Volume 12, Issue 1: Spring 2017
ARTICLES
Averting the Battle of Antarctica (PDF)
By Doaa Abdel-Motaal
A battle for Antarctica? Surely there will be none. After all, when is Antarctica ever in the news? We only hear about the continent when a portion of its ice shelf collapses into the sea and the media concludes it has found the latest evidence of global warming – evidence of the failure of nation states to collaborate in protecting…
Who Makes Iran’s Foreign Policy? The Revolutionary Guard and Factional Politics in the Formulation of Iranian Foreign Policy (PDF)
By Behbod Negahban
Analysts commonly depict Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, as the prime mover behind the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy. Khamenei is “the head of state, the commander in chief, and the top ideologue,” and Iran’s elected parliament and presidency “all operate under [his] absolute sovereignty.” So, too, does the…
Decoding Gender Mainstreaming: Gender Policy Frameworks in an Era of Global Governance (PDF)
By Zeinab Khalil
The purpose of this article is to examine gender equality strategies employed by supranational entities and international development institutions as a way to elevate the status of women. This essay specifically unpacks gender mainstreaming, a project that first emerged in the European Union (EU) and was then popularized…
Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems: Adapting to the Future of Unarmed Warfare and Unaccountable Robots (PDF)
By Aiden Warren and Alek Hillas
That landscape of war and how it is conducted is changing exponentially. For the first time in history, humankind is confronted with the prospect that autonomous robots may join the battlefield. They will come in all shapes and sizes. Some of these machines will be fighting under the same flag as a nation-state, while…
How Should the U.S. Respond to a Russian Cyber Attack? (PDF)
By Nicole Softness
Following the hacking of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, the United States had publicly expressed concern that it could imminently face additional cyber attacks. Public discourse has focused on Russia as a likely culprit, calling attention to its seemingly advanced military technology in Syria, President Putin’s…
INTERVIEWS
A Conversation with Daniel Magaziner (PDF)
By Alex Defroand and Nelly Mecklenburg
In episode four of our podcast series, Professor Daniel Magaziner, an intellectual historian of South Africa, reflected on the recent decisions of various African governments to withdraw from the International Criminal Court.
Interview with Mathew Rycroft: Russia Prolonging War and Making Situations in Syria Worse, British Ambassador Tells YJIA (PDF)
By Joshua Jacobs
Rycroft has had a full agenda since he took up one of Britain’s top diplomatic posts last year, and his duties may yet become more complicated under President Trump, whose references to isolationism and disdain for multilateral organizations such as NATO have stoked fears that the United States could also turn away…
“Impunity does not die quickly”: Transitional Justice in Post-Civil War Guatemala (PDF)
By Rebecca TeKolste and Erik Woodward
Alejandra Castillo Díaz is the Assistant Director of the Center for Human Rights Legal Action (Centro para la Acción Legal en Derechos Humanos, CALDH), the organization that led the prosecution against President Ríos Montt and Rodríguez Sánchez. In this interview with Rebecca TeKolste and Erik Woodward, Ms. Díaz…
Lessons Against Authoritarianism (PDF)
By Alex Defroand
A week after the election of Donald Trump, Timothy Snyder, a historian of twentieth-century Europe, posted a message on his Facebook page entitled, “Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.” Reflecting on the experience of Europeans “who saw democracy yield to fascism,” Snyder urged Americans to heed lessons…
PHOTO ESSAYS
Warehouse Children: Syrian Refugees in Search of Shelter (PDF)
By Marwan Tahtah
The Syrian Civil War has seen more than 4.8 million refugees flee the country, with 1.1 million now living in neighboring Lebanon. They constitute more than 20% of the Lebanese population and, although many have access to official refugee camps, others have been forced to seek refuge in already crowded, impoverished…
Homs: the city that disappeared (PDF)
By Marwan Tahtah
In the alleys of Homs in Western Syria, my camera looks for what’s left of the city and struggles to find any remnants. On the sidewalk lies a stray cat that does not let out a sound. It drags its memories of destruction and hides behind one of the buildings reduced to rubble. The smell of war and the deafening silence of its…
BOOK REVIEWS
Straying from the Path: A review of “The Betrayal: The Nuremberg Trials and German Divergence” (PDF)
By Ellen Chapin
In examining the rise of the Weimar Republic, a central question guides many historians: how did it all happen? Accordingly, one of the first things that Professor Kim Christian Priemel astutely mentions in his new book, The Betrayal: The Nuremberg Trials and German Divergence, is that German actions in World War…
Communism’s Ghost Lingers on in Russia, Charges of Terror and Dictatorship (PDF)
By Julia Sinitsky
David Satter, a journalist who has covered Russia for more than 30 years, opens his new book The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep, with an anecdote. Satter was living in Kiev in December 2013 where he was covering the Maidan revolution and waiting to receive a renewal of his Russian visa from the Russian…