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35991. An Alternative Framework for the Control of Nuclear Materials

Author:
Robert L Rinne
Publication Date:
07-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Security and Cooperation
Abstract:
The decade of the 1990s has seen renewed concerns over nuclear proliferation, both horizontal and vertical. While many in the arms control community focus on numbers, it is control that is the most important factor—the detonation of just one nuclear weapon would be an international catastrophe. Rather than concentrating on numbers, the regime defined herein centers on enhancing the safety and security being provided nuclear weapons and weapons-usable fissile materials. The proposal in the paper is called the Nuclear Weapons Control Treaty (NWCT) and referred to as New Court. The emphasis is on control rather than disarmament, protection from unintended or unauthorized use rather than elimination. New Court, once in place, would provide an environment in which the necessary audits and accountability for undertaking dramatic reductions in the numbers of weapons and the quantities of weapons-usable materials could be made with much greater confidence than exists today. However, it will be decades (if ever) before the number of nuclear weapons goes to zero. In the meantime, it is paramount that comprehensive safety and security be established and maintained.
Topic:
Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, and Nuclear Weapons

35992. Women's Rights are Human Rites: Women's human rights activists as cross-cultural theorists

Author:
Brooke A. Ackerly
Publication Date:
10-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
The familiar human rights paradigm, manifested in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and subsequent related international documents, is problematic. It cannot deal with 1) rights violations associated with a country's cultural norms that define what it means to be “human” and 2) rights violations that do not take the paradigmatic form of discrimination. Further, the framework for human rights set out by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights is insufficient for 3) adjudicating between seemingly competing liberal rights or between liberal and other rights, 4) attributing responsibility for human rights violations by state and non-state actors, attributing responsibility for structural causes of human rights violations, or imputing political import to private actions, and 5) reconciling the concept of universal human rights with cultural norms that violate certain universal human rights. These five problems are interrelated. Cross- cultural human rights theorizing is promising, but in its current articulations, it tends to focus on the last of these five problems. Moreover, it relies either on models of discourse that are exclusionary or on models of culture articulated by elites. Drawing on the theory implicit in their actions, I argue that women's human rights activists give us a way of theorizing that addresses the problems with the existing paradigm without being exclusive or elitist.
Topic:
International Relations, Gender Issues, and Human Rights

35993. 'So how do you do culture?': A workshop to discuss methodological approaches to studying culture in International Relations

Author:
Patricia M. Goff and Jacinta O'Hagan
Publication Date:
04-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
Increasingly, scholars of International Relations are acknowledging that attention to the various dimensions of culture can expand our understanding of world politics. This workshop was premised on the assumption that culture is a significant factor in international relations. Its objective was not to ask whether culture matters in IR; it assumes that it does. Instead, it asked “how do we study the influence of culture? What methodological approaches are available to us?” Part of the difficulty in addressing these questions lies in the epistemological and methodological divide that animates many IR debates. While discussions inevitably touched on these issues, the emphasis was on productive discussions of method. Rather than reprising debates over the relative merits of quantitative versus qualitative methods, or rationalist versus social construction approaches, the workshop sought to draw on all of these traditions, in an effort to assemble a problem-driven methodological toolkit that could make confident assertions and arguments about an increasingly important area of inquiry.
Topic:
International Relations

35994. Syria and Weapons of Mass Destruction

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman
Publication Date:
10-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The Middle East is the scene of an ongoing process of proliferation. Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, and Syria all have significant capabilities to deliver weapons of mass destruction Israel, and Syria has made considerable progress in acquiring weapons of mass destruction since the mid-1970s. Syria has never shown a serious interest in nuclear weapons, although it did seek to buy two small research reactors from the PRC in 1992, including a 24-megawatt reactor, and purchased a small 30-kilowatt research reactor from the PRC in 1991. It allowed inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency for the first time in February 1992. Syria does, however, deploy sheltered missiles, armed with chemical warheads, as a means of both countering Israel's nuclear forces and maintaining its rivalry with Iraq. As the attached article Syrian Defense Minister Gen. Mustafa Tlas shows, Syria has a major interest in biological warfare, and the fact his article first appeared in public in an Iranian journal may not entirely be a coincidence.
Topic:
Security, Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
Iraq, Iran, Middle East, Israel, Libya, Syria, and Egypt

