RADICAL ISLAM IN EUROPE. Leslie S. Lebl, Orbis, Winter 2010, pp. 46-60.  "Europe now faces three related but different challenges: how to respond, in a time when 'native' European populations are shrinking, to the growing presence of Muslim minorities; how to avoid having its relationships with its Muslim communities controlled by Islamists who seek to replace Western civilization with Islamic government based on sharia law; and what to do generally about this Islamist threat. Thus far, the European responses to these challenges have been shaped by four factors: accumulated civilizational exhaustion; the inability to grasp the challenge posed to European national identities by the allure of the global Caliphate; weakness arising from degraded security capabilities, including the impact of the continued drive to 'build Europe' by adopting the Treaty of Lisbon; and the preference for appeasement of Islamist demands." READ MORE

THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE: ISLAMIST MILITANCY IN SOUTH ASIA. Sumit Ganguly and S. Paul Kapur, The Washington Quarterly, January 2010, pp. 47-59. "Pakistan's historical strategy has given rise to a sorcerer's apprentice problem: jihadi organizations have taken on a life of their own. To date, neither India nor Pakistan has reacted to this development constructively. Can they deal with South Asia's sorcerer's apprentice problem more effectively?" READ MORE

“MODERATES” REDEFINED: HOW TO DEAL WITH POLITICAL ISLAM. Emile Nakhleh, Current History, December 2009, pp. 402-409. "It is imperative for the United States to engage mainstream Islamic political parties that are committed to gradual change through the ballot box." READ MORE

DEMOCRACY, FOREIGN POLICY, AND TERRORISM. Burcu Savun, Journal of Conflict Resolution,  December 2009, pp. 878-904. "This article takes a closer look at the relationship between democracy and transnational terrorism. It investigates what it is about democracies that make them particularly vulnerable to terrorism from abroad. The authors suggest that states that exhibit a certain type of foreign policy behavior, regardless of their regime type, are likely to attract transnational terrorism. States that are actively involved in international politics are likely to create resentment abroad and hence more likely to be the target of transnational terrorism than are states that pursue a more isolationist foreign policy. Democratic states are more likely to be targeted by transnational terrorist groups not because of their regime type per se but because of the type of foreign policy they tend to pursue. The empirical analysis provides support for the argument." READ MORE

CAN AMERICA FINANCE FREEDOM? ASSESSING U.S. DEMOCRACY PROMOTION VIA ECONOMIC STATECRAFT. Stephen D. Collins, Foreign Policy Analysis, October 2009, pp. 367-389. "Recent discourse on U.S. efforts to promote democracy has focused on military activities; especially the strategic and normative perils of democracy promotion at the point of bayonets. This paper explores the United States' use of economic statecraft to foster democratization, with particular attention to democracy incentive and assistance strategies." READ MORE

THE TERROR FRINGE. Thomas Rid and Marc Hecker, Policy Review, December 2009/January 2010, var. pp.  "The Afghan-Pakistan border region is widely identified as a haven for jihadi extremists. But the joint between local insurgencies and global terrorism has been dislocated. A combination of new technologies and new ideologies has changed the role of popular support: In local insurgencies the population may still be the 'terrain' on which resistance is thriving — and counterinsurgency, by creating security for the people, may still succeed locally. But Islamic violent extremism in its global and ambitious form is attractive only for groups at the outer edge, the flat end of a popular support curve. Jihad failed to muster mass support, but it is stable at the margin of society. Neither the West nor its enemies can win — or lose — a war on terror. Western anti-terror policy rests on the assumption that the threat of violent extremism has to be treated at the root — in Afghanistan. A stable Afghan-Pakistan border region, the theory goes, would stop exporting terrorism to the rest of the world." READ MORE

CHANGES AND THE AMERICAN SECURITY PARADIGM. Kenneth Allard, Orbis, Winter 2010, pp. 87-96. Ken Allard explores how the U.S. security paradigm, especially when it comes to borders and security of the homeland, is shifting as a result of cooperation between drug and terrorist networks. READ MORE

