Search

Begin New Search

53941. The Trouble With Congo

Author:
Séverine Autesserre
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Although the war in Congo officially ended in 2003, two million people have died since. One of the reasons is that the international community's peacekeeping efforts there have not focused on the local grievances in eastern Congo, especially those over land, that are fueling much of the broader tensions. Until they do, the nation's security and that of the wider Great Lakes region will remain uncertain.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Democratic Republic of the Congo

53942. The Case Against the West

Author:
Kishore Mahbubani
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The West is not welcoming Asia's progress, and its short-term interests in preserving its privileged position in various global institutions are trumping its long-term interests in creating a more just and stable world order. The West has gone from being the world's problem solver to being its single biggest liability.
Political Geography:
Asia

53943. The Distant Horizon

Author:
Paul Kennedy
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
William Bernstein's A Splendid Exchange, Strobe Talbott's The Great Experiment, and Amy Chua's Day of Empire take up the challenge of 'Big History' -- and in the process shed light on the real choices policymakers face.

53944. The Myth of Grass-Roots Terrorism

Author:
Bruce Hoffman
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Marc Sageman claims that al Qaeda's leadership is finished and today's terrorist threat comes primarily from below. But the terrorist elites are alive and well, and ignoring the threat they pose will have disastrous consequences.

53945. Putin's Russia

Author:
Padma Desai
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
To the Editor: Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss ("The Myth of the Authoritarian Model," January/February 2008) make several erroneous judgments regarding the current Russian scene. The Russian economy has grown in the last seven years at an annual rate of 6.5 percent. The ongoing debate among economists and other informed observers of Russia is over whether this is a result of exceptionally high (and rising) oil prices, and hence a reversible phenomenon if the price of oil collapses, or the result of substantive changes in the last decade that made high growth rates sustainable. At a major World Leaders Forum and a scientific conference attended by distinguished Russia scholars at Columbia University last April, participants shared the view that Russia's economic performance was not a flash in the pan caused by oil; rather, the consensus was that important policy changes had taken place. Still, no responsible Western scholar of Russia (nor even a supporter of former Russian President Vladimir Putin) has suggested that the high growth rates in Russia are a product of Putin's authoritarian ways. The claim by McFaul and Stoner-Weiss that this argument is made is simply creating a straw man.
Political Geography:
Russia

53946. CIA Chronicles

Author:
Amy Zegart
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
To the Editor: Paul Pillar ("Intelligent Design?" March/April 2008) spent most of the 1990s doing counterterrorism analysis at the CIA and rose to be the deputy director of its Counterterrorism Center. My book Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11 is highly critical of that center and finds that its weaknesses contributed to 11 operational failures prior to 9/11. How can an individual who served at the heart of the organization being criticized render an unbiased view of that organization's performance?

53947. Chinese Ways

Author:
Naazneen Barma, Ely Ratner, and Steven Weber
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
To the Editor: In "The Rise of China and the Future of the West" (January/February 2008), G. John Ikenberry offers a compelling series of arguments for why China will not attempt to overturn the liberal order. But he is wrong to assume that the absence of confrontation implies gradual integration. It does not. China is pursuing a different strategy: forging a route around the West by constructing an alternative international system in the developing world. The norms of China's parallel political order are alien to those Ikenberry wishes to see preserved.
Political Geography:
China

53948. Market Blues

Author:
Terrence Keeley
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
To the Editor: Robert Kimmitt ("Public Footprints in Private Markets," January/February 2008) provides an overview of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) in the global economy that is helpful but incomplete. His proposed principles for a policy response are well intended but neither workable nor adequate. Kimmitt delineates four kinds of sovereign investment. In fact, there are six. His category of SWFs should be divided into three parts, stabilization funds, state-holding corporations, and future generation, or future welfare, funds. Each of these has different investment horizons, different investment benchmarks, different risk-management frameworks, and different oversight requirements.

53949. Congress at War

Author:
Louis Fisher, Ryan Hendrickson, and Stephen R. Weissman
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
To the Editor: William Howell and Jon Pevehouse ("When Congress Stops Wars," September/October 2007) suggest that Congress has been far more influential in shaping U.S. military action abroad than previously thought. We disagree. Such a view does not reflect the overwhelming historical evidence since World War II. Moreover, their argument undervalues Congress' constitutional responsibility to independently check the president prior to war. In most cases, Congress has chosen the politically expedient route of deferring to the president. The principal reason for this support has been not partisan calculations, as Howell and Pevehouse argue, but rather lawmakers' unwillingness to exercise their constitutional powers and understand the need for legislative checks.
Political Geography:
United States

53950. The Road to the Arctic

Author:
Coalter G. Lathrop and Scott Borgerson
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
To the Editor: Scott Borgerson's article "Arctic Meltdown" (March/April 2008) is an addition to the recent wave of Arctic journalism rife with Wild West imagery of chaos and lawlessness -- a reporting trend spurred by Russia's August 2007 flag-planting stunt on the North Pole. Arctic frontier jargon that included "land grab" and "ungainly scramble" is now augmented by Borgerson's "gold rush" and "legal no man's land." While Borgerson correctly identifies the many sources of tension in the region, he is wrong when he writes that "the Arctic region is not currently governed by any comprehensive multilateral norms." The Arctic is not the "legal vacuum" invoked in his piece; it is a region governed by international law and, for the maritime issues that are the main subject of the article, specifically by the international law of the sea. With one exception ("growing talk of Greenland petitioning Denmark for political independence"), all of the Arctic problems that Borgerson raises -- offshore hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation, overlapping maritime claims, wide-margin continental shelves, the dumping of nuclear reactors, indigenous whaling, and a variety of shipping issues, including contested shipping routes, the use of flags of convenience, vessel-source pollution, and ship-based tourism -- are quintessential law-of-the-sea problems, around which a robust and widely adopted body of international law has grown.
Political Geography:
Russia