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The World Today
August/September, 1997
The policy of the present Israeli government has made the option of a Palestinian state less workable and less likely. As an alternative, a single democratic state including Israelis and Palestinians might seem utopian, but it is a route to a stable region.
Ghada Karmi is a Research Associate at the Centre of Near and Middle Eastern Studies of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Her book 'Jerusalem Today: What Future for the Peace Process?' (London: Ithaca Press) was published last year.
Executive Outcomes, the South African private security firm that has specialised in helping out governments in Africa, has been at the sharp end of the blossoming private security business. It has faced unprecedented condemnation from critics influenced by its military origins at the heart of the apartheid regime. The enduring hatred of mercenaries left over from the 1960s has also stuck. But the company insists it is both legitimate and serving a useful role. It has held up its work in Sierra Leone as a showcase of how force can be applied to shift a country's fortunes in war and bring peace.
David Shearer is a Research Associate with the International Institute for Strategic Studies and is writing an Adelphi Paper on private security forces. He was in Sierra Leone a week before the coup in May.
The rapid growth of the Internet has led to its increasing use by campaigning groups, businesses and states. In the quest for influence, companies and consumers are likely to become better informed.
John Bray is Principal Research Consultant at Control Risks Information Services in London. He is editor and co-author of 'No Hiding Place', a Control Risks report on companies and the politics of pressure groups.
The crises of this part of the century, whether within or between states, have drawn a response from a growing army of non-governmental organisations. Many are now comparable with international companies, spending as much as small countries. But just which side are they on, and to whom are they responsible and accountable?
Hugo Slim is Director of the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP) at Oxford Brookes University and an International Advisor to the British Red Cross.
No US president worth his salt wants to leave office without having established his own specific foreign policy 'doctrine'. From 1797 onwards, when George Washington, in his Farewell Address, warned his countrymen to 'steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world', American presidents have been obsessed with devising personalised mission statements in foreign affairs which serve to align US interests, values and behaviour, to inform the international community at large and to secure the backing of the American public.
Graham Evans is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Wales Swansea.
Supporters of the idea of a Revolution in Military Affairs suggest it will change warfare for ever. But, in assessing the impact of new technologies on armed conflict, the Revolution in Political Affairs has to be considered too. Nations need to prepare for the wars they may actually need to fight.
Lawrence Freedman is Professor of War Studies at Kings College London. This article is an edited version of a paper he gave at a Chatham House Conference on the Revolution in Military Affairs.
With the decision of the NATO summit to admit three new members, the shape of European security has begun to change. Several European states are neutral, but in Ireland at least there are signs of an increasing will for international military engagement.
Renata Dwan, Hedley Bull Junior Research Fellow in International Relations at St Anne's College, Oxford, is a visiting fellow at the Western European Union Institute for Security Studies, Paris.
The Islamist Welfare Party increased its influence in Turkey's election of 1995. The party's first taste of office lasted less than a year and another coalition is now having a go at government. Non-political groups and those less well off are increasingly turning to voluntary civil organisations in frustration at the apparent inability of a succession of government to improve their lot.
Debbie Lovatt is a Lecturer in the International Relations Department of Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir.
This month India marks fifty years of independence. While it remains the world's largest democracy, it begins its second half-century coming to terms with the forces of diversity that democracy has released. The Congress Party ruled India for forty-four of the past fifty years. Can India's politicians now acquire what I. K. Gujral - the country's fourth premier in a year - calls 'coalition culture'?
James Chiriyankandath is Lecturer in Politics at London Guildhall University and a writer and broadcaster on South Asia.
Indian independence became a reality as British troops retreated through Bombay's Gateway of India. Now the city is at the heart of the globalisation process. Will globalisation be a force for division or prosperity?
Monojit Chatterji is Bonar Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Dundee.
Next January, the US Department of Energy is due to take legal possession of 30,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste now stored beside the civilian reactors that produced it. It was originally intended that the waste would be buried deep underground, but the Department has not yet decided where it should dig the necessary hole. The leading candidate for a geological repository is Yucca Mountain in Nevada, a hundred miles northwest of Las Vegas, but even if a waste facility were to be built there, it would not be ready for at least fifteen years.
Giles Alston is a Research Fellow of the Graduate School of European and International Studies at the University of Reading.
Sir Patrick Moberly, formerly Britain's Ambassador to South Africa and now Chairman of the Southern Africa Study Group at Chatham House, looks at the aims and activities of the Group.