Volume 7, Issue 2: Fall 2012

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR (PDF)

Audrey Latura

Editor-in-Chief  (2011-2012)

IR SCHOLARS FORUM (PDF)

IR Scholars Forum Introduction (PDF)

International Affairs of the Heart (PDF)

By Francis J. Gavin

Psychology and Security: Enduring Questions, Different Answers (PDF)

By Robert Jervis

The Ideas-Power Nexus (PDF)

By John M. Owen IV

History Teaches (PDF)

By Marc Trachtenberg

Theory and Policy in International Relations:  Some Personal Reflections (PDF)

By Stephen M. Walt

INTERVIEWS

Disrupting Terrorist Financing Networks: The US Treasury and its Partners  –  An Interview with US Treasury Department Under Secretary David Cohen (PDF)

By David S. Cohen

Bridging the Gap between Policy-making and Academia (PDF)

By Alexander Evans

ARTICLES

The Mouse that Keeps Roaring:  The United States, China, and Solving the North Korean Challenge (PDF)

By Paul Carroll

North Korea poses serious international security risks that have increased since it demonstrated a nuclear weapons capacity in 2006. Nations like China and South Korea have clear interests and vulnerabilities vis-à-vis North Korea, as does the United States; these relationships are based on historical and geopolitical factors that will endure. But each nation also has different priorities with respect to North Korea and the threats it poses. This leads to different policy approaches toward Pyongyang that preclude resolving the threats. Until common ground and more coordinated approaches can be agreed upon and implemented among China, the United States, and South Korea, there is little hope that achieving stability and a nuclear weapons-free North Korea will be realized.

Destiny of the Pearl:  How Sri Lanka’s Colombo Consensus Trumped Beijing and Washington in the Indian Ocean (PDF)

By Patrick Mendis

As Sri Lanka’s Eelam War between government forces and the separatist Tamil Tigers ended with the defeat of the terrorists, the island nation of Sri Lanka entered into another increasingly treacherous but as-yet subtle conflict: that between the United States and China to secure the flow of Persian Gulf energy resources and free trade in the Indian Ocean passageway. A series of Chinese-built ports and airfields across the Indian Ocean comprises a grand “string of pearls” strategy within which Sri Lanka has become a crown jewel. The new forces of global power are geoeconomic, in which every capital in the world—from Washington, Beijing, London, and New Delhi to Karachi, Tehran, and Tokyo—seeks out Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, as part of the twenty-first century’s latest “Great Game.” More recently, in a failure of American foreign policy, Sri Lanka drifted toward Beijing as China’s naval strategy gained momentum; however, the challenge for the emergent Colombo Consensus lies in navigating the freedoms and voices of its people—not flaunting the laurels of its combative, defiant, and dictatorial leaders.

China’s Foreign Policy Research Institutes:  Influence on Decision-making and the 5th Generation Communist Party Leadership (PDF)

By Michael Morrison

As the Chinese Communist Party prepares for a major leadership transition, China’s foreign policy think tanks are poised to contribute to the conceptualization and propagation of major foreign policy initiatives. This article examines the degree to which Party and State leaders look to think tanks for analysis, and how think tanks can be used as a window into Chinese decision-making. China’s foreign policy think tanks attempt to exert influence in a variety of ways, and clear examples of previous influence over major foreign policies can be seen during the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao administrations. Future predictions are less precise.

The Armless Hand: The Call for Anti-Hunger Law and the International Food Security Treaty (PDF)

By John Teton

The long-recognized human right of freedom from hunger remains unrealized because traditional remedies for addressing it continue to prove inadequate. Nonetheless, the goals of ending starvation and malnutrition worldwide can be achieved through a global commitment to the International Food Security Treaty, which will place that right under the protection of enforceable national and international laws, and catalyze the development of systems necessary to effect those goals.

OP-EDS

Beyond a World at Seven Billion:  The Naïveté of Large Numbers (PDF)

By Michele Acuto

China as Peacekeeper:  An Updated Perspective on Humanitarian Intervention (PDF)

By Bernard Yudkin Geoxavier

BOOK REVIEW

“If You Leave Us Here We Will Die”:  How Genocide Was Stopped in East Timor (PDF)

By Jessica N. Trisko