Foreign Affairs

American Foreign Policy is Already Post-Partisan: Why Politics Does Stop at the Water's Edge. Joshua W. Busby, Jonathan Monten, and William Inboden, Foreign Affairs, May 30, 2012, var. pages. “A recent survey reveals large majorities of respondents from the upper echelons of both parties were aligned on major issues in American foreign policy.” READ MORE

A Better Internationalism. David C. Unger, World Policy Journal, Spring 2012, 101-110. “The New York Times’ David C. Unger argues that it’s time to reclaim and redefine ‘internationalism’—a term that he says is misused in the United States to wage unwinnable and unpopular wars. President Barack Obama’s “crisis management internationalism,” according to Unger, is an elitist, expensive, and often violent process with waning popular support. From global warming, nuclear weapons, and infectious diseases to the widening inequalities that support ideologies of hatred, Unger shows how taking on challenges from a global perspective—the true internationalism—can lead to lasting peace.” READ MORE

American Prospect: The Romney Foreign-Policy Agenda. James Mann, American Prospect, May 22, 2012, var. pages. “James Mann of the American Prospect provides insight into presidential candidate Mitt Romney's foregin policy agenda and how he has yet to announce the direction he hopes to steer the country.” READ MORE

Assessing the United Nations: Is it worth the money? Tom Price , CQ Global Researcher, March 20, 2012, pp. 129-152. “As the government of Bashar Assad slaughters thousands of civilian protesters in Syria, the United Nations stands impotent — blocked from intervening by Russian and Chinese vetoes in the U.N. Security Council. The inaction contrasts dramatically with the U.N.'s success in stopping similar atrocities during an anti-government resistance movement in Libya last year that led to the overthrow of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The stark difference between U.N. action and inaction in the two venues helps explain the wide range of opinions about the effectiveness of the global organization, created in 1945 to preserve peace after World War II. Some critics say the U.N. is too heavily influenced by countries run by dictators, while others say it is dominated by industrial democracies. Several countries are conducting studies to determine which U.N. agencies are most cost-effective, and some in the United States want to make all U.N. contributions voluntary. Meanwhile, many U.N. agencies quietly continue to feed the hungry, aid needy children and enable mail, telecommunications and aircraft to move smoothly across borders.” READ MORE
 
Global Economy

After the Crash: The Future of Globalisation. Robert Skidelsky, Survival, June/July 2012, pp. 7-28. “Either the global economy will contract to the ambit of existing government authority, or government authority will have to expand to meet its needs. Since its collapse in autumn 2008, the world economy has gone through three phases: a year or more of rapid decline; a bounce back in 2009–10, which nevertheless did not amount to a full recovery; and a second, though so far much shallower, downturn in the developed world over the last year.” READ MORE

State Capitalism: Can state-run economies sustain their success? Jason McLure, CQ Global Researcher, May 15, 2012, var. pages. “Since the 2008 financial crisis China, Russia and Saudi Arabia have been among the best-performing economies in the world. All three countries practice so-called state capitalism, in which the government plays a dominant role in the economy and owns a large share of the nation's companies. As economic growth in the United States and Japan remains tepid, and parts of the European Union are mired in a double-dip recession, many developing world governments are questioning whether Western market capitalism is the best path for growth. Many also blame the excesses of unfettered Western-style capitalism for the recent global financial crisis and the ensuing worldwide recession. China, on the other hand, has lifted 600 million people out of poverty in three decades, and Russia's economy has doubled in size since Vladimir Putin began rolling back post-Soviet free-market reforms. Some economists see trouble ahead, however, because when governments manipulate markets for political purposes it can lead to inefficiencies, corruption and political tensions over time.” READ MORE

Arab Spring

Syria’s Stalemate: The Limits of Regime Resilience. Bassam Haddad, Middle East Policy, Spring 2012, pp. 85-95. “We are witnessing in Syria a stalemate between regime and opposition. The battle has been constructed as a zero-sum game from the very beginning, increasing the stakes tremendously for all parties involved, most notably for the regime.” READ MORE

The Syrian Uprising of 2011: Why the Asad Regime Is Likely to Survive to 2013. Joshua Landis, Middle East Policy, Spring 2012, pp. 72–84. “Will President Bashar al-Asad make it to 2013? Chances are he will. Despite his regime's rapid loss of legit-imacy, its growing isolation and tanking economy, no countervailing force has yet emerged that can take it down. Four elements are important in assessing the regime's chances of surviving to 2013: its own strengths, the opposition's weaknesses, the c”ances of foreign intervention, and the impact of sanctions and economic decline." READ MORE

