Search

20991. How worthy Israeli Relations for Turkey?

Author:
Halil Erdemir
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations
Institution:
Center for International Conflict Resolution at Yalova University
Abstract:
Palestine is a crucial and well-known place for humanity in general for the region in particular. The area is important for religious, cultural, political, strategic and economic matters. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are connected with the region. The well-known world empires and cultures left their ethnic, cultural and/or political marks in the life of regional people. The lucrative energy stocks are either located or connected with the region. The strategic location, military and economic capabilities of Turkey and Israel is significant and noteworthy in the region. They have played roles in the recent past and it seems they will continue to play in the near future. The both countries relationship required delicate policies due to their domestic and international sensitivities. There are ethnic and religious rivalries as well as political and economic clash of interests in the region. Alliances and co-operations in various fields shaped the recent history of the region. The region seems to be the most interesting arenas of political, economic, cultural and military manoeuvres of the influential world and regional powers. Turkey and Israel will play their active or passive roles in the wider scenarios accordance with their influences in regional and/or international politics. The relationship will be affected either upwards or downwards depending on their domestic and international perspectives of the issues. Regional and international developments are influential in shaping consistency of bilateral relations and regional peace.
Political Geography:
Turkey and Israel

20992. Chinese Aid to Africa: Filling the gaps that others left

Author:
Max Rebol
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations
Institution:
Center for International Conflict Resolution at Yalova University
Abstract:
Western observers sometimes shockingly reduce Chinese Aid to Africa to a way of securing access to natural resources. A closer look does not only reveal that China's disbursement of Aid to the continent is relatively unrelated to natural resources, but also that it fills exactly the areas that Western aid has increasingly neglected: Infrastructure, industrialization and manufacturing. Chinese and Western aid work but in many ways can be seen as complementing rather than competing. Western aid since the 1980s focuses almost exclusively on basic social needs, while China's Aid to Africa is more based on industrial cooperation. The tools, such as preferential loans, that China uses hereby are often similar to what has been successful when China was in the role of the Aid recipient. Aid should therefore not be seen as a philanthropic one way transfer, but part of a mutually beneficial strategy that uses policy to channel investment into areas in which they are needed most. There is a fine line between aid and business, but in its relations with Africa today, China is well aware that at home it was not aid that lifted 200 million people out of poverty.
Political Geography:
Africa and China

20993. Right-wing Populism and the European Union

Author:
Somdeep Sen
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations
Institution:
Center for International Conflict Resolution at Yalova University
Abstract:
Since its inception the European Union has transformed itself from a mere economic partnership to a regional cooperation, supposedly, embodying laws and values 'universally' accepted as 'good'. This very character has encouraged the EU to pursue the role of a global actor that not only personifies this 'value-system' but also strives at disseminating them into the rest of the world. But, over the years the rise of right-wing populism throughout Europe has threatened to challenge some of the core orientating aspects of this 'value-system'. While electoral victories have demonstrated their ability to impact the character of the EU within its boundaries, this study wonders what impact the rise of the right-wing populism could have on the European Union as a global actor.
Political Geography:
Europe

20994. The Shifting Global Power Balance Equations and the Emerging Real 'New World Order'

Author:
Alex Igho Ovie-D'Leone
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations
Institution:
Center for International Conflict Resolution at Yalova University
Abstract:
Expansion in globalization arising from increased interconnectivity and interdependence across the world is causing a shift both in the focus of what now could determine the principal international power variables and the criteria for power balancing calculus. One direct challenge to the status quo is the emergence on one hand of new state actors which are becoming more assertive, as well as some other new key non-state actors now matching states seemingly one-on-one on the world stage in many spheres of international political concourse. Consequently, there is a visible or perceptible shift from the current USled unipolar 'New World Order' to a new form of multi-faceted power balancing structure that abstracts sharply from the traditional patterns of international power balancing calculus. The predominant position of the US in a post-Cold-War order is being threatened on several fronts. Consequently, unipolarity appears to be obviously on its decline. However, the US has started to respond in kind to such new threats to its continued international hegemony. It is a unilateral response that seeks to perpetrate unipolarity. But how long can it hold on to its grip and status as a global hyper power balancer? The challenges presented by such sundry scenarios including also other new related developments are exhaustively tackled here in this article.

