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Topics in this
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February 16, 2010
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In this Tuesday, April 8, 2008 file photo released
by the Iranian President's Office, Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, center, listens to a technician during his visit of the
Natanz Uranium Enrichment Facility some 200 miles (322 kilometers)
south of the capital Tehran, Iran. (AP Photo/Iranian Presidents
office, File) |
Nuclear Nonproliferation
THE GREATER MIDDLE EAST: IS PROLIFERATION
INEVITABLE?
NCAFP, American Foreign Policy Interests, January 2010, pp. 26–35.
"The report that follows is a summary of a closed-door,
off-the-record roundtable that was held in New York City on April
29, 2009. Just as the article begins with a letter from the
president of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP),
it closes with a postscript written in November 2009 by the senior
fellow of the NCAFP's project on The Middle East: Islamic Law and
Peace. Both testify to the panelists' commitments to answering the
overarching question posed in the title of the roundtable and to
identifying Iran's purpose in enriching its uranium."
READ MORE
IRAN'S GROWING WEAPONS CAPABILITY AND ITS
IMPACT ON NEGOTIATIONS. David Albright, Jacqueline Shire, Arms
Control Today, Dec 2009, pp. 6-14. "The crisis over
Iran's growing nuclear weapons capabilities is rapidly reaching a
critical point. Recent developments do not bode well for the
prospect of successful negotiations that can end concerns about
Iran's nuclear program, at least in the short term. These concerns
center on two related questions: whether Iran can be prevented from
using its nuclear program for weapons purposes, and how much
confidence the United States and other countries can have in
verification measures to ensure that the Iranians are not using
their program for such purposes."
READ
MORE
THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES: CAN JAPAN LIVE
WITHOUT THE BOMB? Masaru Tamamoto, World Policy Journal, Fall
2009, pp. 63-70. "Clearly, a world free of nuclear
weapons is a step-by-step process. It will take many years for the
US and Russia--not to mention China or North Korea--to decommission
their arsenals. But politicians in Japan fear, for the first time,
that these moves are likely to cloud the clarity of America's
commitment to defend the nation. Japan, which has foresworn
offensive military capability since World War II and remains so
reliant on a foreign protector, is deeply fearful of abandonment.
Here, Tamamoto looks at whether Japan can live without nuclear
weapons."
READ MORE
NUCLEAR POWER WITHOUT NUCLEAR
PROLIFERATION? Steven E. Miller, Scott D. Sagan, Daedalus,
Fall 2009, pp. 7–18. ""The global nuclear order is
changing. Concerns about climate change, the volatility of oil
prices, and the security of energy supplies have contributed to a
widespread and still-growing interest in the future use of nuclear
power. This surge of interest in nuclear energy–labeled by some
proponents as “the renaissance in nuclear power”– is, moreover,
occurring simultaneously with mounting concern about the health of
the nuclear nonproliferation regime, the regulatory framework that
constrains and governs the world’s civil and military-related
nuclear affairs."
READ MORE
NUCLEAR POWER IN THE ARAB WORLD & THE
REGIONALIZATION OF THE NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE: AN EGYPTIAN PERSPECTIVE.
Mohamed I. Shaker, Daedalus, Winter 2010, pp. 93–104.
"Nuclear Technology Review 2009 also reported that a
number of Arab countries are interested in the introduction of
nuclear power. A quick tour d’horizon of the Arab world, from east
to west, reveals some facts and developments concerning nuclear
technology and its affiliations in this vast area of the world,
which constitutes 10.2 percent of the entire globe."
READ MORE
THE NUCLEAR "RENAISSANCE" & PREVENTING THE
SPREAD OF ENRICHMENT & REPROCESSING TECHNOLOGIES: A RUSSIAN VIEW.
Anatoly S. Diyakov, Daedalus, Winter 2010, pp. 117–125.
"Concerns about sharp growth in oil and natural gas prices and
shortages of fossil fuel reserves have led many countries, including
developing countries, to express interest in nuclear power. An
additional factor contributing to the growth of interest in nuclear
power is essential improvements in reactor technology. Since the
Chernobyl disaster in 1986, for example, the reliability and
efficiency of nuclear power plants (npps) have grown substantially.
