About Wars

COST OF THE IRAQ WAR: ARE ECONOMIC WOES A CASUALTY OF UNEXPECTEDLY HIGH COSTS? Peter Katel, The CQ Researcher, April 25, 2008, pp. 361-384. "The fifth anniversary of the Iraq War hit just as the subprime mortgage crisis and rising unemployment in the United States were turning the economic situation bleak. Against this backdrop, a Nobel laureate economist and a federal budget expert linked the economic downturn to the war and calculated its eventual total financial cost at $3 trillion and possibly even more, plus the tens of thousands of Americans and Iraqis killed or wounded. President George W. Bush dismisses the linkage argument, contending the war creates job opportunities at home and that military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan amounts to only a 'modest fraction' of the U.S. economy. But even Republican lawmakers have been asking why taxpayers are funding much of the rebuilding of oil-rich Iraq while it reaps billions in profits thanks to record-high oil prices. For its part, the administration says Iraq is now starting to bear more of the reconstruction costs." READ MORE

DEBATING BUSH'S WARS. Peter Wehner; Kishore Mahbubani and Philip H. Gordon, Survival, February 2008, pp. 69-90. "In the winter 2007–08 issue of Survival, Brookings Institution scholar Philip Gordon argued that America’s strategy against terror is failing ‘because the Bush administration chose to wage the wrong war’. The Bush record is six years of failure, according to Gordon, because of a misdiagnosis of the origins of the problem, too much faith in military force and belligerent rhetoric, alienating friends and allies, conflating America’s foes into a single ‘enemy’, and misunderstanding the ideological fundamentals of the struggle. As the campaign to replace Bush intensifies, Survival invited former Bush speechwriter and Deputy Assistant to the President Peter Wehner and Kishore Mahbubani, Dean and Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, to reflect on Gordon’s arguments. Their comments, and Philip Gordon’s response, follow." READ MORE

THE PRICE OF THE SURGE. Steven Simon, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2008, var. pages. "The Bush administration's new strategy in Iraq has helped reduce violence. But the surge is not linked to any sustainable plan for building a viable Iraqi state and may even have made such an outcome less likely -- by stoking the revanchist fantasies of Sunni tribes and pitting them against the central government. The recent short-term gains have thus come at the expense of the long-term goal of a stable, unitary Iraq."  READ MORE

Nations in Turmoil

BEYOND DARFUR. Andrew S. Natsios, Foreign Affairs, May-June 2008, var. pages. "While the crisis in Darfur simmers, the larger problem of Sudan's survival as a state is becoming increasingly urgent. Old tensions between the Arabs of the Nile River valley, who have held power for a century, and marginalized groups on the country's periphery are turning into a national crisis. Engagement with Khartoum may be the only way to avert another civil war in Sudan, and even that may not be enough."
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CONFLICTS WITHOUT BORDERS.  Stefan Wolff, National Interest, May/June 2008, var. pages. "Many governments around the world identify stopping and stemming 'ethnic and religious hatreds' as a major foreign-policy priority. Quite simply, in the words of the 2006 U.S. National Security Strategy, such 'conflicts do not stay isolated for long and often spread or devolve into humanitarian tragedy or anarchy.' Yet, ethnic conflicts do not simply appear out of thin air. They can be traced primarily to the decisions of political leaders. The spread of ethnic conflict is not automatic either. For existing ethnic conflicts to move beyond their original borders, the relevant actors—ethnic communities, states and other private-interest groups—need to make a choice. If they choose to expand the conflict, they need three things: the motive, the means and the opportunity." READ MORE

THE MORAL HAZARD OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION: LESSONS FROM THE BALKANS. International Studies Quarterly, Alan J. Kuperman, March 2008, pp. 49-80. "This article explores a perverse consequence of the emerging norm of humanitarian intervention, or 'Responsibility to Protect,' contrary to its intent of protecting civilians from genocide and ethnic cleansing. The root of the problem is that such genocidal violence often represents state retaliation against a substate group for rebellion (such as an armed secession) by some of its members. The emerging norm, by raising expectations of diplomatic and military intervention to protect these groups, unintentionally fosters rebellion by lowering its expected cost and increasing its likelihood of success." READ MORE

PARTITIONING TO PEACE: SOVEREIGNTY, DEMOGRAPHY, AND ETHNIC CIVIL WARS. International Security, Spring 2008, pp. 140-170. "Some scholars have proposed partition as a way to solve ethnic civil wars. Partition theorists advocate the demographic separation of ethnic groups into different states, arguing that this is the best chance for an enduring peace. Opponents argue that partition is costly in terms of its human toll and that its advocates have yet to demonstrate its effectiveness beyond a limited number of self-selected case studies. Partitions that completely separated the warring groups did not experience a recurrence of war and low-level violence for at least five years, outperforming both partitions that did not separate ethnic groups and other ethnic war outcomes. These results challenge other studies that examine partition as a war outcome. The results also have direct implications for Iraq's civil war, postindependence Kosovo, and other ethnic civil wars." READ MORE

Water Rights

AN OCEANS MANIFESTO: THE PRESENT GLOBAL CRISIS. Alan B. Sielen, Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Winter 2008, pp. 39-61. "Ever-increasing challenges test the health of the oceans and amplify the global impact of their ecological deterioration. Though government policy, economics, and multilateral engagement have begun to address environmental concerns, the creation of a Global Environment Organization, in combination with grassroots activism, would provide a viable framework for moving forward." READ MORE.

CRYSTAL UNCLEAR: THE CHALLENGES OF WATER POLITICS IN THE MIDDLE EAST. Gloria Park, Harvard International Review, Winter 2008, pp. 36-39. "Middle eastern countries have had to divide water sources while ignoring all political boundaries, which has generated a great deal of hostility. Although cooperation of the riparian states is crucial in settling water conflicts in the Middle east, inequalities among the involved states render successful cooperation a difficult process, especially when the countries are left to their own accord. Four individual inequality types amongst riparian countries -- geography, resources, economy and military capacity -- have kept fair water-sharing agreements from becoming a political reality."
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STRENGTHENING GLOBAL WATER INITIATIVES. Robert G Varady et al.  Environment, Mar/Apr 2008, pp. 19-32. "How to address the needs of an ever-more thirsty planet? Critics question the effectiveness of the massive conferences of water experts, managers, and policymakers called to do so - but there may be ways to strengthen these far-reaching initiatives." READ MORE