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10661. M. Sornarajah. Resistance and Change in the International Law on Foreign Investment

Author:
Harm Schepel
Publication Date:
10-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
In 1994, Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah published the first edition of his treatise, The International Law on Foreign Investment. There, he sought to demonstrate that investment law as a separate branch of international law was ‘in the process of development’ and could and should be isolated for separate study. Organizing his material from the disparate sources of domestic law, contract-based arbitration and public international law along the overarching tension between the interests of developing countries and those of traditionally capital-exporting states, his stated aim was to ‘help in the identification of the nature of the disputes’, which would lead, in turn, to the ‘formulation of acceptable solutions’. The treatise was a well-timed pioneering effort that rightfully earned the author a lasting reputation as one of the founding fathers and towering figures of the academic discipline. There seems to be no one better placed, then, to ask, 20 years on, what happened or, rather, what went wrong. Investment law has developed with breathtaking speed into a (very) separate branch of international law – yes – but almost entirely on the waves of treaty-based investor–state arbitration, which has all but eclipsed contractual and domestic processes, at least in terms of academic interest. And this system has, in the eyes of Sornarajah and many others, rather spectacularly failed to lead to ‘acceptable solutions’, especially for developing countries.
Topic:
International Law, Treaties and Agreements, Foreign Direct Investment, Neoliberalism, and Book Review
Political Geography:
Europe and United States of America

10662. Mur sous ma main

Author:
Guillaume Landais
Publication Date:
10-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
A poem by Guillaume Landais.
Topic:
Poem
Political Geography:
Europe and Global Focus

10663. The Myth of Entangling Alliances: Reassessing the Security Risks of U.S. Defense Pacts

Author:
Michael Beckley
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
A large literature assumes that alliances entangle the United States in military conflicts that it might otherwise avoid. Since 1945, however, there have been only five cases of what might be characterized as U.S. entanglement—the 1954 and 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crises, the Vietnam War, and the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s—and even these cases are far from clear-cut. U.S. entanglement is rare because the United States, as a superpower with many allies, is capable of exploiting loopholes in alliance agreements, sidestepping commitments that seriously imperil U.S. interests, playing the demands of various allies off of each other, and using alliances to deter adversaries and allies from initiating or escalating conflicts.
Topic:
Diplomacy, International Cooperation, and International Security
Political Geography:
United States, Bosnia, Vietnam, and Kosovo

10664. A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? The Hard Choice between Military Competition and Accommodation

Author:
Charles L. Glaser
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Despite the intense focus on China's rise, the United States has yet to confront the most challenging question posed by this power shift: Should it pursue a strategy of limited geopolitical accommodation to avoid conflict? U.S. policy continues to focus almost entirely on preserving the geopolitical status quo in Northeast Asia. Given the shifting power balance in Asia, however, there are strong theoretical rationales for considering whether significant changes to the status quo could increase U.S. security. A possibility designed to provide the benefits of accommodation while reducing its risks is a grand bargain in which the United States ends its commitment to defend Taiwan and, in turn, China peacefully resolves its maritime disputes in the South China and East China Seas and officially accepts the United States' long-term military security role in East Asia. In broad terms, the United States has three other options—unilateral accommodation, a concert of Asian powers, and the current U.S. rebalance to Asia. Unilateral accommodation and the rebalance have advantages that make the choice a close call, but all things considered, a grand bargain is currently the United States' best bet.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, International Cooperation, International Security, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
United States and China

10665. Alliance Coercion and Nuclear Restraint: How the United States Thwarted West Germany's Nuclear Ambitions

Author:
Gene Gerzhoy
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
When does a nuclear-armed state's provision of security guarantees to a militarily threatened ally inhibit the ally's nuclear weapons ambitions? Although the established security model of nuclear proliferation posits that clients will prefer to depend on a patron's extended nuclear deterrent, this proposition overlooks how military threats and doubts about the patron's intentions encourage clients to seek nuclear weapons of their own. To resolve this indeterminacy in the security model's explanation of nuclear restraint, it is necessary to account for the patron's use of alliance coercion, a strategy consisting of conditional threats of military abandonment to obtain compliance with the patron's demands. This strategy succeeds when the client is militarily dependent on the patron and when the patron provides assurances that threats of abandonment are conditional on the client's nuclear choices. Historical evidence from West Germany's nuclear decisionmaking provides a test of this logic. Contrary to the common belief among nonproliferation scholars, German leaders persistently doubted the credibility and durability of U.S. security guarantees and sought to acquire an independent nuclear deterrent. Rather than preferring to renounce nuclear armament, Germany was compelled to do so by U.S. threats of military abandonment, contradicting the established logic of the security model and affirming the logic of alliance coercion.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation and Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Germany, and West Germany