Russia is among the countries that are pursuing very ambitious
programs of nuclear power development."
READ MORE
NUCLEAR DISORDER. Graham Allison,
Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2010, pp. 74-85. "The global
nuclear order today could be as fragile as the global financial
order was two years ago, when conventional wisdom declared it to be
sound, stable, and resilient. In the aftermath of the 1962 Cuban
missile crisis, a confrontation that he thought had one chance in
three of ending in nuclear war, US Pres John F. Kennedy concluded
that the nuclear order of the time posed unacceptable risks to
mankind. The current global nuclear order is extremely fragile, and
the three most urgent challenges to it are North Korea, Iran, and
Pakistan. If North Korea and Iran become established nuclear weapons
states over the next several years, the nonproliferation regime will
have been hollowed out. Most of the foreign policy community has
still not absorbed the facts about North Korean developments over
the past eight years. One of the poorest and most isolated states on
earth, North Korea had at most two bombs' worth of plutonium in
2001."
READ MORE
SAME AS IT EVER WAS: NUCLEAR ALARMISM,
PROLIFERATION, AND THE COLD WAR. Francis J Gavin,
International Security, Winter 2010, pp. 7-37. "A
widely held and largely unchallenged view among many scholars
and policymakers is that nuclear proliferation is the gravest
threat facing the United States today, that it is more dangerous
than ever, and that few meaningful lessons can be drawn from the
nuclear history of a supposed simpler and more predictable
period, the Cold War. This view, labeled 'nuclear alarmism,' is
based on four myths about the history of the nuclear age. First,
today's nuclear threats are new and more dangerous than those of
the past. Second, unlike today, nuclear weapons stabilized
international politics during the Cold War, when in fact the
record was mixed. The third myth conflates the history of the
nuclear arms race with the geopolitical and ideological
competition between the Soviet Union and the United States,
creating an oversimplified and misguided portrayal of the Cold
War. The final myth is that the Cold War bipolar military
rivalry was the only force driving nuclear proliferation. A
better understanding of this history, and, in particular, of how
and why the international community escaped calamity during a
far more dangerous time against ruthless and powerful
adversaries, can produce more effective U.S. policies than those
proposed by the nuclear alarmists."
READ MORE
THE PUZZLE OF TRUSTING RELATIONSHIPS IN
THE NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY. Jan Ruzicka, Nicholas J.
Wheeler, International Affairs, January 2010, pp. 69-85.
"A successful outcome of the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) Review Conference is widely seen as vital if the
NPT is to continue to play an important role in preventing
nuclear proliferation. Focusing on the concept of trust, this
article offers a novel perspective on the treaty and its future
prospects. Too often dismissed as impossible or dangerous in
international politics, trust has received little attention from
both academics and practitioners. This article challenges this
predominant view by making a case that the NPT establishes and
embodies a series of trusting relationships between states."
READ MORE
NUCLEAR POWER FOR SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT: CURRENT STATUS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS. A Adamantiades,
I Kessides, Energy Policy, December 2009, pp. 5149-5166.
"Interest in nuclear power has been revived as a result of
volatile fossil fuel prices, concerns about the security of
energy supplies, and global climate change. This paper describes
the current status and future plans for expansion of nuclear
power, the advances in nuclear reactor technology, and their
impacts on the associated risks and performance of nuclear
power. Advanced nuclear reactors have been designed to be
simpler and safer, and to have lower costs than currently
operating reactors. By addressing many of the public health and
safety risks that plagued the industry since the accidents at
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, these reactors may help break
the current deadlock over nuclear power. In that case, nuclear
power could make a significant contribution towards reducing
greenhouse gas emissions. However, significant issues persist,
fueling reservations among the public and many decision makers.
Nuclear safety, disposal of radioactive wastes, and
proliferation of nuclear explosives need to be addressed in an
effective and credible way if the necessary public support is to
be obtained."
