Search

Begin New Search

54901. Responses to Prediction and the Middle East Peace Process

Author:
Rick Hermann
Publication Date:
02-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
My first cut at the hierarchy of driving forces ranks Israeli-Palestinian bilateral factors as the most important and regional and global factors as secondary. Competition between global powers (USA, Russia, China) is currently not intense. None of them see the bilateral Israeli-Palestinian conflict as instrumentally critical to their broader strategic competition with each other. None see their security as centrally tied to this conflict, and, consequently, while interested not even the United States will commit enough resources at this point to overturn the forces driving the bilateral bargain. Competition among regional states is substantial, but the conflicts that do not involve Israel do not involve states powerful enough to project their competition into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For example, Iranian v. Turkish, or Iranian v. Saudi Arabian, or Syrian v. Iraq, or India v. Pakistan might tangentially connect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, mostly in the realm of rhetoric and symbol manipulation. None of these states, however, are strong enough to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an instrumental regional manifestation of their broader strategic conflict. The primary determinants of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiation process in the short-term are the conflicting ambitions and calculations made by Israelis and Palestinians. Forces at the global and regional level will affect these bargaining calculations, (affecting both relative coercive leverage and positive reassurance) but they will not impose additional sources of conflict. My examination of global and regional forces, will follow my construction of the primary bilateral dynamic. I do not think global and regional factors will upset the short-term prediction I will make for the bilateral Palestinian-Israeli relationship. They may play a big role in shaping longer-term predictions.
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Iraq, Middle East, Israel, and Syria

54902. Responses to Prediction and the Middle East Peace Process

Author:
Bruce Jentleson
Publication Date:
02-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
There are two issues I want to raise regarding our basic approach of focusing on driving forces to trace scenarios and predict outcomes. First is the question of the time frame of the outcomes to which we are driving. I ask this with particular reference to the "violent collapse" outcome. There are numerous permutations here that we need to differentiate. I'm not adept enough to graph it on the computer, but here are the permutations: Two versions of violent collapse: violent collapse as some sort of end state for whatever our timeframe is, or violent collapse as an intermediate outcome which then comes back together and leads to "two state" or "autonomy"; If violent collapse as an intermediate stage, then what conditions make an ensuing path to Palestinian state more likely, and what conditions for autonomy? Or what 's the story line for getting to either of these without going through violent collapse? And what are the parameters and criteria for what we mean by "violent" (Singer and Small had their figures for how many deaths equal a war; how many equal "violent") and by "collapse", as distinct from pause or suspension of talks?
Political Geography:
Middle East

54903. Responses to Prediction and the Middle East Peace Process

Author:
David E. Spiro
Publication Date:
02-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
Several interesting observations came out of our first conference. We realized that the mainstream academic view on the Middle East peace process has changed dramatically—from a belief that there would never be a peace to confidence that the peace process would not be derailed. In trying to make predictions that are not driven by newspaper headlines, we used a fairly uncontroversial laundry list of systemic variables, but we could not agree on which way they would effect the outcome. My aim in this memorandum is to review my past views on the Middle East peace process as an exercise in exploring what changed—both in the Middle East, and in my own implicit assumptions. I will amend my conclusions about the past by examining what has happened since the Oslo Accords. Finally, I will suggest, by way of conclusion, what driving forces will affect the future.
Political Geography:
Middle East

54904. Responses to Prediction and the Middle East Peace Process

Author:
Janice Stein
Publication Date:
02-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
The two-state solution includes continuing but declining violence over time against Israeli and Palestinian civilians as the Palestinian state becomes entrenched and its legitimacy and authority grows, Palestinian leaders develop a commitment to the status quo, and the opposition in Israel reluctantly accepts the permanence of a Palestinian state. If the Palestinian state is poorly institutionalized, violence against Palestinian and Israeli citizens may well increase over time.
Topic:
Development and Government
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

54905. Responses to Prediction and the Middle East Peace Process

Author:
Don Sylvan
Publication Date:
02-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
Steve asked each of us to do the following: "Each participant will return to the next meeting with arguments on these seven driving forces. These arguments will include: Logic: what is the causal logic by which the driving force impacts on the intervening and dependent variables. Probability: what is the probability estimate of the effect. Hierarchy: is there an identifiable hierarchy among these driving forces.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Middle East

54906. Responses to Prediction and the Middle East Peace Process

Author:
Steven Weber
Publication Date:
02-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
The election of Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister of Israel threw into flux the Middle East peace process. What in early 1996 seemed to many observers the almost inevitable "working out" of a decades-long conflict that had gradually become unsustainable on all sides, was by late 1996 seen more clearly as part of a contingent unfolding set of events which could drive the region in more than one direction, including backwards toward explicit conflict and even war. This presents unique theoretical, analytic, and policy opportunities.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Middle East

54907. After Hebron: Prospects for the Peace Process

Author:
Zalman Shoval
Publication Date:
03-1997
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
The Hebron agreement is now finally in place. During the months that it took to reach that point, some must have been reminded of what the nineteenth century British Prime Minister Lord Palmerstone once said about the Schleswig-Holstein question: there were only three people who understood it - one of whom was dead, one was in an asylum, and he himself had forgotten it.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
Middle East