Radicals Rising. Who are Egypt’s Hard-line Islamists and What Do They Want? Wendell Steavenson, The New Yorker, April 30, 2012, var. pages.  “Among the Islamists, the most powerful entity is still the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, which, with forty-two per cent of the seats, is by far the largest party in parliament. Its electoral success was no surprise. The success of the less well organized, more extremist Nour Party, however, surprised everyone.” READ MORE

Egypt in the Moment. Jeffrey Bartholet, National Geographic, May 2012, var. pages. “In the wake of the Arab Spring, Egypt is full of unprecedented hope--and gnawing fear, writes Jeffrey Bartholet for National Geographic.” READ MORE

Political Rights, Development, and Corruption in the Balkan and Arab Mediterranean Countries. Petros Sioussiouras and Ioannis Vavouras, Mediterranean Quarterly, Winter 2012,  pp. 89-103. “This essay provides an account of the phenomenon of corruption in the Balkan and Arab countries of the Mediterranean. The analysis focuses on the effects that the political system—approached through the lens of political rights—and the level of economic development have on corruption. These factors are of critical importance for analyzing the scale of corruption in the region and should form the core of any anticorruption strategies.” READ MORE

Do the Post-Communist Transitions Offer Useful Lessons for the Arab Uprisings? Adrian A. Basora, Orbis, Spring 2012, pp. 278-288. “In January 2011, when the Arab protest movements were just beginning in Tunisia and Egypt, few experts predicted the speed and extent of their spread. Fewer still suggested that there were significant analogies to the wave of post-communist revolutions that swept through Europe and Eurasia starting in 1989. However, such comparisons have become more frequent as the uprisings have continued. This article examines whether the current uprisings and political ferment in the Arab world have enough in common with the transitions that began two decades ago in Eastern Europe to provide useful analytical and policy comparisons.” READ MORE

The Year of the Arab Uprisings. Arch Puddington, Journal of Democracy, April 2012, pp. 74-88. “Despite improvements, however, Burma, Egypt, and Libya remained in the Not Free category. [...]while the Middle East experienced the most significant improvements, it also registered the most declines, with a list of worsening countries that includes Bahrain, Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. In far too many parts of the world, these qualities proved to be in short supply during 2011. [...]in addition to singling out the fullfledged authoritarians for special attention, it is imperative to shine the spotlight on leaders who, having come to power through legitimate democratic means, have set about systematically undermining the aspects of freedom that they find inconvenient.” READ MORE

Counterterrorism

Counterterrorism cooperation in the transatlantic security community. Andrew L. Porter and Annegret Bendiek, May 2012, European Security, pp. 1-21. While the notion of a European security community encounters little resistance in the security community literature, the transatlantic security community, comprised of the European Union (EU) and United States of America (USA), has suffered routine criticism in the aftermath of 9/11. This article seeks to lend empirical support to the claim that the transatlantic security community is alive and well, though not without its political arrhythmias. Drawing on the idea that community membership enhances norm convergence, this article examines the process of norm convergence in EU–US counterterrorism cooperation. We argue that the recent EU–US agreements on Passenger Name Records and the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme represent a form of cooperation, that is, the convergence of values, which is essential for late-stage security community integration. Detainee practices, however, represent a harder case for the transatlantic security community. Despite these difficulties, we argue that this controversy does not preclude a priori the possibility of agreement. Although these transatlantic differences might shake the foundations of the EU security community, we argue that the current controversies provide an opportunity for the EU to reaffirm its commitment to its values, thus reinforcing its foundations as an independent security community. This account of cooperation, political disagreement notwithstanding, upsets the Kaganian account of transatlantic relations. READ MORE

The social construction of an EU interest in counter-terrorism: US influence and internal struggles in the cases of PNR and SWIFT. Christian Kaunert, Sarah Léonard and Alex MacKenzieb, European Security, May 2012, pp. 1-23. The construction of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice has seen the pooling of a significant amount of national sovereignty at the European Union (EU) level through the establishment of internal EU competences. This process has also had the important side-effect of an increasing development of an EU interest in various areas of security, including in counter-terrorism. This article examines the processes through which the EU interest in counter-terrorism is constructed. It argues that, in line with social constructivist literature, it is important to conceptualise interests as being mutually constituted through interactions amongst political actors. It further develops two arguments in this respect. First, the United States (US) has exercised significant influence on the shaping of the EU interest in counter-terrorism. This point is particularly well-illustrated by the Passenger Name Record case. The second argument put forward by this article is that the process through which the EU interest is shaped has become increasingly complex, in particular following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, which reinforced the powers of the European Parliament. A particularly apt illustration of this argument is the case of the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) Agreement. READ MORE
 