READ MORE
ORGANIZATIONAL INTEREST, NUCLEAR
WEAPONS SCIENTISTS, AND NONPROLIFERATION. Sharon K Weiner,
Political Science Quarterly,Winter 2009/2010, pp. 655-680.
"In the early 1990s, the disintegration of the Soviet
Union led to concerns about proliferation, including fears about
the spread of nuclear weapons expertise. In the US, the response
was the creation of several programs to fight proliferation by
providing income to former Soviet nuclear weapons workers. Two
such efforts were located in the US Department of Energy. Both
focused on a two-pronged response: improve experts' living
standards in the short term and re-direct them to non-weapons
jobs in the future. Here, Weiner looks at two cooperative threat
reduction programs between the US and Russia that were aimed at
the proliferation of nuclear weapons expertise. She asserts that
the organizational interests of the US nuclear weapons
laboratories--key actors in these programs--are responsible for
early success but, in the long term, have led to concerns that
have limited program effectiveness."
READ MORE
REDUCING TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS
IN EUROPE. Miles Pomper, Survival, February 2010, pp.
75-96. Control of US and Russian tactical
nuclear weapons has remained an elusive goal since the end of
the Cold War, despite the fact that these weapons are
particularly attractive to nuclear terrorists and represent a
major danger from the standpoint of early or accidental use.
Meaningful progress will probably require a larger deal in which
there are trade-off between US concessions on issues of interest
to Russia and Russian concessions on tactical nuclear weapons.
Two options merit serious consideration. The first entails the
withdrawal of the small number of US tactical weapons that
remain in Europe to jump-start a dialogue. The second option
involves a package deal that would include Russian agreement to
initiate negotiations on tactical nuclear weapons reductions in
exchange for NATO agreement to discuss changes in the
Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. An optimal approach would
be to launch a meaningful dialogue on tactical nuclear weapons
in a separate forum, yet in parallel to the next stage of START
negotiations.
READ MORE
Democracy
PRESS FREEDOM: SHOULD PARTISAN BLOGGERS GET
FREE-PRESS PROTECTIONS? Peter Katel, The CQ Researcher, February 5, 2010, pp.
97-120. "Wrenching changes in the news business are starting to alter the
legal landscape for journalists. The federal Freedom of Information
Act and “shield” laws in many states give reporters access to
official documents and offer some protections against prosecutors
who demand to know their confidential sources or information that
reporters have gathered. But amid catastrophic revenue declines,
media companies struggling to stay afloat have less money to throw
into court fights to enforce their journalistic rights. And the
increasing numbers of online bloggers — including those who call
themselves independent journalists — have even fewer resources.
Moreover, politicians have been arguing over which kinds of bloggers
— if any — should be defined as journalists entitled to free-press
protections. The debate on that issue has stalled progress on a
proposed federal shield law in the Senate, though backers were
hopeful of reaching a compromise."
READ MORE
PROMOTING DEMOCRACY TO STOP TERROR,
REVISITED. Shadi Hamid, Steven Brooke.
Policy
Review, March 2010, var. pp.
U.S. democracy promotion in the Middle East has suffered
a series of crippling defeats. Despite occasionally paying lip
service to the idea, few politicians on either the left or right
appear committed to supporting democratic reform as a central
component of American policy in the region. Who can really blame
them, given that democracy promotion has become toxic to a
public with little patience left for various “missions” abroad?
But as the Obama administration struggles to renew ties with the
Muslim world, particularly in light of the June 2009 Cairo
speech, it should resist the urge to abandon its predecessor’s
focus on promoting democracy in what remains the most
undemocratic region in the world.
