International Relations Commons^™

War Is The American Way Of Life, Paul L. Atwood

New England Journal of Public Policy

The war against terror following the September 11 attack is in keeping with the long history of American foreign policy. Various “doctrines” issued by one president after another since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 are really incremental expansions of that original statement of hemispheric dominance aimed at encompassing the entire globe. The westward expansion to the Pacific coast and beyond to the Philippines, Hawaii, and the interventions in the nations of Latin America are early stages in the development of American hegemony. After intervening in the First World War, Wilson tried to dictate the peace. The rest of the century …

From Just War To Just Intervention, Susan J. Atwood

New England Journal of Public Policy

What is Just War? What is Just Intervention? This paper examines the evolution of the criteria for Just War from its origins in the early Christian church to the twenty-first century. The end of the Cold War era has expanded the discussion to include grounds for intervention. Indeed, in the 1990s, a number of multilateral interventions took place on humanitarian grounds. But the debate is ongoing about whether the criteria applied in the Just War theory — proper authority, just cause, and right intent — remain valid in an era of Just Intervention. The author examines as case studies some …

The United Nations And War In The Twentieth And Twenty-First Centuries, Robert Weiner

New England Journal of Public Policy

The United Nations was created in 1945 to prevent another world war. It was designed, as the Preamble to the Charter states, to eliminate the scourge of war. The failure to agree on a permanent UN international army meant that the UN had to improvise in dealing with wars. Peacekeeping, which is not mentioned anywhere in the UN Charter, had to be invented. This study investigates how peacekeeping has evolved through four “generations,” culminating in Unsanctioned multinational forces consisting of “coalitions of the willing.” The study also stresses how one of the greatest peacekeeping failures of the UN in the …

The Link Between Poverty And Violent Conflict, J. Brian Atwood

New England Journal of Public Policy

The threat to the international system from the many forms of violent conflict, terrorism being the most prominent among them, is greater today than it was at the end of the twentieth century. This escalation of global conflict has been attributed to the breakup of the Soviet State, increasing ethnic tensions, weak governance at both the nation-state and international levels, and the rise of religious extremism. Each of these factors contributes to instability and the social tensions that lead to violence. It will be posited here that there is also a significant link between poverty and violent conflict, one that …

The Costs Of Covert Warfare: Airpower, Drugs, And Warlords In The Conduct Of U.S Foreign Policy, Alfred W. Mccoy

New England Journal of Public Policy

Over the last fifty years the United States has fought four covert wars by using a unique combination of special operations and airpower as a substitute for regular ground troops. Such covert wars are removed from Congressional oversight and conventional diplomacy. Their battlegrounds become the loci of political instability. In highland Asia, while these covert wars are being fought, CIA protection transforms tribal warlords into powerful drug lords linked to international markets. Arguably, every nation needs an intelligence service to warn of future dangers. But should this nation have the right, under U.S. or international law, to conduct its foreign …

American Warfare In The Twenty-First Century, Paul R. Camacho

New England Journal of Public Policy

Over the last several years there have been a number of calls for the development of a new theoretical doctrine to govern the force structure of the United States military. The last big change in doctrine occurred in the post-Vietnam era. It involved not simply the change to the all-volunteer force, but an abandonment of escalation brinkmanship and open-ended missions. The subsequent Powell Doctrine demanded the use of overwhelming force and clear objectives and boundaries for military intervention. As the new millennium approached, the deficiencies of the Powell Doctrine became apparent — the multilateral approach of coalition building and the …

Globalization: New Challenges, Cornelio Sommargua, Robert Jackson, Ramu Damodaran, Philip Bobbitt

New England Journal of Public Policy

From the EPIIC Symposium at Tufts University. These articles speak about topics on war and the effects that the UN has on it, sovereignity, and human rights to name a few.

Engendering Accountability: Gender Crimes Under International Criminal Law, Richard J. Goldstone, Estelle A. Dehon

New England Journal of Public Policy

Gender crimes, such as rape, sexual assault, sexual slavery, and forced prostitution, have always been perpetrated during war, yet the laws of war have been slow to acknowledge these crimes and to bring their perpetrators to justice. This article examines the response of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda to this lacuna in international law, and analyzes the mainly positive developments they have made in this area in relation to the definition of rape and to the prosecution of gender crimes as crimes against humanity, war crimes, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and genocide. It …

Human Rights & The International Criminal Court, John Shattuck, Valerie Epps, Hurst Hannon

New England Journal of Public Policy

From the EPIIC Symposium at Tufts University. These articles speak about topics on war and the effects that the US government had on it, issues about war crimes, and human rights to name a few.

War & Public Health In The Twenty-First Century, Barry S. Levy, Victor W. Sidel

New England Journal of Public Policy

War has profound adverse effects on public health. War leads to death for military personnel and especially for civilians, long-term physical and psycho- logical consequences to survivors, destruction of sociocultural and ambient environments, and diversion of needed resources. In addition, war legalizes and promotes violence as a mode of solving problems. These and related issues relating to war in the twenty-first century are analyzed in this paper. The authors discuss several approaches to preventing war and minimizing its consequences on health — including addressing the underlying problems that often lead to war, promoting a culture of peace, and controlling weapons.

Worldview And Culture: Leadership In Sub-Sahara Africa, Betsie Smith

New England Journal of Public Policy

The traditional worldview and culture of Africa was very different from that of the West today: man was at the center of a religious universe; time was generally felt to be under the control of man, not the reverse; the belief that the dead are able to influence the living enhanced reverence for the elderly; a belief in collectivism was far stronger than a belief in individualism. Colonial- ism, the Cold War, and three decades following independence upset the traditional African worldview and created bewildering frictions within the political, economic, and social wellbeing of the continent. The role of African …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

Much has changed in the world since the last issue of this journal. All is indeed changed and changed utterly. But we have no terrible beauty with which to console ourselves. For the foreseeable future, the debate over whether we live in a unilateral or multilateral world is moot. A new Rome rules with an arrogance only the truly certain can master.

The invasion of Iraq definitively answered the question: What is the New World Order? America is, and America’s order will continue until Americans themselves decide otherwise, and that, in the short term at least, means whether they will …

The United Nations And The Magna Carta For Children, Winston E. Langley

John M. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies Publications

The impulse that invited the preparation of this book is one which is linked to the convergence of a number of factors bearing on my interest in human rights. First, the brutality visited on children during World War II has had an abiding negative effect on my sense of what is possible in human conduct. Second, I am persuaded that children are not simply the means by which human societies are continued, but, as well, the potential source of moral revitalization and transformation for those societies. Third, I recognize that the human rights movement, which followed World War II, holds …