Middle East, Iran, Iraq

STRUCTURING MIDDLE EAST SECURITY. Peter Jones, Survival, December 2009–January 2010, pp. 105–122. "The lack of an inclusive mechanism for the promotion of regional cooperation and security in the Middle East is striking. How could the first steps be taken towards such a goal, given the Middle East's many rivalries and conflicts? There are different conceptions of the basic notions of security in play; the question of the proper relationship between regional and sub-regional approaches requires much deliberation; the role of outside powers remains vexing; and the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict is seen, at least by some, as rendering progress impossible for the time being. One way forward may be to accept that no single system is going to emerge. Rather, it might be best to conceive of the road ahead as involving discussion of a 'system of systems'." READ MORE

AMERICAN GRAND STRATEGY AFTER IRAQ, Sarah Kreps, Orbis, Fall 2009, pp. 629-645. "Kreps, assistant professor at the Department of Government at Cornell University, writes that, to the extent that a strategy can be identified in the first year of the Obama Administration, its defining features are not a break from the past but continuity. She first identifies the elements of grand strategy, pointing to the international distribution of power, American bureaucracy, and public as the key sources of constraint and opportunity.  Kreps then shows how shifts in these factors—comparatively less U.S. power, an overstretched military conducting counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a weary American public—produced a shift in grand strategy that predated the 2008 election and that remains consistent with the current strategic setting.  This article is part of a special series, Debating American Grand Strategy After Major War."  READ MORE

SANCTIONING IRAN: IF ONLY IT WERE SO SIMPLE. Suzanne Maloney, The Washington Quarterly, December 2009, pp. 131-147. "For U.S. policymakers, the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to pose a dilemma because of the unpredictability of the problem on one hand, and the invariability of available U.S. policy instruments on the other. While the Iranian threat has been perennial, Tehran’s internal political dynamics and its external conduct have evolved considerably, and unexpectedly. Although Iran’s challenge has grown more complicated over the years, the landscape of U.S. policy options has remained consistent and frustratingly limited for most of the past three decades. The Obama administration came into office determined to chart a new course on Iran, only to find itself quickly confronted with this same old quandary when the ground shifted suddenly and dramatically. The epic upheaval that followed Iran’s June 2009 presidential election did not formally derail the new administration’s diplomacy toward Tehran, but it surely shattered any expectations for quickly and durably ending the estrangement or resolving the increasingly urgent international concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions." READ MORE

Russia

RESETTING U.S.-RUSSIAN RELATIONS: IT TAKES TWO. David J. Kramer, The Washington Quarterly, December 2009, pp. 61-79.  "President Barack Obama deserves credit for his initial efforts to reverse the deterioration in relations between the United States and Russia. The downward spiral in bilateral ties accelerated by Russia’s invasion of Georgia last year has ended for now, but relations are not likely to improve appreciably because of fundamental differences in values, interests, and outlook between the two countries’ leaderships. In fact, Russian leaders’ actions and rhetoric continue to raise serious doubts about their interest in really resetting relations. The
Obama administration, much like the Bush administration before it, is likely to
find Moscow the source of endless frustrations and headaches and few
solutions." READ MORE

RUSSIA REBORN. Dmitri Trenin. Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec 2009. pp. 64-78. Two decades after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and nearly 20 years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia has shed communism and lost its historical empire. But it has not yet found a new role. Instead, it sits uncomfortably on the periphery of both Europe and Asia while apprehensively rubbing shoulders with the Muslim world. Russia would better serve its interests by strengthening its ties to the world's most relevant and influential actors, rather than by focusing on power balances and exclusive zones. And instead of favoring diplomacy at the United Nations merely because it wields a veto in the Security Council, Russia needs to engage in producing global public goods. Russia will certainly survive the present economic crisis. But it does have a long way to go before it becomes a modern state capable of pursuing a foreign policy that serves its needs, not its nostalgia. READ MORE

Climate Change

THE GREAT MELT: THE COMING TRANSFORMATION OF THE ARCTIC. Alun Anderson, World Policy Journal, Winter 2009/10, pp. 53-64."If there is one place where we don’t want more water, it is at the very top of our planet. But a lot more water is what we are going to have—and all too quickly. In the far north, the biggest and fastest change to our planet ever caused by human activity is underway. More and more of the frozen Arctic seas are melting away. Each winter, the ice grows until it covers an area more than one-and-a-half times the size of the entire United States. In summer, as the 24-hour sunlight sets to work, that ice previously melted to half the winter area. Now, after a catastrophic collapse in 2007, close to two-thirds of the ice is vanishing. Compared to a decade earlier, the Arctic is losing an extra area of ice each summer that is six times the size of California. The big, once-unthinkable question is not if—but when—the ice will disappear completely each summer. Predicting such a monumental shift is a tricky business. When the ice collapsed in the summer of 2007, scientists were caught napping. The ice shrank to an area that climate models predicted we would not see until 2055. Some estimates on total disappearance of the summer ice now suggest a date as early as 2013." READ MORE

