Recent news in June 2008 that a Japanese firm has prototyped a car that runs on the reaction between metal hydride and water, did not cause joy in my heart. I was delighted to learn it was not really true. Like the rush to biofuels based on plants people eat, putting even small amounts of water into a car only bodes ill for the environment and human rights ahead. Meanwhile, climate change offers too much fresh water here, too little there, or too saline yet other there. Sorting out the public health/human rights of water from the ecological issues will be a stern challenge for politics at all levels of governance.
In recent years declassified documents relating to attempts by the Kennedy administration at withdrawing US forces from the conflict in Vietnam have been released, causing much debate among scholars and historians. Previously not much was written about Kennedy’s decision to withdraw US personnel from Vietnam in over 40 years of historical writing.
The questions of how the concept of global governance can be used to describe the prevailing global order and what is the most appropriate way of formulating the concept of global governance challenge the limits of traditional IR theory to explain a world where the shape and importance of individual states is changing and the role of agents above and below the state is increasing.
Despite conclusive and significant scientific evidence to the contrary, there is still some considerable scepticism over the nature, causes and consequences of climate change. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and cyclones, as well as retreating glaciers and melting sea ice at the North and South poles, are all indicative of a warming world.
The European security regime cannot serve as a model for East Asia, as this region is conditioned by markedly different institutional, political, economic, and cultural factors that are manifest in strong preferences for informal, incremental and bilateral frameworks based upon the principles of non-interference, consensus-building, power-balancing and bandwagoning. Nevertheless, the OSCE pillar of the European security regime may be a more appropriate model for Africa.
This work will assess whether the regional perspective has anything new to offer for the understanding of democratisation and economic reform in the Russian Federation.
What has become of the idea of the Rainbow Nation, the triumphant trope broadcast by the irrepressible Nobel Laureate, Desmond Tutu, and in which all the country’s people, under Nelson Mandela, rejoiced?
Since the end of the Cold War, the policies followed by Russia towards the United States and the European Union have defied simple analysis. In the decade and a half since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has at times appeared an ally and at times has been much more hostile.
In October 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) replaced the Republic of China (ROC) after the Chinese Communists won a nationwide victory in the civil war and drove the Nationalist government to Taiwan. A Communist China, comprising a quarter of the world’s population, had inevitably extended the Cold War to East Asia. The PRC’s foreign policy during the Cold War went through several distinctive stages.
War has been an omnipresent aspect of the international order. Consequently, ‘realism’ sees conflict and war as the defining aspects of international relations. Conversely, ‘idealists’ posit that human reason/different forms of societal organization can curb or even eliminate belligerency. This essay draws on ‘critical theory’ to show that realism is essentially limited in its analysis of the world system.
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