READ MORE
POPULISM,
PLURALISM, AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY. Marc F. Plattner, Journal
of Democracy, January 2010, pp. 81-92. "In recent
years, scholars have begun to focus on the sources of
'authoritarian resilience.' But democracy has also shown
surprising resilience, in part because the disorders to which it
is prone tend to counteract each other. "
READ MORE
A WAY FORWARD WITH THE INTERNATIONAL
CRIMINAL COURT. Tod Lindberg,
Policy Review,
March 2010, var. pp. The international criminal
court is an institution that sits uneasily at the dangerous
intersection of law and politics, both international and
domestic. Created by a treaty, the Rome Statute, opened for
signature in 1998 and commencing operation after ratification by
60 state signatories in July 2002, the Court has as the subject
matter of its jurisdiction the most horrible acts of violence
that political conflict can produce: genocide, war crimes,
ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity. The notion that
atrocities on such a scale can be brought to heel or ameliorated
by the law acting across national borders necessarily entails
the Court inserting itself into some of the worst and most
vexing conflicts the world sees.
READ MORE
THE FALSE PROMISE OF THE NOBEL PRIZE.
Ronald R. Krebs, Political Science Quarterly, Winter
2009-2010, pp. 593-625. The author "discusses the
history, politics, and effects of the award of the Nobel Peace
Prize. While conferral of the Prize seeks to change the world,
Krebs argues the award only occasionally draws attention to
ignored problems. He claims that the award has sometimes
produced unexpected and unwanted outcomes, which have become
more common in recent years as the Peace Prize has increasingly
been awarded to promote domestic liberalization."
READ MORE
Diplomacy
THE CONTINUED RELEVANCE OF REALISM IN
THE AGE OF OBAMA: PLUS CA CHANGE, PLUS C'EST LA MEME CHOSE. Bradley A. Thayer,
American Foreign Policy Interests, January 2010, pp. 1-4.
"If this prediction of the foreign policy of the Obama administration
proves to be true, President Obama will be judged to be an exemplar
of realism. So will the sustainability of realism in the formulation
and practice of American foreign policymaking where it has informed
and driven policy for more than two hundred years."
READ MORE
AMERICA'S 'INTELLECTUAL' DIPLOMACY.
David Milne, International Affairs, January 2010, pp. 49-68.
"Historians and journalists such as Richard Hofstadter and Susan
Jacoby have decried the reality 'of anti-intellectualism' in
American society, culture, and politics. Yet intellectuals have
played a vital role in shaping US diplomacy—from Alfred Thayer Mahan
to Paul Wolfowitz. This article explores the varied reasons why the
US government has proved so amenable to input from academia,
think-tanks and freelance intellectuals."
READ MORE
PUBLIC DIPLOMACY: IDEAS FOR THE WAR OF
IDEAS. Peter Krause, Stephen Van Evera, Middle East Policy,
Fall 2009, pp. 106-134. "The United States cannot
defeat al-Qaeda by strength of arms alone. It must also change
the terms of debate in the Arab/Muslim world, especially in its
radical wing. How can this best be accomplished? What strategy
should the United States adopt for what is often called the 'war
of ideas' against radical Islam? The Barack Obama administration
has vastly improved on its predecessor's approach to the war of
ideas. As a result, the global terms of debate have improved
since the change of administrations in January 2009. But recent
U.S. gains are shallow and reversible. They fall short of the
change in opinion needed to defeat the al-Qaeda network.
Moreover, they mainly reflect President Obama's subtle instinct
for public persuasion. As such, they could be undone by a change
in U.S. leadership. These gains should be consolidated by
embedding them in stable policies that will create and sustain
favorable terms of debate over the long term. Accordingly, we
survey and assess recent and current U.S. public diplomacy
toward the Muslim world and offer suggestions for improvement."
READ MORE
EU Issues
EUROPE'S IMMIGRANT PROBLEM:
INTEGRRATING MINORITY POPULATIONS. Lauren Fulton.
Harvard International Review.
Fall 2009, pp.28-33.