EU issues
 
Saving the Euro without Losing the Europeans. Stefan Lehne, Carnegie Europe, May 2012, var. pp. This article argues that the gap between the technocratic imperative of deepening integration in order to save the euro and what most people really think should happen is wider than it has ever been before. READ MORE

China

Dusk, Dawn, and High Noon: Demographic Trends Forecast Next Phases for China, India, and the United States. Martin C. Libicki and Julie DaVanzo, Rand Review, Winter 2011-2012, var. pages.  “Much has been written since October about the world’s population having passed 7 billion, but little attention has been paid to the implications of recent demographic changes for the world’s nations and regions relative to one another. In this article, we turn our focus to the demographic futures and related economic prospects facing China, India, and the United States over the next several decades. The trends in these countries reflect just some of the shifts in power to which the world has already, literally, given birth. How the countries respond will determine their ultimate fates.” READ MORE

America's Pivot to East Asia: The Naval Dimension Christian Le Mière, Survival, June/June 2012,pp. 81-94. "Washington and Beijing have established a pattern of nervous, ostentatious behaviour, whereby each attempts to demonstrate its ability and intent to deter aggression while avoiding direct confrontation. The announcement of a reformed US defence strategy by President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in early January 2012 confirmed a pivot towards the Asia-Pacific as commitments to war fighting in the Middle East and Central Asia subside. Obama, Panetta and General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed reporters on 5 January on America's new strategic guidance document, 'Sustaining US Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense'. The product of a review of US defence priorities 'at a moment of transition' for the nation, the document notes that the United States will 'of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region'. The principle of the Asia pivot was also signalled by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a November 2011 Foreign Policy article in which she noted that 'one of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will … be to lock in a substantially increased investment – diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise – in the Asia-Pacific region'. READ MORE

Confronting a Powerful China with Western Characteristics. James Kurth, Orbis, Winter 2012, pp. 39-59. “The rapid rise of Chinese economic and military power has produced the most fundamental change in the global system since the end of the Cold War, and it poses vital questions about China's future direction. Many Western analysts argue that China's great power will cause it to become more like the West, i.e., like Western great powers. Other Western analysts believe that China will continue to be the same, i.e., like the China of the past few decades. An alternative interpretation, however, is that China's new power will enable it to become even more Chinese than it is now, i.e., to become more like the traditional and imperial China that existed before the Western intrusions of the 19th century.” READ MORE

Internet Issues

Internet regulation: Are stiffer rules needed to protect web content? Marcia Clemmitt, CQ Researcher, April 13, 2012, pp. 325-348. “Lawmakers are struggling with tough questions about how to regulate digital media and the Internet. With digitized versions of feature films and recorded music playable on personal computers and cell phones, the film, television and music industries have repeatedly complained that global ―pirates‖ use cheap, widely available computer technology and the Internet to steal their intellectual property and profits. A bill to require Internet service providers (ISPs) to shut down websites suspected of posting or distributing copyrighted material stalled in Congress. Meanwhile, ISPs are fighting government attempts to bar them from discriminating against certain websites. Advocates say such ―net neutrality rules are needed to prevent situations in which, for example, a cable TV-owned ISP that also sells video content might slow the flow of video that customers buy from other companies. But ISPs argue that it wouldn't be in their financial interest to conduct business that way.” READ MORE

Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? Stephen Marche, The Atlantic, May 2012, var. pages. “For all the connectivity of the social- media age, research suggests that we have never been lonelier. A report on what this epidemic is doing to our bodies, our souls, and our society.” READ MORE

Internet Freedom and Human Rights. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Issues in Science & Technology, Spring 2012, pp. 45-52. “The article focuses on the role of open communication system and the multi-stakeholder management of the internet in the advancing of the principles expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It says that the advent of internet creates new challenges and opportunities in terms of digital economy, international security, and human rights. It cites the role of Global Network Initiative in meeting the said opportunities and the violation of Internet Freedom in several countries.” READ MORE

Keeping the Internet Competitive. Timothy B. Lee, National Affairs, Spring 2012, pp. 59-77. “Because of the internet's unique structure and design, government regulators have been able to take a largely hands-off approach. The result of this freedom has been enormous innovation, and thus greater prosperity for millions of Americans. Today, however, the increasing consolidation of internet service providers threatens that architecture — and, with it, the basic economics of the internet. If consolidation continues unchecked, heavy-handed regulation may be the only way to save the internet. Much better would be to take less intrusive preventive steps now — keeping the internet competitive while avoiding damaging government interference.” READ MORE