Home  About us  Contact
 

Foreign Powers (foreign + power)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

,Weapons of the Weak?' Colombia and Foreign Powers in the Nineteenth Century

BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 2008
MALCOLM DEAS
First page of article [source]

A self-restrained approach to nation-building by foreign powers

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2004
Amitai Etzioni
Nation-building by foreign powers can rarely be accomplished and tends to be very costly, not merely in economic resources and those of political capital, but also in human lives. Foreign powers often attempt to tackle numerous tasks with little discernible effect. Therefore, whatever resources foreign powers are willing and able to commit should be focused on a modest agenda,what is termed in this article a ,restrained approach,. A restrained approach focuses first and foremost on pacification and security, it deals with whoever is in power initially and it requires local people to overcome some challenges by themselves. Greatly curtailing foreign ambitions and promises will lead to much greater credibility of drives for democratization; will provide stronger domestic support for such efforts among the taxpayers and donors who have to foot the bills; and will pay off by focusing more resources on the few facets of society that are relatively easy to change. [source]

Unipolarity, Globalization, and the War on Terror: Why Security Studies Should Refocus on Comparative Defense,

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 3 2007
Damon Coletta
Changes in the international environment such as the shift toward unipolarity, the rise of globalization, and the expansion of terrorist networks have redefined the sorts of problems confronted by policymakers and military practitioners in the arena of national security. With most of its fundamental concepts and frameworks rooted in the study of international relations (IR), the field of security studies has failed to keep up. Highly educated soldiers and diplomats sent to help rebuild failed or fragmented states are still poorly equipped to identify major obstacles or formulate solutions for accomplishing their missions. The safety of states and societies today depends less exclusively on blocking the military, economic, and ideological initiatives of a foreign power and more on supporting the integrity of members that can participate in an international system regulated by generally agreed-upon rules and conventions. The need to help various types of states under a variety of cultural and economic conditions build legitimate, durable political institutions and functioning societies should push security studies toward a broader examination of comparative politics. Beyond the balance of power and modalities of interstate competition, the new security studies should embrace fundamentals found outside of IR to make more robust intellectual contributions to the examination of comparative defense. [source]

A self-restrained approach to nation-building by foreign powers

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2004
Amitai Etzioni
Nation-building by foreign powers can rarely be accomplished and tends to be very costly, not merely in economic resources and those of political capital, but also in human lives. Foreign powers often attempt to tackle numerous tasks with little discernible effect. Therefore, whatever resources foreign powers are willing and able to commit should be focused on a modest agenda,what is termed in this article a ,restrained approach,. A restrained approach focuses first and foremost on pacification and security, it deals with whoever is in power initially and it requires local people to overcome some challenges by themselves. Greatly curtailing foreign ambitions and promises will lead to much greater credibility of drives for democratization; will provide stronger domestic support for such efforts among the taxpayers and donors who have to foot the bills; and will pay off by focusing more resources on the few facets of society that are relatively easy to change. [source]

War, Factionalism, and the State in Afghanistan

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 3 2002
Nazif M. Shahrani
Since September 11, 2001, the explanations offered to account for the rise of a foreign-led terrorist network on Afghan soil have variously focused on the political vacuum opened up by the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, interference by foreign powers in Afghanistan's internal affairs, the failure of Afghanistan to produce a "strong state" because of ethnic factionalism, and an internal moral incoherence inherent to Afghan culture. I argue that none of these explanations is entirely satisfactory in itself. To understand the situation in Afghanistan, we must recognize that its political and military chaos is not an isolated or unique phenomenon, and at the same time acknowledge the particular social and political dynamics of Afghanistan's history that have set the parameters for current events. I show that communal conflicts in Afghanistan are part of a much wider affliction common to many postcolonial states and multinational societies, and that Afghanistan's current situation can only be understood by focusing on its failed attempts at nation-state building within the broader geopolitical circumstance of foreign manipulation and proxy wars that have given rise to particular forms of ethnic division. [Keywords: Afghanistan, nation-building, ethnic factionalism, warfare, the State] [source]