54908. Saudi Arabia in the 1990s: Stability and Foreign Policy

Author:
Mordechai Abir
Publication Date:
09-1997
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
The stability of Saudi Arabia (and the Persian Gulf as a whole) is crucially important to the world's industrial countries. According to the Gulf Center of Strategic Studies, "oil is expected to account for 38 percent of all the world consumption of energy until 2015, compared to 39 percent in 1993. Increasing world-wide demand for oil, now about 74 million barrels per day, is projected to rise by 2015 to about 110 million" (Gulf Report, London, July 1997). Over 60 percent of the world's proven oil reserves are located in the Persian Gulf, and Saudi Arabia alone controls 25 percent of the total.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Foreign Policy, Economics, Energy Policy, Politics, and Religion
Political Geography:
Middle East and Saudi Arabia

54909. Demarcating an Israeli-Palestinian Border: Geographic Considerations

Author:
David Newman
Publication Date:
07-1997
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
Maps are a very important part of the political process of conflict resolution known as the peace process. Maps are important parts of all territorial conflicts. We often walk around with the idea of a map in our head and think we know what we are talking about, but often we do not.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Peace Studies, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

54910. Turkey Between Secularism and Islamism

Author:
Jacob M. Landau
Publication Date:
02-1997
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
When Mustafa Kamal (Ataturk) founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923 (he was its president until his death fifteen years later), he set as his main objective the modernization of the new republic. His preferred means was speedy, intensive secularization and, indeed, every one of his reforms was tied up with disestablishing other Islamic institutions from their hold on Turkey's politics, economics, society, and cultural life.
Topic:
Government, Islam, Politics, and Religion
Political Geography:
Turkey and Middle East

54911. The Northeast Asian Security Setting

Author:
Sheldon W. Simon
Publication Date:
01-1997
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
We may now be experiencing one of those relatively rare periods in world affairs when the structure of the international system does not dominate foreign policies. While the old cold war alliances have not completely disappeared from U.S. security policy, their ability to determine reflexively America's foreign relations on issues from Bosnia in Europe to the Spratly islands in the Pacific has greatly atrophied. For other states, too, domestic considerations and nearby regional concerns take precedence over alliances with remote great powers whose reliability is problematic in this new era. To better understand this unfamiliar international security environment, analysts should concentrate on internally generated alternative national visions of security which, in the aggregate, are creating a new, innovative structure of international politics.
Political Geography:
America, Europe, and Northeast Asia

54912. Changing U.S.-Korean Security Relations

Author:
Edward A. Olsen
Publication Date:
01-1997
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
United States-Korea security relations are experiencing a period of dynamic change that raises serious questions about the way that the relationship will evolve during the 21st Century. A number of well-known factors have provoked this phase. The end of the U.S.-Soviet cold war, North Korea's use of its nuclear card to engage the United States in a broader dialogue, South Korea's pursuit of diverse multilateral approaches to its security to shore up the U.S.-ROK alliance, and the emergence of Chinese and Japanese assertiveness in the regional balance of power, cumulatively have altered the context in which Washington and Seoul conduct their bilateral security relations. Both allies are struggling to come to grips with these new—and sometimes troubling—circumstances.
Political Geography:
United States, South Korea, and Korea

54913. The Viability of U.S. Security Strategy Toward the Korean Peninsula

Author:
William J. Taylor, Jr. and Abraham Kim
Publication Date:
01-1997
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
The end of the cold war resulted in a mixed bag of challenges in the Northeast Asia region. The Soviet threat is gone, but the danger of regional instability is not. Lingering conflicts, old rivalries, and security challenges pose an uncertain future for the Asia-Pacific. The U.S. military presence still remains an important stabilizer in the region. Former U.S. Secretary of Defense, William Perry stated: "It is [the U.S. military] presence that the countries of the [Asia-Pacific] region consider a critical variable in the East Asia security equation.... [and] the most important factor in guaranteeing stability and peace."
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States, South Korea, and North Korea

54914. North Korea and the United Nations

Author:
Samuel S. Kim
Publication Date:
01-1997
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
On 17 September 1991, the first day of its (46th) annual session, the United Nations General Assembly admitted the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea (ROK) as the 160th and 161st member states. This historical turnabout was made possible by what had already happened in the Security Council five weeks earlier. Indeed, the 3001st meeting of the Security Council on 8 August 1991 may well be remembered as one of the remarkable events or nonevents in the annals of global high politics in the world organization. Since 1947 the Korean question, in a great variety of contentious manifestations, has proved to be one of the most intractable problems constandy intruding upon wider East-West geopolitical and ideological rivalries in and out of the world organization. Yet, on this day the Security Council devoted only five minutes—between 11:30am and 11:35am EST to be exact—to finally crossing the Rubicon on divided Korea. Without any debate, the Council unanimously adopted the report of the Committee on the Admission of New Members concerning the applications of the two Koreas for admission to membership in the United Nations.
Topic:
United Nations
Political Geography:
North Korea

