm they expose themselves to in alienating progressive and pro-peace groups.
Topic:
Government and History
Political Geography:
United States, America, Iran, Washington, Middle East, and Israel

105. Immorality and Illegality of Sanctions and Iranian Response

Author:
Mohammad Kordzadeh Kermani
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Center for Strategic Research (CSR)
Abstract:
Undertaking research on the political economy of sanctions in Iran covers a wide area of study. In a research project, relevant data and key questions can be collected in order to organize them methodologically and write a book on this issue. In this article, within the conceptual framework of political economy, interactions of a few variables involved in the sanctions on Iran are studied. First, the article explores the immoral aspect and consequently illegal aspect of sanctions as an American policy tool to coerce Iran's behavior regarding its legal right of nuclear enrichment. Then the article sheds light on economic impacts of the sanctions through examples. It also discusses political impacts of the sanctions and practical experience of how Iranians tackle these restrictions. It finally proposes an alternative way to change this hostility dominated environment of the Iran-US relations. This article concludes that As sanctions remain over a prolonged period they tend to become even less effective in achieving their political objectives; the sanctioning countries consequently tend to impose additional, more extensive sanctions, which only promotes further radicalization in both the sanctioned and sanctioning countries. The only way to stop this vicious cycle is for both sides to negotiate in good faith and with open minds.
Topic:
Climate Change and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Iran

106. The Changing Nature of Anglo-American Special Relationship and Iran

Author:
Mohammad Javad Bakhtiari
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Center for Strategic Research (CSR)
Abstract:
The US-UK special relation has always been an attractive and important issue in international relations. The pro-American tendencies of the British and their partnership with American policies as opposed to being willing to more clearly align with the EU and other European countries, have raised various questions in the minds of scholars. Now, considering that David Cameron's Premiership is coming to an end and the next year's election in the UK and also the different challenges which Barack Obama faced in foreign affairs during his presidency along with his declining popularity in the US, this paper is going to find out whether the Anglo-American special relations have already came to an end or not. At the end, the Anglo-American dispute over Iran would be also examined. The Constructivism theory of international relations has been used here to analyze data which have been gathered from library sources and various other internet resources. It is concluded that the Anglo-American special terms which started after the Second World War and were deepened in the Cold War, have lost its strength in one way or another – especially after Bush-Blair era- and is waiting for a new shape with the change of British Premiership.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, United Kingdom, America, Europe, and Iran

107. The South Caucasus: Obama's Failed Russia "Reset" And The Putin Doctrine In Practice

Author:
Mahir Khalifa-Zadeh
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Middle East Review of International Affairs
Institution:
Global Research in International Affairs Center, Interdisciplinary Center
Abstract:
Since 2009, under President Barack Obama, the U.S. has pursued a "Russian reset" policy, promising a fresh start to previously tense relations. Yet this policy has failed to improve American interests, particularly in the South Caucasus region, which is strategically important for both Israeli and U.S. policy towards the greater Middle East and the post-Soviet space. This article examines the priorities of both the Obama administration and President Vladimir Putin's doctrine and evaluates the implications of the Crimean crisis for the South Caucasus. Finally, it demonstrates that in light of this failure, new U.S. initiatives are urgently needed to enforce peace along international borders and America's strategic interests in the South Caucasus and throughout Central Asia.
Political Geography:
Russia, America, Central Asia, and Caucasus

108. Map Room: Violence Against Women

Author:
Jill Filipovic
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
Sisterhood, Robin Morgan wrote, is powerful. That rallying cry of second-wave American feminism is compelling, but this concept of sisterhood—shared experiences, shared values—doesn't exist on a global scale. There is no universal experience of womanhood. Women around the world live vastly differently lives, our experiences often shaped as much by our location, race, economic standing, nationality, age, and religion, as by our sex. But there is one thread that cuts across all dividing lines—violence.
Political Geography:
America

109. Women and the New Global Order: A Conversation with Anne-Marie Slaughter

Author:
Silvia Viñas and Jeff Danziger
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
Anne-Marie Slaughter has helped shape global policy at the highest levels of government and academia—as director of policy planning in Hillary Clinton's State Department, as dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and today as president of the New America Foundation. She also has some provocative ideas on the role of men and women in shaping the nature of the contemporary world. World Policy Journal editor David A. Andelman and managing editor Yaffa Fredrick talked with Dr. Slaughter about the nature of global governance and, on a more personal level, whether women, or for that matter men, can have it all.
Political Geography:
America

