Volume 50, Number 6 of Survival, the Institute's bi-monthly journal, has been published.
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The Importance of the Financial Crisis
Alexander Nicoll
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Ukraine Since the War in Georgia
Dominique Arel
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Noteworthy
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Securing the Peace: Presidents and Nation Building from FDR to George W. Bush
James Dobbins
In the United States, military and foreign policies are most obviously shaped by the president. Presidential personality clearly influences the sort of decision-making process each incumbent feels comfortable with: whether he prefers oral or written interactions, has an appetite for detail, or can tolerate conflict among and with subordinates. A review of the personal styles of five American presidents reveals three broad approaches that can be categorised as ‘formalistic’, ‘competitive’ and ‘collegial’. The first approach, often associated with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, emphasises order and hierarchy. The second, epitomised by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, seeks wisdom through the clash of ideas among competing subordinates. The third, identified with George H.W. Bush, encourages greater cooperation among these advisers. As these examples suggest, all three models can yield excellent results. They can also produce quite unsatisfactory outcomes.
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A New American Middle East Strategy?
Robert E. Hunter
With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the greater Middle East must top President Barack Obama’s foreign policy agenda. He will also face critical challenges with Iran and Israeli–Palestinian peacemaking. To deal successfully with any one he must deal effectively with all. Further, he must decide soon how much permanent US military presence to retain in and near the Persian Gulf and assess how much the American people will support open-ended US engagements in the Greater Middle East. Obama will clearly press for more European support, especially in Afghanistan. He should also foster a new regional security structure, in time involving all Middle East states. It should include confidence-building measures, Standing Military and Political Commissions, incidents at sea and freedom of navigation agreements, ‘open skies’, and OSCE-like cooperation. NATO and the EU can play supporting roles in training and counseling; and outsiders such as the United States should be prepared to intervene military if need be to keep the peace.
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Fragile States: Securing Development
Robert B. Zoellick
Fragile states are the toughest development challenge of our era. But we ignore them at our peril: about one billion people live in fragile states, including a disproportionate number of the world’s extreme poor, and they account for most of today’s wars. These situations require a different framework of building security, legitimacy, governance, and the economy. Only by securing development – bringing security and development together to smooth the transition from conflict to peace and then to embed stability so that development can take hold – can we put down roots deep enough to break the cycle of fragility and violence. Currently, we face critical gaps in our international capabilities to secure development. We need to better integrate military, political, legal, developmental, financial and technical tools with a variety of actors, from states to international organisations, civil society, and the private sector. Beyond assistance, we need new networked relationships between peacekeeping forces and development practitioners, and a new approach to security, to help the people in fragile states shift from being victims to principal agents of recovery.
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Why War in Asia Remains Thinkable
Hugh White
For over 30 years, East Asia has been free of major wars. But East Asia’s stable order is based on a unique and remarkable triangular relationship among the region’s three biggest powers, and that relationship is now under pressure from China’s growth. Asia’s future peace will depend on the ability of the United States, China and Japan – and eventually India – to create a new regional order which reflects the emerging economic and power relativities of the Asian Century. Creating a stable new order will require major sacrifices from all three powers: America will have to concede primacy and learn to treat China and Japan as equals; China will have to forgo its own dreams of primacy and accept Japan as a legitimate major power; and Japan will have to accept the costs and complexities of strategic independence. We cannot assume they will meet these challenges successfully.
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Why East Asian War is Unlikely
Richard A. Bitzinger and Barry Desker
The Asia-Pacific region is home to many unresolved geostrategic issues that could escalate into conflict; nevertheless, it is probably more stable than one might believe. In particular, the emergence of a more assertive China does not mean a more aggressive China or that war in Asia is more likely. While Beijing may be increasingly pushing its own agenda in regional international affairs, and while it may seek to displace the United States as the regional hegemon, this does not automatically translate into an expansionist China. If anything, China appears content to press its claims peacefully, if forcefully, through existing avenues and institutions of international relations, and in particular by co-opting these avenues and institutions to meet its own purposes. Secondly, when one looks more closely at the Chinese military buildup, one can still find many deficiencies in its offensive capabilities. The Chinese war machine, while still quite worrisome, may not be quite as threatening as some might argue.
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The Gulf's Renewed Oil Wealth: Getting it Right This Time?
Suzanne Maloney
The dramatic escalation in the price of oil over the past seven years has allowed the Middle East and the Gulf states in particular to reap an incredible windfall. Early indications suggest that the region may be optimising these rewards with greater prudence than during past oil booms, by reducing debt, increasing savings and launching meaningful economic reforms. Still, it is hardly certain that mounting revenues will enable the region to successfully overcome the political and economic vulnerabilities inherent in oil-led development. The oil boom has neither saved nor doomed the Middle East, but rather opened new possibilities and heightened existing problems. International interest in ensuring the free flow of energy resources should prompt serious efforts by Washington and other capitals to enhance regional integration, encourage meaningful reform and promote long-term cooperation in cultivating a more stable, prosperous and sustainable future for the Middle East.
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Is the Arab World Immune to Democracy?
Volker Perthes
The debate over whether the political development of the Arab world is exceptional has been going on since before the collapse of the Eastern bloc governments. Arguments and approaches based in economic or cultural determinism, or even conspiracy theory, were adduced to explain the exceptional condition of the Arab world: Western schemes for domination, oil, Islam or simply ‘the Arab mind’. Instead of resorting to such essentialism, we should rather attempt to uncover forces that improve or decrease the chances for political reform or democratisation in the Arab states and Iran. Though outside powers cannot successfully engage in social and political engineering in the states of the region, Western actors can decide whether they want to make life more difficult for their actual and potential partners in the region by making them the object of their policies, or whether they want to make their task easier through credible political, societal and economical engagement.
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The Evangelical Roots of US Africa Policy
Asteris Huliaras
Within the last 15 years, several factors (including the spectacular growth of their missionary activities in Third World countries) have transformed US evangelicals from staunchest isolationists to enthusiastic internationalists. Successful coalitions with other groups (like ethnic lobbies and humanitarian NGOs) and a receptive Bush administration have helped them gain unprecedented influence in US foreign policy towards the less developed world. Their influence in Washington’s Africa policy (especially in relation to Sudan and foreign aid) is probably much deeper, more consistent and more able to survive a change of administration than the evangelical impact on any other area of US external relations.
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Review Essay: Al-Qaeda 2.0
Raffaello Pantucci View this article online
Review Essay: Reports from the Revolution
Russell Crandall View this article online
Book Reviews View this article online
Brief Notices View this article online
From the Archives: Survival 1998–2007 View this article online
Real America
Dana H. Allin View this article online
Video: The morning after the 2008 US presidential election, Dana Allin, editor of Survival, and Anatol Lieven, a professor at Kings College London, participated in a panel discussion on 'America After the Elections'. Watch the discussion and the Q&A.
