The Uneven Application of the ‘Civil War’ Label to Iraq

Many scholars and policy practitioners believe that the US invasion of Iraq triggered a civil war. Several major scholarly data-sets, however, do not code a civil war, due to the challenge of coding multiple simultaneous patterns of violence. Further, many political actors have resisted the term, due to obvious political and public relations concerns. This paper analyses these discrepancies in the use of the label, arguing that, for scholars, the coding problem could limit or even bias models of civil war, while for policymakers, the failure to see Iraq’s civil war as such has contributed to major policy failures, from the Bush administration’s state of denial early in the war to the Obama administration’s withdrawal and the subsequent reescalation of violence.     

NONPROLIFERATION POLICY CROSSROADS:

On October 1, 2008, Congress enacted a proposal that originated with President George W. Bush in 2005 to approve an unprecedented nuclear trade pact with India by removing a central pillar of US nonproliferation policy. Despite the numerous political challenges confronting the Bush administration, the initiative won strong bipartisan support, including votes from Democratic Senators Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. The four-year struggle to pass the controversial US-India nuclear trade agreement offers an exceptionally valuable case study. It demonstrates a classic tradeoff between the pursuit of broad multilateral goals such as nuclear nonproliferation and advancement of a specific bilateral relationship. It reveals enduring fault lines in executive branch relations with Congress. It vividly portrays challenges confronting proponents of a strong nonproliferation regime. This article is based on an analysis of the negotiating record and congressional deliberations, including interviews with key participants. It assesses the lessons learned and focuses on three principal questions: how did the agreement seek to advance US national security interests?; what were the essential elements of the prolonged state-of-the-art lobbying campaign to win approval from skeptics in Congress?; and what are the agreement's actual benefits—and costs—to future US nonproliferation efforts?     

Arms Control,Proliferation and Terrorism: The Bush Administration's Post-September 11 Security Strategy

The current Bush Administration considers ‘outlaw regimes’ and their terrorist clients acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD) the gravest danger to international security. Thus, arms control, proliferation and terrorism are inextricably linked. The administration also believes that arms control and non-proliferation, as traditionally practiced, do not provide effective tools for preventing WMD spread. As evidenced in Iraq, Washington subscribes to an interventionist policy of rolling back WMD programs it considers threatening. This article examines the logic that underpins US arms control and proliferation thinking and considers the implications of US policy for relations with other states deemed to be proliferation risks.     

The case for Bush revisionism: Reevaluating the legacy of America’s 43rd president

This article reassesses the foreign policy legacy of George W. Bush in light of the emerging historical record of his administration. We conclude that, whereas Bush’s foreign policy was in widespread disrepute when he left office in 2009, that reputation is likely to improve – perhaps significantly – in the coming years. We identify six particular arguments that lend credence to an emerging ‘Bush revisionism.’ To be clear, we do not necessarily argue that the balance sheet on Bush’s foreign policy was positive, but the arguments presented here are likely to generate a more sympathetic and favorable historical assessment of Bush’s presidency over time.     

消防行政自由裁量权控制研究

作为公安消防机构的一种相对自由的判断权和选择权,消防行政自由裁量权必须受到有效控制,并在法律规定的范围内合法、合理行使,以确保公安消防机构能够更好的承担起维护社会稳定、保卫人民生命财产安全的神圣职责。根据消防行政自由裁量权的类型及特征,分析了滥用消防行政自由裁量权的表现形式及危害,并结合当前消防工作的形势与要求,阐述了完善我国消防行政自由裁量权的控制策略。     

Pragmatism over principle: US intervention and burden shifting in Somalia, 1992–1993

ABSTRACT

The conventional wisdom about the 1992 US intervention in Somalia is that it was a quintessentially humanitarian mission pushed by President George H. W. Bush. This article challenges that interpretation, drawing on newly declassified documents. The Somalia intervention, I argue, was largely a pragmatic response to concerns held by the US military. In late 1992, as the small UN mission in Somalia was collapsing, senior American generals worried about being drawn into the resulting vacuum. Hence they reluctantly recommended a robust US intervention, in the expectation that this would allow the UN to assemble a larger peacekeeping force that would take over within months. The intervention ultimately failed, but the military learned useful lessons from this experience on how to achieve smoother UN handoffs in the future and thus effectively shift longer-term stabilisation burdens to the international community.     