110. Change Management

Publication Date:
06-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
Pocket change-mountains of it can shape or re-shape society, politics, and most certainly the economy. The rise and fall of governments, democracies, and tyrannies are all too often at the mercy of the ebb and flow of plain, hard cash. Currencies today are very much the defining feature of nations, individually and collectively. A flailing and fragmented Europe seeks to hang together-retain its global reach-on the strength of a single currency that has taken on a life or neardeath of its own, its very existence becoming an end in itself. Across Africa and Asia, the Americas north and south, continents and peoples are all too often held hostage by forces unleashed in the name of money. It is this kaleidoscope of silver, gold, and paper, often in the magnitude of tsunamis, that we set out to explore in the Summer issue of World Policy Journal.
Political Geography:
Africa, America, Europe, and Asia

111. Argentina: Driven Black

Author:
Meredith Hoffman
Publication Date:
06-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
BUENOS AIRES—When the peso hit rock bottom in January, Ande Wanderer rang up her money dealer—a former official in Argentina's nation-al government. She'd sold off her stocks, cashed in her American savings, and wired him the money. Now she rushed to his office, a ninth floor room in downtown Buenos Aires. The official ex-change rate was 8 pesos to the dollar. But her dealer gave her 11—the black market rate at the time—and kept a small fee for himself. That meant she got some 40 percent more pesos for her U.S. money.
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Argentina

112. China Goes Global: The Partial Power

Author:
Ming Wan
Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
China has gone global, but most China experts in the American academic community have gone local, moving in the opposite direction. As Shambaugh has observed rightly, 'big picture' books on China in the United States have been written by virtually anyone but China scholars. A crucial reason for this academic trend is the current obsession with theories and methods in the social sciences departments, which has changed the incentive structure for scholars who compete for employment, promotion, recognition, and funding. Moreover, given the increasingly complex nature of China's greater presence in the world on so many dimensions, it is also the case that a new generation of scholars trained to be specialized in narrow research topics would arguably find it difficult to write a big book even if they want to. As guilty as many others, this reviewer also encourages his own students to follow a narrow path out of fear that they would otherwise be placed at a competitive disadvantage even though he shares the same concern with Shambaugh.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
United States, China, and America

113. Review: The Conscience of the Constitution

Author:
Slade Mendenhall
Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty, by Timothy Sandefur. Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2014. 200 pp. $24.95 (hardcover). While the principles of liberty on which America was founded are under attack from so-called liberals and conservatives alike, and while expanding abuses of government power are too vast and complex for most Americans to fully follow, books by rational, knowledgeable professionals clearly and concisely explaining the problems and offering solutions are of immense value. Timothy Sandefur's The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty fits this bill. Sandefur, a principal attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, bases his latest work on an underappreciated idea in American legal thinking. It is the idea that the Declaration of Independence—understood as a formal, legal, diplomatic document issued by the representatives of thirteen British colonies to the king of England—is part of the law of the land, just as are the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In fact, argues Sandefur, the Declaration used to be seen as the “conscience of the Constitution,” and reviving this understanding of its position in the framework of U.S. law will go a long way toward establishing the moral and political context within which lawyers, judges, and Supreme Court justices should argue and interpret constitutional law. Sandefur's thesis is controversial and is not likely to be well received in modern courts and law classrooms. Most law schools teach students to view the Declaration as a mere manifesto or letter of aspiration. But Sandefur wages a compelling intellectual defense of the Declaration-as-law on two fronts: against leftists, who have ridiculously claimed that the document was drafted as a wink-and-nod effort by elite white men to put down minorities and the lower classes; and against conservatives such as Russell Kirk and neoconservatives such as Irving Kristol who, afraid of its “natural rights” language, dismiss the ideas of the Declaration and characterize it as an underhanded “ploy to lure the French” into conflict with the English (p. 14). Sandefur, pointing out the baseless nature of such criticisms, puts forth a strong argument for holding the Declaration as law and highlights the Founding Fathers' own understanding of it as such. . . .
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
America, Washington, and England

