China's emergence begs a fresh look at power in world affairs—more precisely, at how the spread of freedom and the integration of the global economy, due to the information revolution, are affecting the nature, concentration, and purpose of power. Perhaps such a look could improve the odds of responding wisely to China's rise.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Government, and International Law
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
Abstract:
Humanitarian action in the Caucasus is shaped by the political, social, and security contexts of the region which, in many ways, constitute a case study in the lasting legacies of forced migration and social engineering. Without discounting the historical underpinnings of conflict that often date back several centuries, fears of persecution and deeply-rooted feelings of injustice are contemporary sources of tension and have been overlaid and complicated in the past decade by profound upheaval in the economic, social, and political spheres. The collapse of the Soviet system left the economies of the region in tatters.
David Cortright, Larry Minear, Thomas G. Weiss, George A. Lopez, and Julia Wagler
Publication Date:
01-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
Abstract:
Increased concerns about the negative humanitarian consequences of multilateral sanctions have prompted calls for reform. Drawing upon expertise in both humanitarian activities and sanctions scholarship, the report by independent analysts offers a series of recommendations to the United Nations system for ameliorating the adverse humanitarian consequences of sanctions and making their implementation more effective and accountable. The authors call for greater transparency in the functioning of UN sanctions committees and urge that the present ad hoc policy be replaced by a more regime-like system characterized by agreed principles, rules, and procedures.
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
Abstract:
This occasional paper explores the relationships between emergency and development assistance. These relationships are important because the development community has seen much of its investment eroded or negated in recent years by war and governmental collapse and because relief agencies have recognized the need for sustainable peace if their work is to have long-term significance. Understanding the connections is also important because of evidence that emergency assistance can be inappropriate or even dangerous and that development aid, like emergency assistance itself, has in some cases contributed to fueling and igniting conflict.
Chantal Mouffe, Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Bert A. Rockman, Doreen Massey, Tony McGrew, Kimberly Hutchings, and Niels Jacob Harbitz
Publication Date:
09-1998
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster
Abstract:
Ideological disputes about the respective domains of the state and the market have convulsed much of the twentieth century. Yet recent research and experience suggest that the interaction between politics and economics, between the state and the market, is complex and systemic. An understanding of these systemic properties is crucial for effective democratic reconstruction. This is especially so in countries with a legacy of communism - such as the transition states of the former Soviet Union and East-Central Europe - where not only the market but the state, and indeed society, may have to be reconstructed, if not reinvented.
Chantal Mouffe, Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Bert A. Rockman, Doreen Massey, Tony McGrew, Kimberly Hutchings, and Niels Jacob Harbitz
Publication Date:
09-1998
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster
Abstract:
Does the power of the media threaten democracy (understood as the participation of the people in political debate and decision- making)? In answering this question we need to distinguish between three kinds of power: political, economic, and intellectual.
Since the beginning of the atomic age in 1945, the possession and deployment of nuclear weapons has become the dominant factor in the international system. Those countries that acquired nuclear weapons have become (or maintained their status as) primary world powers, but as the number of such countries grew, the potential for the use of nuclear weapons also increased. In the early 1960s, President Kennedy warned that unless immediate and significant action was taken, within a decade there would be as many as 20 nuclear powers. The process of proliferation was seen as one of the most dangerous and destabilizing aspects of the nuclear era.
Topic:
Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, and Nuclear Weapons
"Transition" is surely the most hackneyed concept among commentators on Korea over the last decade. In this post-modern world of increasingly rapid change, it is fair to say that the Republic of Korea (ROK) is in a constant state of transition from one thing to something else. The two broad areas that most frequently appear in discussions of Korea's transition are economic and political development. In the first case, analysts trace the transition of the ROK from a backward, largely agrarian economy to an industrial and now even post-industrial powerhouse that competes at a high level in the world marketplace. In the latter case, scholars examine the transition from an authoritarian system to a democratic one. Until the economic slide of last fall and the subsequent election to and assumption of the presidency by former opposition leader Kim Dae Jung, most observers would have conceded that the political transition is at an earlier and more precarious stage than the economic. Kim's smooth rise to the ROK's highest office demonstrated powerfully that the way Koreans in the south conduct themselves politically has changed fundamentally over the last generation.
The visit of Jiang Zemin, president of the People's Republic of China (PRC), to the United States to meet with President Bill Clinton in October 1997, and Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto's meetings with Russian President BorisYeltsin and Chinese President Jiang, on November 10, changed the international environment. Hostilities among the major powers surrounding the Korean peninsula are being transformed by an atmosphere of reconciliation and confidence building.
Sensational stories in the American and international press since mid-August have abruptly transformed North Korea from a feeble, impoverished nation on the verge of famine and political collapse into an awesome, secretive, irrational nuclear power. The New York Times on August 17 reported that "spy satellites have extensively photographed a huge work site 25 miles northeast of Yongbyon," North Korea's nuclear research facility. "Thousands of North Korean workers are swarming around the new site, burrowing into the mountainside, American officials said," the report continued. "Other intelligence," according to the same story, cites unidentified officials as saying that U.S. intelligence analysts told them "they believed that the North intended to build a new (nuclear) reactor and reprocessing center under the mountain."