谈奥巴马时代美国的联合国政策

奥巴马对联合国政策的调整，反映出奥巴马政府全球外交和安全战略的需要，体现了实用主义外交风格。较之于其前任，奥巴马将更加重视联合国维和行动，并让联合国更多地参与解决包括伊拉克和阿富汗在内的热点问题。奥巴马的联合国政策面临挑战，联合国仅仅是奥巴马实现美国国家利益的手段之一。     

Market reactions to regulations on minerals from the democratic republic of the Congo

Using an event study approach to analyze stock market data from the United States, I investigate how regulations on conflict minerals sourced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were perceived by investors. I find that for a subset of mining companies, stock returns were abnormally high when regulations in the US became more likely. I also find that returns were higher for communications equipment manufacturing companies when strong regulations in the DRC were announced. I argue that these responses were due to the competitive environments faced by each of these company types. These findings relate to debates surrounding the effects of the conflict mineral regulations. While some critics argue that reporting requirements were tantamount to a ban on minerals from the DRC, I find that stock returns for a subset of companies were sensitive to legislation in the DRC after legislation became law in the US, suggesting that market participants did not expect a complete trade ban on regulated mining and trading activities.     

The mother of all post-mortems

The most striking finding of the Chilcot Report is that the record reveals little that was previously unknown. A key point for its authors is that diplomatic alternatives had not been exhausted when the US and UK went to war. But, short of an armed attack by the other side, it is hard to say when they would have been. Here what was crucial was the belief shared by Bush and Blair that Saddam Hussain would not and could not change. For the British the issue of whether alternatives to war remained is particularly important because of its implications for international law, something that did not trouble the Americans. It remains unclear if Blair would have gained or lost leverage over Bush had he made British participation contingent on better American policy, for example on developing a workable plan for the reconstruction of Iraq.     

An American Trojan horse? Eisenhower,Latin America,and the development of us internal security policy 1954–1960

Perceptions of Third World nations as susceptible to communist subversion and revolutionary warfare led the Eisenhower administration to formulate a coordinated internal security strategy known simply as ‘1290d’. Later renamed the Overseas Internal Security Program (OISP), this policy initiative sought to strengthen host‐nation security forces, judicial systems, and public information media in an effort to combat indirect communist intervention strategies. Implementing OISP policy in Latin America proved difficult. In Congress, the administration was criticised for colluding with dictatorial regimes, while Latin Americans feared that the new program would be used as a ‘Trojan Horse’ to penetrate their security structures. After the Cuban Revolution, however, OISP policies developed under Eisenhower came to dominate US‐Latin American security relations for the remainder of the Cold War.     

THE EXERCISE OF NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY

Skeptics of the Bush administration have castigated its strong aversion to formal international agreements in responding to the threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), citing unilateral actions as the default alternative. Yet this critique misses the growing emergence of a conscious framework guiding the administration's actions: an emphasis on the exercise of national sovereignty and the corollary principle of sovereign responsibility. Rejecting the paradigm of arms control as the answer to WMD proliferation, the current administration instead advocates a toolkit of alternative mechanisms based on the full exercise by individual nation, states of their domestic authorities and rights under international law, acting in their capacities as responsible citizens of the global community. This paper will examine that philosophical approach and its concrete application through the following policies: (1) the Proliferation Security Initiative; (2) enforcement of national laws and regulations as exemplified by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 and the U.S. proposals for consideration by Biological Weapons Convention signatories; and (3) preemptive warfare to disarm the WMD programs of a threatening state.     

OPTING OUT OF THE IRON TRIANGLE

Between the 1960s and the 1990s, the US chemical industry went from lobbying against the Geneva Protocol and promoting increased funding for chemical warfare to refusing to produce binary chemical weapons and assisting with the negotiations of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)—even though the treaty included provisions that could be costly to industry. What happened in those thirty years to make the US chemical industry reverse its position on chemical weapons? This article argues these changes were largely caused by the chemical industry's desire to reform the negative public image it had acquired due to its involvement in the Agent Orange scandal and other high-profile incidents during the 1970s and 1980s. The chemical industry's assistance with CWC negotiations may be explained after an examination of the US public policy literature, which argues that industry will support apparently costly regulations if doing so helps it repair a damaged public image and ensures greater profits in the long run.     

国外新型预警机发展

美国陆军所建立和运维的高度复杂、全频覆盖的人力资源自动化信息系统使其能够高效的应对日常沉重的部队重组和人事变动任务,进而为其保持强大的战斗力和实时响应的全球应急部署能力提供了有力支撑。本文对美国陆军的主要人力资源数据库、人力资源自动化系统和其它自动化系统及装备进行梳理分析,以期获得对我有益借鉴。     

Hard Balancing in the Age of American Unipolarity: The Russian Response to US Ballistic Missile Defense during the Bush Administration (2001–2008)

One of the central debates in contemporary international relations scholarship concerns the issue of whether balancing has occurred in response to US-based unipolarity, and if it has, how this should be characterised. Existing research has seen analysts argue that major power responses to unipolarity can be placed in one of either three categories: an absence of balancing, soft balancing, and hard balancing. This article contributes to the scholarly literature by providing a case study of hard internal Russian balancing against the US’s development and deployment of Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) systems during the Bush Administration (2001–08). Russian hard balancing against the US has involved: (1) fielding new strategic nuclear and conventional weapons equipped with BMD countermeasures, and, relatedly, (2) making changes in military doctrine. As a result, security dilemma dynamics are increasingly in evidence in US relations with Russia.     

