Trinitarian troubles: governmental,military, and societal explanations for post-1945 Western failures in asymmetric conflicts

It seems paradoxical that powerful Western states are at their most vulnerable when the disparity in military capabilities between them and their opponents is at its largest. Yet it is precisely in such ‘asymmetric conflicts’ that Western countries have failed to achieve their overall political objectives the most often. Focusing on the post-1945 world, this article will examine governmental, military, and societal reasons for Western failures in asymmetric conflicts. Politicians' lack of understanding regarding war's fundamental nature, militaries' tendency to dissociate operational goals from grand strategy objectives and citizens' moral aversion to warfare appear to be among the main obstacles to success.     

非公经济管理对西部大开发质量的影响

1978年以来的改革开放,提高了非公经济在国民经济和社会发展中的地位,随之滋生的包括行贿受贿、偷税漏税、国资流失、假冒伪劣、非法获取各种信息在内的现代版“五毒”,如果泛滥于西部大开发的战略展开中,必然会影响西部地区少数民族的利益,成为各民族共同繁荣之路上的隐患。1952年旨在整治资本主义工商业的“五反”运动,为经管西部大开发中的各类非公经济实体提供了有益借鉴。     

Causal Linkages Between Domestic Terrorism and Economic Growth

We use the Hsiao–Granger method to test for terrorism–growth causality for seven Western European countries. In bivariate settings, the impact of economic performance on domestic terrorism is very strong. In trivariate settings, the impact of performance on terrorism diminishes. In general, we find that economic performance leads terrorist violence in robust ways only for three out of seven countries. Terrorism is almost never found to causally influence growth in bivariate and trivariate specifications. Our findings indicate that the role of economic performance in determining terrorist violence appears to have been important for some countries, whereas all attacked economies have been successful in adjusting to the threat of terrorism.     

Gender,feminism and food studies

Policy research and scholarship on food has rapidly increased in recent decades. The attention to ‘gender' within this work appears to signal important practical and academic efforts to mainstream gendered understandings of food consumption, distribution and production into expansive conceptualisations of human security. This article argues that the gender-related work on food has wide-ranging and often troubling political and theoretical foundations and implications. Often growing out of knowledge regimes for managing social crises and advancing neo-liberal solutions, much gender and food security work provides limited interventions into mainstream gender-blind work on the nexus of power struggles, food resources and globalisation. A careful analysis of knowledge production about gender and food is therefore crucial to understanding how and why feminist food studies often transcends and challenges dominant forms of scholarship and research on food security. This article's critical assessment of what food security studies in South Africa has entailed at the regional level and in global terms also focuses on the methodological and theoretical feminist interventions that can stimulate rigorous conceptual, research and practical attention to what has come to be understood as food sovereignty.     

西部地区教育电视的生存与发展对策研究

本文通过对教育电视的发展面临传媒同业的激烈竞争和西部地区教育电视生存条件的分析，阐明了教育电视在西部地区远程教育中的重要作用，并提出了西部地区教育电视的发展对策。     

论西周史诗的艺术特点及其影响

西周史诗记载了我们祖先周人发祥和创业的历史。在艺术上具有极高的价值。诗中塑造了后稷、公刘、古公、文王、武王等鲜明生动的形象 ,同时诗大量使用赋体铺叙手法 ,层次清晰 ,祥略得当 ,且词汇丰富而准确 ,是文学史中早期的写实之作。这组古诗对后世文学的发展产生了积极的影响     

孔子与苏格拉底思想比较研究

孔子和苏格拉底分别被誉为东西方的伦理学之父，作为轴心时代的文化英雄，他们的思想言行对后世产生了巨大的影响，例如孔子对中国重史、伦理本位及注入式教学等的影响，苏格拉底对西方理性、平等、自由及启发式教学的影响等。在当下时代，东西方文化都遇到了较大的困境，需要在碰撞与融合中获得新生。     

The Morale Maze: the German Army in Late 1918

The state of the German Army’s morale in 1918 is central to our understanding not only of the outcome of World War I, but also of the German Revolution and, indeed, through the pernicious ‘stab-in-the-back-myth’, on Weimar politics and the rise of the Nazis, too. This article presents new evidence from the German archives, blended with statistical analysis, to show that the morale of some units held up better than previously thought almost to the end, and thus to suggest three things. First, it proposes that some historians have placed too much reliance on English-language sources alone, such as British Army intelligence reports, which have various flaws as evidence. Second, it argues that, while historians have increasingly moved away from generalisations about German morale, this process has further to run. Third, it suggests that no single tipping point can be identified, and that morale alone does not provide a sufficient explanation for battlefield defeat. Indeed, much of the data can only be explained if the tactical realities of the war in late 1918 are clearly understood.     

Local contestation against the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo

ABSTRACT

This article examines local contestation against the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX), manifesting itself in local actors publicly demanding a change in the mission’s mandate and/or its operations. The article investigates how EULEX’s actions and its effectiveness are perceived and reacted upon by the local actors. It shows that local contestation is mainly fueled by (1) conflicting sovereignty claims by the majority Albanians and the minority Serbs; (2) the understanding of sovereignty by parts of society as entailing exclusive authority; and (3) dissatisfaction with the mission’s effectiveness. By addressing EULEX from a bottom-up perspective—that of the local actors—the article underlines the limitations of EU policies in post-conflict Kosovo.     

Bourdieu’s capital and insurgent group resilience:a field-theoretic approach to the polisario front

The conflict between the rebel group, the Polisario Front, and the Kingdom of Morocco is nearing its 43rd year. Though under-reported, the conflict itself garners attention for the resilience – some would say tenacity – of the ethnically Sahrawi Polisario Front. Despite shifting regional and international politics and the nearly 150,000 Sahrawi refugees waiting in nearby Algerian camps, the rebel group has survived. What explains its resilience? This article uses Bourdieu’s ‘forms of capital’ to understand the Polisario Front’s persistence. Based on field research in Algeria, Western Sahara, and the United States, it finds that social, cultural, symbolic, and economic capital may provide an explanation.