As the enlargement of the European Union (EU) increases the scope
and population of Europe, social integration has been pushed to the
forefront of political debate. over the past decade, incidents such
as the murder of Theo Van Gogh by Mohammed Bouyeri in 2004 or the
political
furor caused by the French ban on hijab in 2003 call into question
europe’s ability to successfully integrate its diverse minority
populations. When the EU took steps to move beyond an economic free
trade area to a unified political entity, it strived to create a
European identity shared by all of its citizens. However, the
opening of borders between all member countries, which was intended
to promote freedom of travel and the integration of nations, has
instead heralded anti-immigrant sentiment that could undermine the
entire project if given a chance to develop. Now, the steady flow of
migrants from both within the EU and abroad exacerbates tensions
with minority populations that must be solved before the continent
welcomes further expansion.
READ MORE
THE EU
AND MINORITY RIGHTS IN TURKEY.
Sule Toktasand Bulent Aras, Political Science Quarterly,
Winter 2009-2010, p. 697-720.
The authors describe the development of minority
rights in Turkey in light of the European Union accession
process. They conclude that Turkey initiated several reforms
that were necessary for EU membership but failed to alter its
established “minority regime,” which recognizes as minorities
the non-Muslim Armenian, Jewish and Greek communities and
excludes other groups from the minority category.
READ MORE
Economy/Financial Markets
HOW A NEW JOBLESS ERA WILL TRANSFORM
AMERICA.
The
Atlantic, March 2010, var. pp.
The Great Recession may be over,
but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before
it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a
generation of young adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on
many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in
many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into
a despair not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our
politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to
come.
READ MORE
CHINA IN THE
GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS: RISING INFLUENCE, RISING CHALLENGES.
William H. Overholt,
The Washington Quarterly
January 2010
pp. 21-34.
The tsunami of financial chaos that
engulfed the world in the first decade of this century has multiple
causes stemming from a combination of Eastern liquidity and Western
mismanagement. Inexpensive Chinese goods have kept U.S. and European
inflation down, despite the U.S. Federal Reserve’s highly
stimulative monetary policy under Alan Greenspan, which persisted
well after the tech bust at the beginning of the decade, and despite
the Bush
administration’s highly stimulative fiscal deficits. Because the
Federal Reserve was only willing to counter goods inflation, not
asset inflation, Western interest rates in turn were kept lower than
they would otherwise have been. As the U.S. Department of Treasury
sold bonds to finance the budget deficits, large purchases by
Chinese, other Asian, and Middle Eastern countries kept interest
rates on those bonds from rising as much as they otherwise would
have. Meanwhile, Japan’s near-zero interest rates enabled hedge
funds and others throughout the world to borrow yen at very low
interest rates and invest in every kind of asset, including real
estate, stock markets, and private equity, driving asset prices up
throughout the world.
READ MORE
THE BIPARTISAN ROOTS OF THE FINANCIAL SERVICES CRISIS.
Helena Yeaman, Political Science Quarterly,
Winter 2009 - 2010 , pp. 681-696.
Helena Yeaman examines the partisan claims
about the origins of the financial services crisis of 2008-2009. She
challenges the view that observers should solely blame either the
Democrats or the Republicans for the political climate that allowed
the crisis to develop. She finds that the political roots of the
crisis can be found in the strange admixture of the Democratic
promotion of homeownership for all, combined with Republican
adherence to laissezfaire in the financial services sector.
READ MORE
US Society & Values
HOW A JOBLESS ERA WILL TRANSFORM AMERICA. Don Pack. The
Atlantic, March 2010, online edition. The Great
Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably
just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life
course and character of a generation of young adults. It will leave
an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple
marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be
plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for decades.
Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the
character of our society for years to come.
READ MORE
HOW AMERICA CAN RISE AGAIN. James Fallows. The
Atlantic, January-February 2010, online edition. Is
America going to hell? After a year of economic calamity that many
fear has sent us into irreversible decline, the author finds
reassurance in the peculiarly American cycle of crisis and renewal,
and in the continuing strength of the forces that have made the
country great: our university system, our receptiveness to
immigration, our culture of innovation. In most significant ways,
the U.S. remains the envy of the world. But here’s the alarming
problem: our governing system is old and broken and dysfunctional.
Fixing it—without resorting to a constitutional convention or a
coup—is the key to securing the nation’s future.
READ MORE
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