Harvard International Review articles from September 2005

Harvard International Review archives from September 2005

Reworking the WTO.(World Trade Organization)
September 22, 2005... Robert Keohane's essay, "Abuse of Power: Assessing Accountability in World Politics" (Summer, 2005), is temperate, yet thought-provoking, particularly with regards to his comments on the World Trade Organization (WTO). Keohane separates the...

Taiwan's troubles.(CORRESPONDENCE)
September 22, 2005... Taiwan's Foreign Minister Tan Sun Chen in "Joining the Global Village," (Summer, 2005) makes an impassioned and well-argued case for Taiwan's inclusion in the United Nations and other international bodies. In an ideal world, the People's...

Sputtering engine: Germany's sluggish economy.(EUROPE)
September 22, 2005... Germany continues to suffer from anemic economic growth. In 2004, the German economy grew at disappointing 1.7 percent, and German analysts have forecast 2005 growth at 0.7 percent. This low growth reflects Germany's large structural...

Ethnic animosity: Cote d'Ivoire's precarious peace.
September 22, 2005... Looking at the case of Iraq, some have argued that a country that is so religiously and ethnically divided cannot preserve a functional democracy. One example that may justify this reasoning is that of Cote d'Ivoire. Cote d'Ivoire is now...

Budding hope: Lebanon's cedar revolution.
September 22, 2005... For the first time in nearly 30 years, Lebanon appears on the brink of becoming an independent democracy. Following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on February 14, 2005, a wave of massive protests and international...

Getting a facelift: Saudi Arabia's PR campaign.(MIDDLE EAST)(public relations)
September 22, 2005... Following the September 11,2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, several media organizations and politicians began to look with increased scrutiny at the possible role that Saudi Arabia may have played in the attacks as well as at...

Failing grade: the disintegration of Haiti.(AMERICAS)
September 22, 2005... Gang warfare and violence have plagued Haiti since the US-approved exile of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the new interim government seems to be powerless to stop it. Aristide was ousted in February 2004 due to a Haitian...

Death and drugs: Columbia's unending civil war.(AMERICAS)
September 22, 2005... Colombia supplies up to 80 percent of the world's cocaine, and about 70 percent of the cocaine that enters the United States. Production has been steadily rising (up nearly 20 percent) in the past 15 years, despite the successful eradication...

Warm welcome: Russia ratifies Kyoto.(Kyoto Protocol)
September 22, 2005... After refusing to endorse the treaty less than a year previous, Russian President Vladimir Putin ratified the Kyoto Protocol in late October 2004. This landmark gesture of progress in the battle against global pollution came two weeks after the...

Citizens of the world: seeing the city as a site of international influence.(PERSPECTIVES)
September 22, 2005... The urban condition is the human condition. In 1950, one-third of the world's population lived in cities, but by 2050, the figure is expected to rise to two-thirds, or 6 billion people. By 2015 each of the world's ten largest cities will house...

Liberating Liberia: understanding the nature and needs of governance.(natural resource )
September 22, 2005... In mid-April this year, the Analyst, a Monrovia newspaper, reported that US Ambassador to Liberia John Blaney warned that the current transition was Liberia's last chance to secure its future and that successful October elections will "declare...

From Geneva to Gaza: implementing the endgame strategy of the Geneva Initiative.
September 22, 2005... Supporters of the Geneva Initiative have been more modest than its detractors in assessing this unofficial model agreement's role in shifting policy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the past year and a half. The debate stimulated by the...

Spain no more? The Zapatero administration and declining Spanish identity.(Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero)
September 22, 2005... In its tumultuous and unpredictable history, Spain has experienced Muslim rule, Christian reconquest and unification, global military and economic superpower status, brutal Napoleonic occupation, civil war, fascist dictatorship, parliamentary...

A question of chemistry: controlling the spread and use of chemical weapons.
September 22, 2005... As the world was introduced to the destructiveness of total war with new technology in World War I, it also became acquainted with one of the most persistent, hidden threats of today--chemical weapons. World War I brought the destruction of...

Changing the game: assessing Al Qaeda's terrorist strategy.
September 22, 2005... Terrorism is a rhetorical word. Not altogether different from the rather flippant use of the word "Nazi" in modern political discourse, it is employed by various types of people for many different purposes: it is used by politicians to...

The power of foresight.(Predicting the Present)
September 22, 2005... Thomas Jefferson believed that "history, by apprizing [people] of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations." For all those who base predictive power on knowledge of...

Eleven years later: what went wrong in Argentina.(PREDICTING THE PRESENT)
September 22, 2005... "Argentina has entered a period of growth that will last for many years--perhaps decades. Two crucial factors will facilitate this continued growth. First, the rate of investment is increasing--I expect that it will reach 22 or 23 percent...

Halfway to hegemony: Japan's tortured trajectory.(PREDICTING THE PRESENT)
September 22, 2005... "A stabilizer makes and enforces rules of the economic system, provides a key currency, and also, in a liberal economic system, supplies a relatively open market of last resort--preeminently, in the current context, for the exports of...

Academic infallibility: who dares to check?
September 22, 2005... "The Soviet economy today is stagnant and offers little hope for sustained growth. In fact, there have been signs that its future prospects may become even bleaker: last year, a large number of Soviet cities, when faced with severe food...

Downfall delayed: endgames for the North Korean regime.(PREDICTING THE PRESENT)
September 22, 2005... "Predicting the future is risky business. But fundamentals are not too difficult to recognize. The most fundamental fact concerning the Korean peninsula is that North Korea cannot remain as it is. The only question is whether it will change...

Mapping decline: the history of American power.
September 22, 2005... "Great empires of history do decline and have declined, as Spengler showed, but no law of history allows accurate predictions of when or how these declines take place... Those who point to a recent American decline are correct, but...

Growing pains: the outlook on development revisited.
September 22, 2005... "Only time will tell whether the developing countries will regain the economic momentum of the 1960s and the 1970s. But 1983 may well prove to be the worst year for them since the Second World War. There are four principal dangers. ...

The global challenge: strategies for the World Bank Group.(interview)(Interview)
September 22, 2005... What does social and environmental sustainability mean in the context of the World Bank Group's policies? Social and environmental sustainability implies a number of things. First, we recognize poverty alleviation will only come about by...

A doctrinal error: Stefan M. Aubrey reviews American Foreign Policy in a New Era.(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... While the initial post-mortem of the 2004 US presidential election held that the outcome was largely decided on issues of moral and family values, a 2005 Pew Research Center survey found that foreign policy and the War on Terrorism might have...

Up in the clouds; Christopher S. Allen reviews Democracy from Above: Regional Organizations and Democratization.
September 22, 2005... The transition to democracy by formerly dictatorial regimes in Eastern and Southern Europe and Latin America during the past decade and a half has been a significant and momentous development in the "third wave" of democratization. Scholars of...

A behind-the-scenes clasic makes a public debut: Ravikiran Raju reviews.(Oxford International Review )(Editorial)
September 22, 2005... Launched in the late 1980s at the University of Oxford, Oxford International Review (OIR) has long been distributed only among those featured in the journal and the scholars who populated its staff. OIR was originally founded as a vehicle for...

National security: an accident waiting to happen.(ENDPAPER)
September 22, 2005... At a news conference, Mr. Chertoff called the hurricane and subsequent flooding, an 'ultra-catastrophe' that exceeded the foresight of planners. Asked what the government's response signified about the nation's preparedness for a potential...