Eisenhower,science and the nuclear test Ban Debate 1953–56

Though historians debate whether Eisenhower seriously pursued a nuclear test ban agreement at the close of his presidency, few have closely examined his consideration of the issue during his first term in office. Publicly, his administration ridiculed Democratic presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson's highly publicized test ban proposal in 1956. In fact, Eisenhower's private inclination to ban testing antedated Stevenson's campaign proposal by two years. A review of the administration's techniques of countering Stevenson's test ban proposal reveals the use of heated rhetoric, clever deception, and outright lies to manipulate public understanding of the test issue and to conceal the depth of Eisenhower's own sincere desire to limit, or even cease, tests.     

A Foregone Conclusion? The United States,Britain and the Trident D5 Agreement

Existing studies of the United Kingdom’s purchase of Trident D5 missiles have simplified the Reagan administration’s sale. Using previously classified documentation, this article highlights the potential political and financial ramifications of a sale agreement that led to complex deliberations within the Thatcher government up until the final day of negotiations. The White House viewed the sale as a means to strengthen Western nuclear and conventional forces to counter the perceived Soviet threat. However, even within this conducive environment, US officials still drove a hard bargain with their British counterparts, in order to support US strategic interests. Indeed, the White House utilised the sale to influence British defence policy. In this way, the Trident agreement was not a foregone conclusion but rather a continuation of the friendly, but not preordained, nature of US–UK nuclear relations that has been renegotiated, according to the varying interests of both parties, throughout the partnership's existence.     

America’s Prescient Dissenters: Senator J. William Fulbright and Dr. Andrew J. Bacevich’s Principled Dissent of US Policy in Vietnam and Iraq and their Enduring Perspectives

During the Cold War, the spread and fear of communism furnished the overarching ideological rationale for American foreign policy and for the deployment of United States military forces and resources. Subscribing to the domino theory and its potential impact on Southeast Asia, the Johnson Administration committed the United States to the Vietnam War. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, and the commencement of the Global War on Terrorism, Washington once again set a national agenda rooted in a simplistic analysis reminiscent of Vietnam and the domino theory. Ignorant of Iraq’s mammoth sectarian, historical, ethnic, and global strategic complexities, the Bush Administration launched Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The absence of critical analysis, contrarian viewpoints, and sound judgment characterized the US policy and strategy for both the Vietnam War and OIF, exhibiting the lack of moral courage that the national security enterprise seeks, but seldom attains. Faced with this challenge, this article draws attention to the ethical lessons we can learn from the dissent of William Fulbright and Andrew Bacevich.     

The Kennedy Administration,US Foreign Internal Security Assistance and the Challenge of ‘Subterranean War’, 1961–63

US foreign internal security assistance, that is, support to ‘Free World’ governments threatened by subversion, terrorism, and insurgency, formed a central part of the Kennedy administration's strategy for defeating ‘wars of national liberation’. As part of the administration's counterinsurgency policy, support to police and paramilitary forces abroad was intended to improve the ability of friendly governments to identify and root our perceived threats to the states. Under the tenets of modernization theory embraced by administration officials, strong internal security forces were expected to contribute to nation-building by protecting the fragile development process underway in the developing world. However, in attempting to export the American police model, policymakers failed to consider whether US notions about internal security were appropriate for fractious and unstable regions of the world.     

边检机关在处置口岸突发事件中的作用

口岸突发事件,是指在出入境口岸限定区域突然发生的危害社会治安、损害人民生命财产安全和国家利益的事件。及时、有效地预防和处置口岸突发事件,对于维护国家的主权和领土完整,保证人民的生命财产不受侵害,保护出入境人员和交通工具的安全,维持口岸的正常出入境秩序,促进口岸的发展具有重要意义。出入境边防检查机关是否能够迅速、稳妥地处置口岸突发事件,将口岸突发事件的不良结果降到最低,有着责无旁贷和不可替代的作用。     

US Counterinsurgency vs Iranian-Sponsored Terrorism

Terrorist networks involve not only non-state actors but also an international environment in which state sponsors and 'gray areas' play significant roles. Non-state actors need the sanctuaries of state sponsors and of areas outside of effective state control to recruit, organize, and train their ranks, and to finance their activities. Through statistical analysis of statements of Iranian state intentions, and measures of direct US military interventions, this study examines how US military interventions into Iran's perceived sphere of interests deterred Iranian support for terrorist actions by its proxy groups against United States targets from 1980 to 1990.