10666. The Showdown That Wasn't: U.S.-Israeli Relations and American Domestic Politics, 1973–75

Author:
Galen Jackson
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
How influential are domestic politics on U.S. foreign affairs? With regard to Middle East policy, how important a role do ethnic lobbies, Congress, and public opinion play in influencing U.S. strategy? Answering these questions requires the use of archival records and other primary documents, which provide an undistorted view of U.S. policymakers' motivations. The Ford administration's 1975 reassessment of its approach to Arab-Israeli statecraft offers an excellent case for the examination of these issues in light of this type of historical evidence. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger decided, in large part because of the looming 1976 presidential election, to avoid a confrontation with Israel in the spring and summer of 1975 by choosing to negotiate a second disengagement agreement between Egypt and Israel rather than a comprehensive settlement. Nevertheless, domestic constraints on the White House's freedom of action were not insurmountable and, had they had no other option, Ford and Kissinger would have been willing to engage in a showdown with Israel over the Middle East conflict's most fundamental aspects. The administration's concern that a major clash with Israel might stoke an outbreak of anti-Semitism in the United States likely contributed to its decision to back down.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Regional Cooperation, International Affairs, and Domestic politics
Political Geography:
United States, Israel, and Palestine

10667. Concessions or Coercion? How Governments Respond to Restive Ethnic Minorities

Author:
Arman Grigoryan
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Destabilized multiethnic states and empires are environments that are highly susceptible to violent ethnonationalist conflict. Conflicts between states built on the ruins of such empires and their minorities are especially common. James Fearon has famously argued that these conflicts are the result of minorities' rational incentives to rebel, which in turn are the result of newly independent states' inability to guarantee that these minorities will not be discriminated against if they acquiesce to citizenship, as well as expectations that over time the balance of power will shift against minorities as states consolidate their institutions. States can, however, take steps to reassure their minorities. The puzzle is why they often fail to do so. In fact, states often adopt policies that confirm minorities' worst fears, pushing them toward rebellion. Such action may be precipitated by a state's belief that a minority is motivated by a separatist agenda rather than by the desire to have its concerns and grievances satisfactorily addressed. If secession is a minority's primary objective, then concessions intended to demobilize the minority will only make the state more vulnerable to future demands and separatist bids. The existence of third parties with incentives to support minority separatism exacerbates the problem. The violent and nonviolent minority disputes in post-Soviet Georgia illustrate these findings.
Topic:
Ethnic Government, Governance, Ethnicity, and Domestic politics
Political Geography:
Europe, Asia, Georgia, and Global Focus

10668. Soft Balancing in the Americas: Latin American Opposition to U.S. Intervention, 1898–1936

Author:
Max Paul Friedman and Tom Long
Publication Date:
08-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
In the aftermath of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, scholars of international relations debated how to best characterize the rising tide of global opposition. The concept of “soft balancing” emerged as an influential, though contested, explanation of a new phenomenon in a unipolar world: states seeking to constrain the ability of the United States to deploy military force by using multinational organizations, international law, and coalition building. Soft balancing can also be observed in regional unipolar systems. Multinational archival research reveals how Argentina, Mexico, and other Latin American countries responded to expanding U.S. power and military assertiveness in the early twentieth century through coordinated diplomatic maneuvering that provides a strong example of soft balancing. Examination of this earlier case makes an empirical contribution to the emerging soft-balancing literature and suggests that soft balancing need not lead to hard balancing or open conflict.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Imperialism, Post Colonialism, and Military Intervention
Political Geography:
United States, Argentina, Latin America, and Mexico

10669. Strategies of Inhibition: U.S. Grand Strategy, the Nuclear Revolution, and Nonproliferation

Author:
Francis Gavin
Publication Date:
08-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The United States has gone to extraordinary lengths since the beginning of the nuclear age to inhibit—that is, to slow, halt, and reverse—the spread of nuclear weapons and, when unsuccessful, to mitigate the consequences. To accomplish this end, the United States has developed and implemented a wide range of tools, applied in a variety of combinations. These “strategies of inhibition” employ different policies rarely seen as connected to one another, from treaties and norms to alliances and security guarantees, to sanctions and preventive military action. The United States has applied these measures to friend and foe alike, often regardless of political orientation, economic system, or alliance status, to secure protection from nuclear attack and maintain freedom of action. Collectively, these linked strategies of inhibition have been an independent and driving feature of U.S. national security policy for more than seven decades, to an extent rarely documented or fully understood. The strategies of inhibition make sense of puzzles that neither containment nor openness strategies can explain, while providing critical insights into post–World War II history, theory, the causes of nuclear proliferation, and debates over the past, present, and future trajectory of U.S. grand strategy.
Topic:
National Security, Nuclear Weapons, and Grand Strategy
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Soviet Union, and Germany

10670. Beyond Emboldenment: How Acquiring Nuclear Weapons Can Change Foreign Policy

Author:
Mark S. Bell
Publication Date:
08-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
What happens to the foreign policies of states when they acquire nuclear weapons? Despite its importance, this question has not been answered satisfactorily. Nuclear weapons can facilitate six conceptually distinct foreign policy behaviors: aggression, expansion, independence, bolstering, steadfastness, and compromise. This typology of foreign policy behaviors enables scholars to move beyond simple claims of “nuclear emboldenment,” and allows for more nuanced examination of the ways in which nuclear weapons affect the foreign policies of current and future nuclear states. The typology also sheds light on Great Britain's response to nuclear acquisition. Britain used nuclear weapons to engage in greater levels of steadfastness in responding to challenges, bolstering junior allies, and demonstrating independence from the United States, but it did not engage in greater levels of aggression, expansion, or compromise. The typology and the British case demonstrate the value of distinguishing among different effects of nuclear weapons acquisition, have implications for scholars' and policymakers' understanding of the role of nuclear weapons in international politics, and suggest avenues for future research.
Topic:
Diplomacy, International Cooperation, and Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
United States