20995. Thucydides: An Author Still Relevant for the Contemporary Analysis of International Relations?

Author:
Alexandra Dobra
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations
Institution:
Center for International Conflict Resolution at Yalova University
Abstract:
The present paper aims to assess the relevance of Thucydides's study for international relations, via focusing on his most eminent text, The Peloponnesian War. The analysis of its relevance will be done through a tripartite structure, in which the first two parts are symmetric. In a first part, the continuities between Thucydides' historical account and the realist and neorealist theory of international relations will be analysed. While in a second part, the continuities between Thucydides' historical account and the constructivist theory of international relations will be dealt with. Finally, in a third part a limit will be raised, via the study of the prescriptive accuracy of The Peloponnesian War (on the grounds of new forms of violence).

20996. Reevaluating Al-Qa'ida's Weapons of Mass Destruction Capabilities

Author:
Peter Bergen
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
CTC Sentinel
Institution:
The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
Abstract:
Two months after the 9/11 attacks, Usama bin Ladin claimed to possess a nuclear capability. On the morning of November 8, 2001, the Saudi militant was eating a hearty meal of meat and olives as Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist, interviewed him in a house in Kabul. Mir asked Bin Ladin to comment on reports that he had tried to acquire nuclear and chemical weapons, to which the al-Qa`ida leader replied: “I wish to declare that if America used chemical or nuclear weapons against us, then we may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons. We have the weapons as deterrent.” Mir asked, “Where did you get these weapons from?” Bin Ladin responded coyly, “Go to the next question.” After the interview was finished, Mir followed up this exchange over tea with Bin Ladin's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. “I asked this question to Dr. al-Zawahiri: that it is difficult to believe that you have nuclear weapons,” Mir explained. “So he said, 'Mr. Hamid Mir, it is not difficult. If you have 30 million dollars, you can go to the black market in Central Asia, make contact with a disgruntled Russian scientist and get from him suitcase nuclear weapons.'”
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Russia, America, and Central Asia

20997. Just War, Jihad, and the Study of Comparative Ethics

Author:
John Kelsay
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
What can the study of the comparative ethics tell us about the similarities and divergences between the just war and jihad traditions? How can the discipline help locate shared concerns, identify persistent differences, and reveal common narratives?
Topic:
Islam and Culture
Political Geography:
America and Europe

20998. The Ethical Implications of Sea-Level Rise Due to Climate Change

Author:
Sujatha Byravan and Sudhir Chella Rajan
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Does humanity have a moral obligation toward the estimated millions of individuals who will be displaced from their homes over the course of this century primarily due to sea-level rise (SLR) as the earth's climate warms? If there are indeed sound reasons for the world to act on their behalf, what form should these actions take?
Topic:
Environment

20999. Kicking Bodies and Damning Souls: The Danger of Harming "Innocent" Individuals While Punishing "Delinquent" States [Abstract]

Author:
Toni Erskine
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The problem with trying to punish an institution that is judged to be ''delinquent''—whether a ''rogue state,'' the United Nations, BP, or the United States Army—might be understood as one of responding to an entity that (to invoke Edward, First Baron Thurlow's eighteenth-century account of the corporation) ''has no soul to be damned and no body to be kicked.'' Perhaps this seems a fairly obvious point. After all, even if one can draw some carefully qualified analogies between individual human actors and institutions (as I will attempt to do in the first part of this article), the two types of entity are different in important ways. One might thereby conclude that the corporeal—and, depending on one's beliefs, even the spiritual—nature of individual human beings renders them vulnerable to forms of punitive harm to which institutions, in the sense of formal organizations, are simply impervious. Alternatively, one might counter that such an observation has little relevance when we are talking about ''delinquent''
Political Geography:
United States and United Nations

21000. Reviving Nuclear Ethics: A Renewed Research Agenda for the Twenty-First Century

Author:
Thomas E. Doyle
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
In 1976 the noted Catholic ethicist J. Bryan Hehir expressed concern about the waning sense of moral urgency over the existence of nuclear weapons with each passing year that superpower nuclear war was avoided. Acknowledging that international ethicists had justifiably turned to other global problems, such as world hunger and poverty, Hehir still worried that the relative exile [of the ethical analysis of the nuclear] issue [that] has endured in the academy . . . , if not in government during the last decade, is not healthy. The price of error on this issue is still catastrophic; the chance of redress is minimal. Yet each year the genie kept in the political bottle contributes to our confidence of control and can contribute to our lack of attention. But the complexity of the issue and the costs of ignorance require attention, ethically and politically.
Topic:
Government and Poverty