As he approaches four years at the helm of France and of France’s foreign policy, three things come to mind with respect to an evaluation of Nicolas Sarkozy’s foreign policy. His ambition remains unchecked; he remains unceasingly on the top of his dossier; and he has calmed down somewhat, not only in his gesticulations and verbal excesses, but also in terms of what he expects to get out of foreign leader.
In the words of one local human rights activist, the new North Sudan is going to be a very nasty country. This matters because of the company president Bashir keeps: he gave shelter to Osama bin Laden for five years in the 1990s, and he considers Iran’s Ahmadinejad, Hamas and Hizbollah to be his closest ideological and political friends, despite claiming to be an ally of America in the war on terror
Religious dynamics (e.g. actors, worldviews, and cultures) infused numerous conflagrations in the 1990s including Bosnia, Rwanda, Afghanistan, and Sudan. Without giving credence to the notion that religion is the “problem” causing all today’s conflicts, how best can we understand the role that religious dynamics play in contemporary war and peace?
National religious lobbies and advocacy organizations represent a growing phenomenon of political life in America. One of the striking recent developments is the globalization of the focus, constituencies, and vision of this religious political advocacy. From the beginning of the republic, national religious interest groups have focused periodically on international relations.
As I’ve hacked my way through the thicket of the Great Debates these thirty-odd years past, I’ve increasingly wondered what my students must have made of my passion for ideas which appear at odds with the lives they lead – even, indeed, the countries they have come to know.
This past weekend, The New York Times ran an interesting story, “Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security.” The entire article was obviously provocative as it created a bit of a stir in the blogosphere.
The 2008 election was not a fluke. The days of Republican advantage on foreign and security affairs are over. The Democrats have learned to talk tougher on defense matters and to appoint Republicans and moderate Democrats to the senior posts. The Democrats now treat military preparedness, including Ronald Reagan’s missile defense, like the Republicans treat Social Security —with the self-preserving respect accorded electrified third rails.
While most studies on peaceful settlement of disputes see the substance of the proposals for a solution as the key to a successful resolution of conflict, a growing focus of attention shows that a second and equally necessary key lies in the timing of efforts for resolution (Zartman 2000). Parties resolve their conflict only when they are ready to do so–when alternative, usually unilateral, means of achieving a satisfactory result are blocked and the parties feel that they are in an uncomfortable and costly predicament. At that ripe moment, they seek or are amenable to proposals that offer a way out.
It is the very nature of ‘otherness’ in the experience of Chinese contact with Africa – the fact that it stands outside the pattern of international relations and historical memory – which forms of one of the key features of this relationship to this day. This notion of ‘difference’ allows us to see in these relations on the periphery, something deeply significant about the broader shape of international relations in the contemporary period
Where collective security avenues are blocked, could a State, or States acting jointly, lawfully intervene militarily in another State’s territory without the permission of the Government of that State to halt or prevent it from committing atrocities against its own people? What about intervention where the territorial Government is unable or unwilling to provide basic humanitarian assistance to its people in the face of natural or human-made disaster?
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