This article responds to Daniel Bethlehem's assertions that globalization is diminishing the importance of geography, and thereby challenging the Westphalian order on which international law is constructed. It contends that international law does not take geography as it is but actively creates and sustains a state-based geography. It argues that the challenges Bethlehem identifies are not new but are inherent in international law's efforts to impose a state-based order on a global world. The question is not whether international lawyers will respond to these challenges, but how they will respond. Will they follow Bethlehem in reinforcing a statist order, or will they place sovereignty of states in the service of the global human community?
This paper argues that contrary to popular belief, in the bygone era, there was not one but two Silk Roads in Asia – the Northern and the less well-known South-western Silk Road (SSR). The SSR connected South/Central Asia with southern China and present day Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). After enjoying a rich history of around 1,600 years, the Silk Roads went into disrepair. Now, for various economic, security, and political reasons, land connectivity is once again making a comeback in Asia. These include the (i) ―Go West‖ and the recent ―New Silk Roads‖ policies of China; (ii) ―Look East‖ policies of South Asia; (iii) opening of Myanmar, a node between South Asia and East Asia; and (iv) growing importance of supply-chain trade. The focus has, however, been mainly on reviving the Northern Silk Road with relatively few actions being initiated to revive the SSR. Mirroring the on-going efforts in the Greater Mekong Sub-region and the Central Asian region, this paper proposes four economic corridors for Pan-Asian connectivity that is to connect South/Central Asia with southern China and ASEAN. The paper argues that the revival of land connectivity in Asia is making Maritime Asia of the past, more continental-based. One implication is that regional institutions focusing solely on Maritime Asia, such as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), may be losing some of their relevance vis-à-vis say the more continental-based China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The other is that the influence of the West in Asia‘s security may be declining relative to that of China, India, and Russia.
I have been asked to help set the stage for this conference by looking at the broader issues that can address the issue of A World with No Axis? International Shifts and their Impact on the Gulf. I have spent enough time in the Gulf over the years to know how often people have strong opinions, interesting conspiracy theories, and a tendency to ignore hard numbers and facts. We all suffer from the same problems , but today I'm going to focus as much on facts and numbers as possible.
The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirmed in Article 13 that "[e]veryone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." In response to the Soviet Union's and China's prohibitive controls over the travel of their citizens, Article 13 recognized the right of individual citizens to take trips to other countries willing to receive them, knowing that they may return home at the end of their foreign stays.
The internet and associated information technology (IT), which often go by the name 'cyberspace,' give modern societies, economies and lives benefits that are too numerous to count. But the dark side of our dependence on the internet goes far beyond the day-to-day headlines of cyber crime, identity theft or concerns about online espionage or loss of privacy.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Globalization, Science and Technology, and Reform
This Think Piece explores how integration into international trade through global networks of production (GPNs) and innovation (GINs) might affect a region's innovation capacity. As regions across the globe are progressively integrated into those global networks - some certainly more than others - these regions are all faced with a fundamental challenge: How might progressive integration of its firms into GPNs and GINs affect learning, capability development and innovation? Will network integration unlock new sources of industrial innovation? Or will it act as a poisoned chalice that will sap and erode the region's accumulated capabilities?
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, and Labor Issues
In the speech delivered on 19 September 2013 focused on the future of NATO, Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen listed the Alliance's top three priorities. Having identified the first two (focusing on further building NATO's capabilities, and the need to achieve a better balance of responsibility between North America and Europe), he pointedly focused on the third priority as the need to "...develop a truly global perspective of security, and the partnerships to match the perspective."
Topic:
Security, NATO, Globalization, International Cooperation, and Reform
Discourse on global affairs often refers to the international community. Statesmen sometimes exhort it, as in "the international community must act"; they sometimes lament its passivity, as in "the international community has done nothing"; and sometimes they speak in its name, as in "the international community condemns this outrage."
Topic:
International Relations, Diplomacy, Globalization, International Cooperation, International Organization, and Governance
An estimated one-third of girls around the globe become brides before the age of eighteen and one in nine do so before the age of fifteen. In recent decades, the issue of child marriage has grown in profile and priority for many policymakers. The Elders, a group of global leaders including former United Nations (UN) secretary-general Kofi Anna n and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, have taken on the issue and opted to use their platform to speak out against the practice, as have other prominent international organizations. The UN estimated that in 2011, nearly seventy million women ages twenty to twenty-four had married before they turned eighteen. If current trends continue without pause, in the next ten years, more than 140 million girls will be married before their eighteenth birthdays. In order to design interventions that can scale to match the level of the challenge, it is critical to understand the drivers of child marriage and the factors that can curb it.
Topic:
Globalization, Human Rights, Human Welfare, and Reform
Globalization has transformed the marketplace for medicines in recent decades, giving rise to new threats including the poor traceability of global supply chains, counterfeit and substandard medicines, and antibacterial resistance. Aware that public drug authorities must cooperate to meet the emerging challenges of modern medicines regulation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been discussing with counterpart agencies abroad creating a"global coalition of regulators." Yet a coalition alone is not enough; the devil, as always, will be in the details. In pursuit of this goal, the FDA and partner medicines regulatory agencies should design a coalition with five distinct features: narrow scope, to promote realistic goals; flexibility, to adapt to future circumstances; selective membership, to maximize like mindedness, particularly in the early stages; nongovernmental (NGO) participation, to leverage the capacities of both NGOs and for-profit corporations; and institutional partnerships, to orchestrate the activities of other regulatory organizations.
Topic:
Globalization, Health, International Cooperation, and Non-Governmental Organization