GIVING AWAY GREEN TECHNOLOGIES. Bruce Stokes, National Journal, November 20, 2009, var. pp. "Experts say that a dangerous mismatch exists today between how many years the planet has left before very adverse consequences of global warming begin and the number of years it will take for green technologies to spread around the world so that all countries can help clean up the atmosphere. Most experts insist that nations must accelerate international collaboration to bring much-needed technological innovations to market everywhere, faster. But in the run-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in early December, the transfer of clean-coal, wind-, and solar-power technologies from rich countries to poor nations has become a political football. Who should own the intellectual-property rights to such technologies? Should the owners be compensated when technologies are transferred? If so, who will pay? And will the transfer of green technologies undermine the competitiveness of European, Japanese, and U.S. firms who, after all, invented the technologies?" READ MORE

THE MYTH OF GREEN EUROPE, Andrea Lenschow and Carina Sprungk, Journal of Common Market Studies, January 2010, pp. 133-154. "Unlike most nation-states, the EU faces the challenge of actively creating and sustaining myths about its polity. In this article we explore if and under what conditions the story of a ‘Green Europe’ represents a successful new myth on the European project, which is appealing to present and future generations and capable of generating legitimacy for EU politics. Exploring the narratives of policy leaders (storytellers) we trace the functional role of environmental policy for the EU polity as a whole, establish the legitimating role of environmental policy for the EU and search the extent to which the environmental narrative is constructed as an identity-building story. We argue that, while the actual performance of the EU in environmental policy might raise some doubts about the credibility and hence sustainability of the Green Europe myth, ‘green’ has become a brand attribute of the EU to the European public and carries a high level of legitimacy and potential for identification." READ MORE

EU Issues

FERMEZ LA PORTE: THE OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF EUROPE. David Rieff, World Affairs, Jan/Feb 2010, pp. 83-92. "For Christopher Caldwell, an American columnist for the Financial Times and contributor to the New York Times Magazine and the Weekly Standard, the end of Europe as we have known it and as it has known itself is not just possible but inevitable. His new book is a grim explication of this thesis and an investigation—part reportage, part history, part analysis, part social theory—both of the deep roots within European culture and politics for this looming catastrophe, and of its proximate cause, which, for Caldwell, is obvious and undeniable: the mass migration of Muslim immigrants to Europe and the sinister prospect of their dominance. His book, he writes, asks “whether you can have the same Europe with different people. The answer is no.” READ MORE

GLOBAL EUROPA: MYTHOLOGY OF THE EUROPEAN UNION IN WORLD POLITICS. Ian Manners, Journal of Common Market Studies, January 2010, pp. 67-87. "The mythology of the European Union (EU) in world politics can be told and untold in many different ways. This article focuses on the lore or stories of who did what to whom, the ideological projection of the past onto the present and the escapist pleasure of storytelling in looking at the mythology of ‘global Europa’ – the EU in the world. It concludes with a reflection on the way in which the many diverse myths of global Europa compete for daily attention, whether as lore, ideology or pleasure. In this respect the mythology of global Europa is part of our everyday existence, part of the EU in and of the world." READ MORE

THE ECONOMIC MYTHOLOGY OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION. Erik Jones, Journal of Common Market Studies, January 2010, pp. 89-109. "This article examines the economic myths that surround the process of European integration. It argues that while such myths once played an important role in fostering identification and support for the process, they no longer serve that function. Instead, these economic myths have become a focal point for contestation and concern. Europeans will have to develop a new mythology to explain and justify their process of integration as a result." READ MORE

