Harvard International Review articles from June 2005

Harvard International Review archives from June 2005

Learning to optimize.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Medical economics )
June 22, 2005... Alistair McGuire and Victoria Serra correctly argue in "The Cost of Care: Is There an Optimal Level of Expenditure?" (Spring 2005) that taking an economic perspective helps us to consider whether a country's health spending is optimal and...

A shallow glimpse.(CORRESPONDENCE)(for Mexico)
June 22, 2005... In "Running After a Fallen Fox" (Spring 2005), author George W. Grayson provides an unbalanced description of Mexico and the administration of Mexican President Vicente Fox. The text pinpoints only certain aspects of Fox's performance, ignoring...

Line in the sand: the Ethio-Eritrean border.(AFRICA)
June 22, 2005... Given the conflict in Iraq and the unfolding of genocide in Sudan, perhaps it should not be surprising that renewed hostilities between Ethiopia and Eritrea have failed to attract any meaningful international attention. Yet this conflict, which...

Clash of clans: challenges to Somali government.(AFRICA)
June 22, 2005... On October 1, 2004, Somalia's newly established 275-member Parliament elected the country's 14th president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. Though Somalis and members of the international community hope that this new administration will bring peace to a...

Under the fence: US-Mexican immigration issues.(AMERICAS)
June 22, 2005... Over the past decade, tension at the US-Mexican border has heightened as an enormous influx of Mexicans has entered the southwestern United States. According to a study conducted by Mexico's National Population Council (CONAPO) in 2001, an...

Election angst: Indonesia's tough transitions.(ASIA PACIFIC)
June 22, 2005... On September 20, 2004, Indonesia held its first direct presidential election in which former General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono defeated incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri by a landslide margin of 60.6 percent to 39.4 percent. While many expected...

Military mayhem: the decline in Japanese pacifism.(ASIA PACIFIC)
June 22, 2005... The end of the Cold War hailed an era of uncertainty over Japan's political and economic future. A receding economy, coupled with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) fall from dominance in 1993, greatly dampened the pride and confidence...

Nixing the news: Iranian Internet censorship.(MIDDLE EAST)
June 22, 2005... Illegal suppression of the press in Iran is nothing new, as the government has been shutting down reformist papers for years. What is new, however, is the recent extension of the crackdown from newspapers to Internet sites and weblogs. The...

End of terrorism? ETA and the efforts for peace.(Euskadi Ta Askatasuna)
June 22, 2005... A nationalist hard-line party of the Basque region, which consists of northern Spain and parts of southwestern France, has asserted Basque independence for the past 40 years. This party, known as Batasuna or Sozialista Abertzaleak, has been...

Toward a new consensus: answering the dangers of globalization.(PERSPECTIVES)
June 22, 2005... We live in a world of "overlapping communities of fate." Everyday life--work, money, beliefs, as well as trade, communications, finance, and the environment--connects us all with increasing intensity. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The word...

The single greatest threat: the United States and global climate disruption.(PERSPECTIVES)
June 22, 2005... Climate change--or better, climate disruption--is the single greatest threat that societies face today. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In 1979, the administration of US President Jimmy Carter asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to...

Joining the global village: Taiwan's participation in the international community.(PERSPECTIVES)
June 22, 2005... Democratic reform in Taiwan, which has been praised as a "quiet revolution," has transformed Taiwan from an authoritarian regime into a democracy in which human rights and the rule of law are honored. Taiwan has been listed by the New...

A man on a mission: Chilean President Ricardo Lagos's health reform plan.(WORLD IN REVIEW)
June 22, 2005... In a speech delivered at the Government Palace just months after being elected President of Chile, Ricardo Lagos laid out his vision for his six years in office. "If we all work together," he proclaimed, "we shall be able to take a better look...

The road to recognition: a global perspective on gay marriage.(WORLD IN REVIEW)(Danish Registered Partnership Act)(Editorial)
June 22, 2005... In the previous half century the world witnessed dramatic cultural upheavals. Factions of the right and left fought many political battles pitting traditionalism against progressivism, each side arguing for its vision of a virtuous society in...

Mending NATO: sustaining the transatlantic relationship.(North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
June 22, 2005... In a recent interview with a reporter from Le Monde, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder pointed out that NATO is "no longer the primary means for dialogue in the transatlantic relationship." While this is hardly surprising in a contemporary context,...

Stalin's joke.(more than might? DEFINING POWER)(Josef Stalin French Foreign Minister)(Column)
June 22, 2005... When the French Foreign Minister suggested the USSR might placate the Pope by tolerating Catholicism, Josef Stalin famously quipped, "The Pope? How many divisions has he got?" It is an irony of history that the figure whose weakness Stalin...

People power primed: civilian resistance and democratization.(more than might? DEFINING POWER)
June 22, 2005... Tisovets, a popular ski resort in the Carpathian Mountains, is a tiring four-hour drive in a four-wheel-drive from Lviv. The journey was exceptionally challenging for Ukraine's newly elected president, Viktor Yushchenko, and Georgian President...

Abuse of power: assessing accountability in world politics.(more than might? DEFINING POWER)(Column)
June 22, 2005... We read all the time that some person or organization in power should be "held accountable." Such demands are made on the UN Secretary-General, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Board of Directors of Enron, the President of the United...

Measuring power: how to predict future balances.(more than might? DEFINING POWER)
June 22, 2005... Power is an elusive concept. As the political scientist Hans Morgenthau wrote, "The concept of political power poses one of the most difficult and controversial problems of political science." Understanding the nature of power has long been...

The politics of power: new forces and new challenges.(more than might? DEFINING POWER)
June 22, 2005... What are the primary forces that characterize power in today's world? What you are asking boils down to distinctions between different kinds of power. Power comes in a number of packages. You have military power, economic power, diplomatic...

Private authority: non-state actors and global governance.(more than might? DEFINING POWER)
June 22, 2005... More than half a century since political scientists Harold Laswell and Abraham Kaplan advocated power analysis as a framework for political analysis of all forms, the concept of power has remained a highly contested concept in political...

The disarmament debate: the fate of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.(Interview)
June 22, 2005... What is the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP) and what are its major goals for international arms control? The LCNP is a research and advocacy organization in New York City. It was formed by lawyers and academics in the early...

Strategic interactions: Edward Bradfield reviews how the weak win wars.
June 22, 2005... With the US military currently engaged in armed conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ivan Arreguin-Toft's How the Weak Win Wars is a timely contribution to the ongoing debate over US defense strategy in the post-September 11 security environment....

The Sinatra Doctrine: Jeremy Jones reviews waging nonviolent struggle.(Waging Nonviolent Struggle by Gene Sharp)(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... At the height of the European revolutions of 1989, the Soviet Foreign Affairs spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov, in an allusion to US President Ronald Reagan's old friend, enunciated the Sinatra Doctrine. Eastern European states were to "do it their...

A long journey to peace: the dispute in the Republic of Cyprus.
June 22, 2005... The Republic of Cyprus joined the European Union as a full member on May 1, 2004 in the midst of jubilation among the Greek Cypriot population. The event confirmed the place of the Republic in the European family of states and created great...