International Relations Commons^™

Return To Unfinished Business: Re-Energizing U.S. Nuclear Arms Policy, William T. Eliason

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Today's international environment characterized in nuclear threat terms as having increasing concerns about the potential for terrorist or non-state use of nuclear devices and a decline in the likelihood of the original nuclear weapon states engaging each other in a nuclear war remains in search of a path away from the fear of nuclear attack some twenty years after the end of the Cold War. This research dissertation will seek to answer the question of how best to reestablish a nuclear arms control regime. This dissertation argues that the international environment has fundamentally changed since the end of the Cold …

May Roundtable: The Downfall Of Human Rights? Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The Downfall of Human Rights” by Joshua Kurlantzick. Newsweek. February 19, 2010.

A Positive View Of The Trajectory Of The Human Rights Movement, David Akerson

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In 1988, during the waning days of apartheid in South Africa, I was a young American lawyer working for South African Lawyers for Human Rights in Pretoria. On one occasion, I accompanied some of my African colleagues to a conference, the purpose of which was to begin visualizing post-apartheid South Africa. While the apartheid regime was still in power, it was clearly in hasty retreat, and it was equally clear that its days were numbered. The African majority would soon be taking over the reigns of power, and they were excited to begin visualizing what freedom and human rights might …

Premature Judgment, Todd Landman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Just as Mark Twain said in 1897, “The report of my death was an exaggeration,” many commentators have prematurely reported the death of human rights. For example, in 1999, in The Theory and Reality of the Protection of International Human Rights , J. Shand Watson sees human rights as a “mere fiction” in light of a century of state-sponsored killing. One year later, Costas Douzinas, through an appeal to history, philosophy, and psychoanalysis proclaimed the “end of human rights.” It is thus no surprise that the article by Joshua Kurlantzick is yet another attempt to warn us that human rights …