Economy and Financial Markets

THE ROOT OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. Arnold Kling, Policy Review, December 2009/January 2010, var. pp. "In a compelling fictional narrative, there are villains, victims, and heroes. One can give a compelling account of the financial crisis of 2008 that contains such characters, but it would be fictional: A true villain has to be aware of his villainous deeds. Instead, the primary candidates for the role of villain in the 2008 emergency — the executives of banks, Wall Street firms, and insurance companies — made out too poorly in the end to suggest willfulness. If these companies had done nothing but deliberately foist risks on others, they themselves would have survived. The fact that Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and other companies took such large losses is indicative of self-deception. Executives had too much confidence in their risk management strategies. Regulators, too, had excessive confidence in the measures that they had in place to ensure safety and soundness of banks and other regulated institutions. The crisis was both a market failure and a government failure. In fact, some of the most important financial instruments implicated in the crisis, including mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps, owed their existence to regulatory anomalies. In the way that they specified capital requirements, regulators gave their implicit blessing to risky mortgages laundered through securitization and to treating a broad portfolio of risky assets as if it were a safe asset. Simply put, there was a widespread gap between what people thought they knew to be true and what was actually true." READ MORE

IMAGINATIVE OBSTRUCTION: MODERN PROTECTIONISM IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY. Philip Levy, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Summer/Fall 2009, pp. 7-14. "Levy, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, notes that, as international trade has grown exponentially in recent decades, so has the variety of motivations for individual countries to institute trade protections. Levy categorizes protectionist policies in three general groups. Intentional protectionism is the most transparent, designed to shield domestically-produced goods, such as agricultural products or steel, from foreign competition. Incidental protectionism are measures that affect the import of goods under the rubric of unrelated domestic issues, such as prohibiting the imports of products made with toxic materials as a public-health or safety issue. Instrumental protectionism are actions designed to further a nation’s foreign-policy or other goal, such as limiting the spread of dual-use technology. Levy Levy agrees that protectionism must be avoided, but “in order to reject protectionism, we must first be able to recognize it.” READ MORE

Education USA

THE VALUE OF A COLLEGE EDUCATION. Thomas J. Billitteri, The CQ Researcher, Nov. 20, 2009, var. pages. "President Obama's $12 billion American Graduation Initiative — announced in July — aims to help millions more Americans earn degrees and certificates from community colleges. The president wants the United States to have, once again, the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. Along with the administration, economists and many students and parents embrace the notion that higher education offers the most promising ticket to financial security and upward mobility. However, some argue that many young people are ill-prepared or unmotivated to get a four-year degree and should pursue apprenticeships or job-related technical training instead. The debate is casting a spotlight on trends in high-school career and technical education — long known as vocational education — and raising questions about the ability of the nation's 1,200 community colleges to meet exploding enrollment demand." READ MORE

BILINGUAL EDUCATION VS. ENGLISH IMMERSION: WHICH IS BETTER FOR STUDENTS WITH LIMITED ENGLISH? Kenneth Jost, The CQ Researcher, Dec. 11, 2009, var. pages. "More than 5 million public school students have limited English proficiency, and the number is growing. Most English learners enter school behind fluent English speakers, and many never catch up either in language or other academic areas. In the 1960s and '70s, the federal government supported bilingual education: teaching English learners in both their native language and in English. A backlash developed in the 1980s and '90s among critics who attacked bilingual education as academically ineffective and politically divisive. They favored instead some form of 'English immersion.' Educators and policy makers continue to wage bitter debates on the issue, with each of the opposing camps claiming that research studies support its position. Some experts say the debate should focus instead on providing more resources, including more and better-trained teachers." READ MORE

Society & Values

GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION: WAS THE UNITED STATES FOUNDED AS A "CHRISTIAN NATION?"  Thomas J. Billitteri.  CQ Researcher, January 15, 2010, pp. 25-48.
A decades-long culture war over the relationship between government and religion and the role of faith in civil society shows no sign of abating. New cases are coming before the Supreme Court, and fresh conflicts are arising over the placement of religious displays on public property and the use of government money to support faith-based social-service programs. At the heart of the battle lies the question of whether the United States was formed as a “Christian nation” — as many conservatives contend — or whether the Founding Fathers meant to build a high wall of separation between church and state. President Obama outraged conservatives when he declared, “we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or Muslim nation” but a “nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.” Still, the share of Americans who profess to be Christians has been shrinking, while the percentage who claim no religious preference has nearly doubled since 1990.  READ MORE