35995. Defending America: Redefining the Conceptual Borders of Homeland Defense

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman
Publication Date:
09-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
There is a wide spectrum of potential threats to the American homeland that do not involve the threat of overt attacks by states using long-range missiles or conventional military forces. Such threats include covert attacks by state actors, state use of proxies, independent terrorist and extremist attacks by foreign groups or individuals, and independent terrorist and extremist attacks by residents of the US. These threats are currently limited in scope and frequency. No pattern of actual attacks on US territory has yet emerged that provides a clear basis for predicting how serious any given form of attack will be in the future, what means of attack will be used, or how lethal new forms of attack will be if they are successful.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
United States and America

35996. Managing the Global Nuclear Materials Threat: Policy Recommendations

Author:
Sam Nunn and Robert E. Ebel
Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Despite the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons continue to pose the most devastating security threat to Americans. Although the risk of a nuclear war destroying civilization has virtually disappeared, the risk that a single nuclear weapon might be used to destroy a major city has increased, particularly given the erosion of control over nuclear material with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nothing could be more central to international security than ensuring that the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons do not fall into the hands of terrorists or proliferant states. Effective controls over nuclear warheads and the nuclear materials needed to make them are essential to the future of the entire global effort to reduce nuclear arms and stem their spread. At the same time, ensuring protection of public health and the environment in the management of all nuclear materials—from nuclear weapons to nuclear wastes—remains a critical priority. Appropriate management of both safety and security worldwide will be essential to maintaining nuclear fission as an expandable option for supplying the world's greenhouse-constrained energy needs in the twenty-first century.
Topic:
Security, Energy Policy, Nuclear Weapons, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States and Soviet Union

35997. Where Did India Miss a Turn in Banking Reform? Is there a comeback?

Author:
Pradeep Raje
Publication Date:
12-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
A decade into financial sector liberalization, there has been little concerted effort at restructuring the Indian public sector banks (PSBs). Though there has been significant progress in banking regulatory reform in the decade, the lack of restructuring has slowed down the assimilation of the incentive structures inherent in the new regulations.
Topic:
International Relations, Debt, and Economics
Political Geography:
India and Asia

35998. The Strategic Implications of Terrorism

Author:
Paul Wilkinson
Publication Date:
06-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, St. Andrews University, Scotland
Abstract:
Terrorism is a special form of political violence. It is not a philosophy or a political movement. Terrorism is a weapon or method which has been used throughout history by both states and sub-state organisations for a whole variety of political causes or purposes.
Topic:
Security, Economics, Politics, and Terrorism

35999. El TLCAN y la Inversióon Extranjera Directa: El Nuevo Escenario

Author:
Arturo Borja
Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
This working paper looks at the changes that have taken place in North America in foreign direct investment (FDI) after NAFTA. The first part analyses the regime defined in the treaty. The main four principles of this regime are: "national treatment", the prohibition of performance requirements for investors, a more liberal norm for foreign ownership of firms, institutional procedures for the solution of disputes. The rule of origin is identified as the most important measure for non-North American investors. The second part offers an empirical evaluation of changes in FDI flows during the first five years of NAFTA. It compares that period with the five years previous to the implementation of the agreement. The findings show a significant increase in FDI going to Mexico, Canada and the United States. At the same time, there have been changes in the distribution of these flows within the region. More FDI is going now to the United States than to Mexico, and investments between Canada and the U.S. are growing at a higher rate than those between Mexico and the U.S. The paper also identifies different patterns between Mexico and Canada. The increases in Canadian investments suggests that Canadian multinationals are adapting their strategies to the new conditions created by NAFTA.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Canada, North America, and Mexico

36000. Coexistence, Consensus, Competition, Conflict: Interservice Contestation

Author:
Varun Sahni
Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
This paper explores one of the lesser-researched aspects of Latin American military politics, namely, relations among the three military services - army, navy and air force. This is done through a study of the Argentine Navy and its relations with the Army and Air Force of that country. The analysis proceeds in three stages. First, the article classifies issue-areas on the basis of four variables: resource and/or prestige implications, symbolic and/or functional importance, zero-sum contestation, and iterative contestations. Second, the article suggests a four-fold typology of inter-service contestation - coexistence, consensus, competition, and conflict - that is closely linked to the nature of the issue-area. Finally, the validity of the typology is tested through the study of four cases: naval management of the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA); naval domination of national policy on Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, the South Atlantic and Beagle Channel islands and Antarctica; the annual inter-service competition over the military budget; and the long-standing rivalry between the Nave and Air Force over military aviation. The four cases studied demonstrate that the taxonomy proposed in this article more than adequately classifies and explains the patterns of inter-service contestation in Argentina, thereby raising questions about its applicability to other military-dominated polities.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Security, and Politics
Political Geography:
Argentina, South America, and Latin America