54915. North Korea's Approaches to the United States and Japan

Author:
B.C. Koh
Publication Date:
01-1997
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
North Korea's approach to the United States is arguably one of the few success stories emanating from Pyongyang. While the story is still unfolding, what has transpired thus far has clearly benefited North Korea in both tangible and intangible ways. By contrast, North Korea's approach to Japan has produced but meager results thus far. Potentially, however, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) stands to profit immensely should its quest for diplomatic normalization with Japan bear fruit.
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, and North Korea

54916. Japan's Policy Toward the Two Koreas in the Post-Cold War Era

Author:
Hong Nack Kim
Publication Date:
01-1997
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
During the cold war era, Japan's Korea policy was geared to the preservation of the status quo on the Korean peninsula by way of supporting the Republic of Korea (ROK) both politically and economically, while refusing to recognize the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). However, Japan's foreign policy in general and its Korea policy in particular had to make some significant adjustments in the aftermath of the collapse of the Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern European nations, which ended the cold war in Europe, and a train of rapid developments on and around the Korean peninsula in the post-cold war era.
Political Geography:
Japan, Europe, and Korea

54917. U.S. Policies Toward the Two Koreas

Author:
Larry Niksch
Publication Date:
01-1997
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
The South Korean government has announced that it would affect a delay in the inauguration of construction of light-water reactors in North Korea (DPRK). Seoul acted in response to North Korea's submarine-borne infiltration of military personnel into South Korea (ROK) and what appears to be North Korea's complicity in the assassination of an ROK diplomat in Vladivostok, Russia. The delay probably will be temporary. By the spring of 1997, a formula likely will be found that will allow construction to begin; and implementation of this important part of the October 1994 U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework will proceed.
Political Geography:
South Korea and North Korea

54918. Chinese and U.S. Relations with South Korea: Compatibilities and Conflicts

Author:
Robert Sutter
Publication Date:
01-1997
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
Chinese-American Rivalry in Korea—A New "Great Game"?There has been considerable discussion in Washington, Beijing and Seoul in recent years about an emerging competition between the United States and China for influence in the Korean peninsula in general and in South Korea in particular. Some in China have voiced concern over alleged U.S. efforts to hold back and "contain" China's rising power and influence in East Asia. They have been impressed by the recent "gains" in U.S. influence with North Korea. Indeed, from their perspectives, the North Koreans have moved away from their traditionally antagonistic stance toward the United States to a foreign policy approach that appears to give top priority to reaching an arrangement with Washington that would allow for the continued survival of the North Korean regime, or at least a so-called "soft landing" for the increasingly troubled government. A possible scenario contrary to these Chinese analysts interests would see the end of the North Korean regime and the reunification of the peninsula by South Korea under arrangements carried out under the guidance and overall influence of the United States, with the support of Japan. In the view of such Chinese officials, such an arrangement would confront China with a major security problem in a crucial area of Chinese concern for the foreseeable future, gready weakening China's ability to exert power and influence in Asian and world affairs. It would give Americans interested in "containing" China a much more advantageous strategic position in East Asia than they now possess.
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, America, East Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

54919. China's Post-Cold War Policy Toward the Korean Peninsula

Author:
Thomas W. Robinson
Publication Date:
01-1997
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
Domestic and International Determinants of Chinese Foreign Policy The period beginning with the Tiananmen Incident of June 1989 initiated the third period of Chinese foreign policy. The first coincided with the rule of Mao Zedong, 1949-1976, and the second extended, after a brief interregnum, from Deng Xiaoping's return to power in 1978 to the Beijing disturbances on 1989. While each period naturally exhibited its own special characteristics, all shared a set of three domestic and three international categories of determinants. To understand those of the post-Tiananmen period, one must inspect, for comparative purposes, those of the first two eras as well. In each era, it is clear that domestic determinants predominated, configuring not only the general direction of foreign policy but much of the specific content. The six determinants influenced Chinese policy toward the Korean peninsula as well, and it is therefore useful to provide a brief sketch in each instance.
Political Geography:
Korea

54920. Soviet and Russian Relations with the Two Koreas

Author:
Jane Shapiro Zacek
Publication Date:
01-1997
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
This essay considers Soviet and then Russian relations with North and South Korea since 1988, which was a watershed year for Soviet policy toward northeast Asia. By that time, the Soviet leadership had reassessed basic ideological and security interests as well as the country's growing domestic economic needs. While the Communist Party was still in power and Mikhail Gorbachev was still General Secretary of the Central Committee (a position he had assumed upon the death of Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985), Marxist-Leninist ideology was playing an everdecreasing role in Party politics and policymaking. By 1987, Gorbachev began to stress the critical need to shift primary political power and the policymaking process from the Party to state institutions. He also emphasized the necessity of revamping the Soviet economy, which would be costly and would need foreign assistance. By 1988, the international communist movement, with the Soviet Union at its head, no longer was of interest to the Soviet leader. Rather, he was looking to reconfirm his country's role as a great power in the international arena, a power that could not be ignored in any regional political turmoil and subsequent settlement, whether in Africa, the Middle East, or Northeast Asia.
Political Geography:
Russia, Middle East, South Korea, Korea, and Northeast Asia