114. Finding Bin Laden: Lessons for a New American Way of Intelligence

Author:
Erik J. Dahl
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
ERIK J. DAHL describes the nearly decade-long search for Osama bin Laden and what it reveals about the capabilities and the limitations of the American intelligence community. He argues that this case suggests that we may be seeing the first signs of a “new American way of intelligence” with a reduced reliance on the expensive, high-technology systems of the Cold War and a greater emphasis on broad-based intelligence fusion and analysis.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
America

115. Acting White? Rethinking Race in Post-Racial America

Author:
Jennifer L. Hochschild
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
The number of publications arguing that the United States is not post-racial despite twice electing Barack Obama to the presidency is many orders of magnitude greater than the number of publications claiming that the United States is post-racial. In fact, it is difficult to find anyone asserting post-raciality beyond one New York Times Magazine article and a few Fox News commentators around the 2008 election. Nevertheless, attacks on the purportedly common assumption continue.
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Germany

116. Fed versus Market Regulation

Author:
Jeb Hensarling
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Before I get into the body of the remarks, I want to thank the Cato Institute for everything it stands for and everything it has meant to me. As I was walking in the foyer, I noticed a copy of the Cato Journal on a table there. I recall as an undergraduate student at Texas A University in the 1970s that I took $25 dollars—and I'm a guy who worked my way through college—of my hard-earned money to invest in the Cato Journal. That was money I could have invested in long necks at the Dixie Chicken, our local watering hole. Also, I would like to thank John Allison. If you have not read his book, The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism Is the World Economy's Only Hope, I commend it to you. Finally, I would like to tell you that as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, before I decide to move out on any particular issue, I certainly glean the scholarship of Cato in general and Mark Calabria in particular.
Political Geography:
America

117. The Case for a Centennial Monetary Commission

Author:
Kevin P. Brady
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
By every economic measure, our nation is presently mired in a disappointing economic recovery. In fact, ours is the weakest recovery of the past half century. Uncertainty reigns as the purchasing power of the dollar declines. What ails us goes well beyond federal fiscal policy, and it is certainly not the result of an irrational marketplace. What ails us goes much deeper to our nation's monetary policy, which is well overdue for a review.
Political Geography:
America

118. Book Review: Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces

Author:
Jonathan Blanks
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Criminal justice reform has been gaining momentum in Washington, attracting policymakers from both sides of the aisle. Draconian mandatory minimum sentences, overcrowded prisons, and bloated criminal justice budgets have made reform a bipartisan issue. This is undoubtedly a positive development, but—as is typical with the political process—the most popular reforms are not enough. Most of the political capital and rhetoric focuses on "back-end" criminal justice reforms, such as sentencing reform, early release, and alternatives to incarceration. While these reforms are sorely needed, the "front end" of the criminal justice system—criminal laws, the courts, and policing itself—also needs thorough examination. Radley Balko's Rise of the Warrior Cop is an exemplar of what these assessments should look like in the American context.
Political Geography:
America and Washington

119. Book Review: Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order

Author:
Travis Evans
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
For the better part of a decade, the United States has been mired in mediocrity, settling for what feels like a new normal of low eco- nomic growth, stagnant wages, political intransigence, and an unending war or terror. Many think America's better days are behind it. Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, disagrees. In Foreign Policy Begins at Home , Haass attempts to reverse American defeatism and assuage fears of American decline, arguing instead that the United States is simply underperforming, suffering from "American made" problems that can be corrected by restoring the "foundations of its power." He explains that America's true strength abroad comes from its strength at home, and if America is to provide global leadership it "must first put its house in order." While much of Foreign Policy focuses on policy prescriptions that would restore American strength, the true contribution of the book is its explanation of why such a strategy is needed.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Japan, China, and America

120. Book Review: Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America

Author:
Emily McKlintock Ekins
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
In this review, I will focus on three main points: their test of whether the tea party is comprised of "reactionary" or "responsible conservatives," their statistical methods testing if racism and a preference for social dominance drive tea party supporters, and their comparison of the tea party to the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. The authors prematurely reject the argument that the tea party is primarily motivated by genuine concerns about spending, the size and scope of government, and taxes in part because they rely on a problematic comparison of local tea party group websites to the National Review Online (NRO). From this analysis, they conclude the movement is a contemporary manifestation of paranoid reactionary conservatism.
Political Geography:
America