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The World Today
March 1999
Why does the world notice and intervene in some crises while paying much less attention to others? Is there a formula which might indicate when intervention is more likely and clarify the steps preceding it — advance warning for peacekeepers and errant states alike?
Karin von Hippel runs the Complex Emergencies Unit at the Centre for Defence Studies, Kings College, London. Her new book, Democracy by Force, will be published by Cambridge University Press.
Michael Clarke is the Executive Director of the centre. This article draws on joint research on complex emergencies conducted over the last two years.
Africa is on the threshold of a renaissance, proclaimed President Bill Clinton in March 1998. Yes, but Africa’s renaissance, suggested US Assistant Secretary of State, Susan Rice, could be like Europe’s that lasted two centuries and was marked throughout by plagues and bloody conflict. What are the images of Africa, and which of these is reflected in the policies and prescriptions proffered by major actors in the international community today? Is it the one of a rebel leader in the Democratic Republic of the Congo sporting ‘brand new Converse trainers, a hooded black tracksuit, Nike USA emblazoned on the front, matching baseball cap, chunky gold watch’. Or is it of Archbishop Desmond Tutu presenting the findings of South Africa’s almost unique experiment in national reconciliation, the Truth Commission?
Randolph C. Kent, formerly with the UN, has just completed a US government-funded study on Humanitarian Futures. He is a Senior Research Fellow at Kings College Centre for Defense Studies.
Despite the demise of communism elsewhere and its own severe crises, North Korea survives. How to handle the risks it poses, however, is causing discord between Seoul and Washington. South Korea under Kim Dae-jung is trying a radically new ‘sunshine’ policy, encouraging businesses such as Hyundai to prise open their northern neighbour with joint ventures. But this patient approach clashes with a new tougher US line, which views North Korea as a missile proliferator and probable nuclear recidivist. A carefully constructed 1994 deal to provide new power plants may be at risk, and this year could see a return to the serious tensions which preceded it.
Aidan Foster-Carter is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology and Modern Korea at the University of Leeds.
Jordan’s new king has pledged to maintain the legacy of his father King Hussein. Along with the mystique of his father’s personal qualities, that legacy includes a highly centralised power structure. Rather than carry on in the same vein, therefore, perhaps the biggest contribution King Abdullah could make would be to take forward the process of institution building that would broaden the basis of his authority.
Rosemary Hollis is Head of the Middle East Programme at Chatham House.
The world is once again wondering what to do about Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction. Despite air strikes, Saddam Hussein is still in power and his people suffer under sanctions. Is this the moment for a touch of old-fashioned deterrence? Might a firm UN resolution regain the initiative and make life safer for all?
Sir John Moberly is an Associate Fellow of the Middle East Programme at Chatham House. He was formerly Britain’s Ambassador to Iraq and Jordan.
The growth of the Internet in recent years, in terms of accessible material and perceived audience, has accelerated at a speed comparable only to the increase in the number of conflicts across the globe. A sweeping statement, perhaps, about two fields as far removed from each other as physics is from fine art. But perhaps not. We live in a very different world today. We have different wars, different warriors, and different weapons.
Cathy Gormley is a Research Officer for the Conflict Data Service (CDS) at INCORE, the Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity, University of Ulster/United Nations University. The CDS is available online at http://www.incore.ulst.ac.uk/cds/
What are the essential qualifications for foreign service officers in the 21st century? What are the important differences in the expertise future diplomats must possess compared with that of their traditional predecessors? The answers to these questions indicate the very substantial changes in the nature of the diplomatic enterprise as we enter the information age.
Jeffrey Cooper is director of the Centre for Information Strategy and Policy at Science Applications International Corporation, Maclean, Virginia.
Reporting a war is almost as dangerous as fighting one. The Committee to Protect Journalists has reported that some four hundred and seventy-four journalists have been killed in the last ten years. At least seventy-five of them died in the conflict in former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1996 a higher number than during the Vietnam war. This increase is mainly due to three developments: the new state of warfare, greater demands on journalists and greater competition in the media.
Keith Suter is Director of Studies at the International Law Association – Australian branch.
Time was, back in the 1970s and 1980s,when only one country in Europe, the Federal Republic of Germany, had an Ostpolitik — a policy aimed at getting on better with its eastern neighbours, notably Poland. It was in pursuit of a political opening in the frozen, then still Moscow-dominated east, that Chancellor Willy Brandt made his historic trip to Warsaw in December 1970. Since then, Germany has been re-united and the Soviet Union is no more. Now it is the independent, non-communist Poland that has fashioned, and actively pursues, its own Ostpolitik towards neighbours further east: the three Baltic Republics — Estonia and Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.
Christopher Cviic, former Editor of The World Today, has just returned from Poland collecting material for a book on post-1989 Central Europe.
In this most recent work, Paul Ormerod continues the criticism of conventional economic thought begun with the publication in 1994 of The Death of Economics. His witty and ambitious book is a new attempt to move beyond criticising the current state of the ‘dismal science’, and offer an alternative approach to understand economic and social issues.
Dr Paulo Wrobel is a Research Fellow of Chatham House responsible for its Brazil and Latin America Programme.