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Volume XIV, No. 2: Fall / Winter 2005 Mass immigration from Africa poses a challenge to four key aspects of
European identity: observance of human rights, internal peace, economic
growth and superpower status. This paper will demonstrate that these European
ideals are far from contradictory to a legal recognition of African
immigrants—in fact, an increasing legal acknowledgement of the European
Union’s immigrant population will be an indispensable step toward the
European Union’s stated ideals. Taking Spain as its point of departure,
this paper will suggest that the capacity of a nation-state to offer legal tolerance
to its most marginal immigrants will disproportionately determine the
EU’s status as a bastion of human rights, a safeguard of internal peace,
an engine of economic growth, and a powerful voice in global affairs. [Full Text] Transnational corruption is one of the most complex, serious, and intriguing
forms of criminal activity that impacts the developing world. This
article seeks to unmask this form of corruption, which the authors have
found has a common anatomy throughout the world. This article describes
the various schemes repeatedly employed by corrupt actors worldwide:
bribery, kickback brokers, front companies, bid rigging, official-owned
enterprises, theft from government accounts, and abuse of public assets.
Finally, this article recommends actions that international financial institutions
can undertake to mitigate or reduce the incidence of this social,
developmental, political, and national security threat. [Full Text] The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has led many
observers of international affairs to question why the Bush
administration appeared so confident of the existence of these weapons
prior to the war. This article suggests that a partial answer to this
question can be found by applying Irving Janis’s “groupthink” model,
which examines pressures for concurrence-seeking in small groups.
While Janis’s model yields important insights into the case of U.S.
decision-making leading up to the war in Iraq, this case illustrates
some of the shortcomings of the groupthink theory. From a policy
perspective, this analysis illustrates the necessity of supporting
debate in the policy-making process and the perils of acting on
worst-case thinking. [Full Text] The increase in international trade over the past
decade means more opportunities for pirates to attack
merchant ships. Where there's sugar, the ants come."
- Hamid Mustapha, Director of the
Royal Malaysian Police, 2001
The Strait of Malacca is the world's second busiest commercial shipping
lane and the lifeline of the economy of many countries that depend on the
safe and timely shipment of oil and industrial goods to support economic
growth. However, maritime piracy continues to be a paramount threat in
the Strait. This paper analyzes the effectiveness of current international
laws against piracy, the characteristics and motivations of pirates, and the
measures in which involved states can take to combat piracy and ensure
greater safety of maritime commerce. [Full Text] This article provides an argument supporting the inclusion of "smart
sanctions" in human se-curity concepts that focus on protecting the
individual from physical violence. The authors argue that when human
security fails as a proactive conflict prevention policy, smart sanctions can
serve as a reactive policy by preventing the further escalation of conflict.
Thus, by com-bining both smart sanctions and human security, enforcement
of a rule can be achieved by peaceful means, including the simultaneous
protection of societal groups and the individual, without resorting to
the use of military force. [Full Text] Fighting the War on Terror will continue to require many organizational,
strategic and tactical changes, including new methods of covert action that
can be effectively employed against closed, fanatical terrorist groups like
al Qaeda. This paper argues that the United States should attempt to use
Western terrorist organizations to penetrate Islamic extremist groups. The
paper examines the feasibility of using derivatives of the Irish Republican
Army and Russian organized crime as “trojan horses” capable of approaching
and identifying Islamic terrorists in the market for documents,
weapons, and other illicit materials and/or services. The paper concludes
that, while there are many risks and difficulties in applying this tactic, it is
superior to other options and has viable success potential. [Full Text] The World Bank has officially supported the notion of participatory
development for over a decade, arguing that development projects are
more effective when beneficiaries have a role in the way projects are chosen,
planned, implemented, and evaluated. In practice, however, the Bank’s
primary model of development continues to be based on expertise rather
than participation. This is partly because the participatory model has not
been definitively proven to be effective in all Bank projects. This paper
criticizes the theory and practice of participatory development in light of
the Bank’s experiences, and recommends that the Bank make a stronger
effort, not just to promote or encourage participatory development, but to
study what specific participatory mechanisms have been shown to work in
what kinds of projects and under what circumstances, and then to identify
the specific tasks that staff on those projects would need to accomplish to
incorporate those mechanisms into their work. [Full Text] In March 2005 the Club de Madrid convened a major international summit on Terrorism and Democracy on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Madrid train station bombings. I was honored to serve as chairman of the committee exploring the psychological roots of terrorism, and recruited a group of ten international experts on terrorist psychology. This essay which I drafted and presented to the summit was drawn from our committee’s deliberations through a web log over a four month period. [Full Text] |
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