Harvard International Review articles from March 2006

Harvard International Review archives from March 2006

Just do aid right.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2006... As soon as the Cold War ended, development aid declined and humanitarian needs increased. Wars, civil strife, and natural disasters altered the scope of aid in the 1990s. As a result, aid agencies were reformed to become far more responsive to...

Ode to reason.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2006... Robert Hambourger's unfavorable review of my book, The End of Faith ("Ode to Intolerance," Winter 2006) alleges that I do not understand religion, at least as it is practiced by most people, most of the time. While he sought to illustrate this...

Calling for aid: the cry from Sudan.
March 22, 2006... A peaceful Sudan was the lofty goal of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed on January 9, 2005, between the northern government of Sudan and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). More than a year afterward, the...

Tackling terror: Australia's steps for security.(ASIA PACIFIC)
March 22, 2006... The apprehension of 16 terror suspects in Australia's two major cities serves as a timely reminder about the costs associated with the War on Terror. In early November 2005, federal police foiled a potentially large-scale attack after 500...

Gray area: the future of Chinese Internet.(ASIA PACIFIC)
March 22, 2006... Morgan Stanley estimated that there were around 94 million Chinese Internet users at the end of 2004, making China second only to the United States in total numbers of Internet users. The Chinese government has struggled to hide its citizens...

Life of the Parti: Boisclair and the Parti Quebecois.(Andre Boisclair, Quebec politician)
March 22, 2006... The license plate says it all: "Je me souviens." Or does it? Quebec has maintained a strong regional and cultural identity despite being under Anglophonic control for the past 250 years. While Quebecois politics has not always encouraged the...

Trading up? The uncertain future of the FTAA.(Free Trade Area of the Americas )
March 22, 2006... The dream of free trade in the Western Hemisphere suffered yet another blow on November 6, 2005, as the Fourth Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina concluded with no progress for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)...

The Sarkozy factor: France's big decision.(Nicolas Sarkozy)
March 22, 2006... The French political world appears to be ready for change. At issue is not just the non vote in the referendum for the European Constitution in May 2005: discontent soars over the relatively dismal performance of the economy, debate rages over...

Democratic mirage: the long road ahead in Egypt.(MIDDLE EAST)
March 22, 2006... In the Egyptian presidential elections of September 2005, President Hosni Mubarak's fourth re-election came as little surprise to the Egyptian people or the international community as a whole. Although lauded by some, progress of Egyptian...

Religion and the state: why moderate religious teaching should be promoted.
March 22, 2006... Should the US government and the international community actively promote religion overseas, especially in the Islamic world? Such an approach may seem wrong on many grounds. Religion is a major force driving jihadists in the Middle East, and...

Performance philanthropy: bringing accountability to charitable giving.
March 22, 2006... Rightly, 2005 will be remembered for the huge public generosity demonstrated in the face of multiple disasters. It should also be remembered as the year when traditional philanthropy displayed how stagnant and ineffective it really is. Not...

Exercising wartime powers: the need for a strong executive.
March 22, 2006... The Iraq is beginning to look like a rerun of the Vietnam War, and not just because critics are crying out that the United States has again fallen into a quagmire. War opponents argue that a wartime president has overstepped his constitutional...

A tale of two churches: battling for the soul of Latin American Catholicism.(WORLD IN REVIEW)
March 22, 2006... The hillside shantytown of La Carapita lies on the outskirts of Caracas, Venezuela. Its houses, which often hold up to ten people, are constructed mostly of thin cardboard and tin. Their religious leader is a spunky, 31-year-old nun known as...

Crafting the Taiwanese: the ambivalence of Taiwan's national identity.(WORLD IN REVIEW)
March 22, 2006... Taiwan is a land of diversity. Travelers on Taipei's Rapid Transit Metro hear announcements in four different languages: English, Mandarin Chinese, Hakka, and Holo. For metro travelers and statesmen alike, this diversity is both a blessing and...

Armed entrepreneurs: private military companies in Iraq.(WORLD IN REVIEW)
March 22, 2006... Pejoratively labeled the "whores of war" or the "soldiers of fortune," personnel from private military companies (PMCs) have been receiving undue negative media attention because their duties seem so similar to mercenaries of the old-fashioned...

A lingering identity: toward a post-post-Soviet future?(after empire: SOVIET LEGACIES)(Cover story)
March 22, 2006... In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed. But did it end? The year began with the violent reassertion of Soviet authority over Lithuania, an exhibition of brutality that rallied international support for democrats and independence movements in the...

Political transitions: democracy and the former Soviet Union.(after empire: SOVIET LEGACIES)
March 22, 2006... The defeat of the August 1991 coup attempt in Moscow marked one of the most euphoric moments in Russian history. For centuries dictators had ruled Russia using force to suppress and at times annihilate society. Emboldened by liberalization...

Bucking the trend: democracy and economic reform.(after empire: SOVIET LEGACIES)
March 22, 2006... At the start of transition from communist rule, skepticism reigned about the possibility of introducing markets and democracy simultaneously. Drawing on the recent experience of Latin America, many expected economic reforms to impose unbearable...

Toward the West: Baltic realignment and Russia's reply.(after empire: SOVIET LEGACIES)
March 22, 2006... While Russia may be regressing toward a strong authoritarian state with some features of the old communist regime, the three Baltic states--Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia--have been deliberately moving away from the Soviet legacy toward liberal...

Class matters: health lifestyles in post-Soviet Russia.(after empire: SOVIET LEGACIES)
March 22, 2006... The current health crisis in Russia is without precedent in modern history. Life expectancy has declined for men and stagnated for women in a persistent pattern since the mid-1960s. The average lifespan of Russian men declined by 5.2 years from...

The way forward: Georgia's democratic vision for the future.(after empire: SOVIET LEGACIES)
March 22, 2006... Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia inherited a wide array of challenges inherent to the post-Soviet political, economic, and geopolitical landscape: entrenched corruption, unaccountable political elites, external manipulation,...

US foreign policy: missteps, mistakes, and broken promises.(AN INTERVIEW WITH TOM DASCHLE)(Interview)
March 22, 2006... TOM DASCHLE is the former US Senate Democratic Leader. He currently holds a visiting professorship at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute and serves as the Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. [ILLUSTRATION...

Exorcising Hobbes: Frank Anechiarico reviews The War on Terror and the Framework of International Law.(Thomas Hobbes)
March 22, 2006... In the mid-seventeenth century's The Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes presents a dilemma to those designing and reforming the government structure: the choice between chaos and order brought by the surrender of personal choice to a "sovereign." In the...

The Capitol's Cold War: Donald R. Wolfensberger reviews Congress and the Cold War.
March 22, 2006... Looking back on the Cold War today, 15 years after the fall of the Soviet empire, a first-year college student might ask a professor, "What was that all about?" Indeed, even at the height of the nearly half-century struggle between East and...

Preventing disaster: realizing vulnerabilities and looking forward.(ENDPAPER)
March 22, 2006... The past 16 months have seen major disasters in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Hundreds of thousands of people have died and millions have had their lives changed forever. Some attention has focused on a possible increase in the frequency of...