Security in Korea Williams, Phil; Goldstein, Donald M
1994, 2019
eBook
An erratic, aging North Korean leadership intent on dynastic succession and development of nuclear weapons is attracting a lot of attention in the Asia-Pacific Region -- an area of utmost importance ...to the United States. Current concerns about security in Korea provide the backdrop to this volume, which offers an overview of the evolution of security on the Korean peninsula and an assessment of the U.S. role there from the 1940s to the present.
A distinctive feature of this volume is the long historical perspective that is brought to bear on contemporary security dilemmas. The renowned contributors examine U.S. policy prior to and during the Korean War and look at the subsequent changes in U.S. commitment to South Korea during a period of global stalemate that had been shaped in part by the war itself. The authors then assess the future of U.S.-Korean relations within the context of the changing international environment, considering the prospects for future strife, the merits of a cooperative security system, and the possibility of reunification.
The european economy since 1945 Eichengreen, Barry J; Eichengreen, Barry J
2007., 20080701, 2008, 2006, 2008-07-01, 20080101, 20070101, Letnik:
23
eBook
In 1945, many Europeans still heated with coal, cooled their food with ice, and lacked indoor plumbing. Today, things could hardly be more different. Over the second half of the twentieth century, ...the average European's buying power tripled, while working hours fell by a third. The European Economy since 1945 is a broad, accessible, forthright account of the extraordinary development of Europe's economy since the end of World War II. Barry Eichengreen argues that the continent's history has been critical to its economic performance, and that it will continue to be so going forward. Challenging standard views that basic economic forces were behind postwar Europe's success, Eichengreen shows how Western Europe in particular inherited a set of institutions singularly well suited to the economic circumstances that reigned for almost three decades. Economic growth was facilitated by solidarity-centered trade unions, cohesive employers' associations, and growth-minded governments--all legacies of Europe's earlier history. For example, these institutions worked together to mobilize savings, finance investment, and stabilize wages.
Epic Encounters examines how popular culture has shaped the ways Americans define their "interests" in the Middle East. In this innovative book—now brought up-to-date to include 9/11 and the Iraq ...war—Melani McAlister argues that U.S. foreign policy, while grounded in material and military realities, is also developed in a cultural context. American understandings of the region are framed by narratives that draw on religious belief, news media accounts, and popular culture. This remarkable and pathbreaking book skillfully weaves lively and accessible readings of film, media, and music with a rigorous analysis of U.S. foreign policy, race politics, and religious history. The new chapter, titled "9/11 and After: Snapshots on the Road to Empire," considers and brilliantly analyzes five images that have become iconic: (1) New York City firemen raising the American flag out of the rubble of the World Trade Center, (2) the televised image of Osama bin-Laden, (3) Afghani women in burqas, (4) the statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled in Baghdad, and (5) the hooded and wired prisoner in Abu Ghraib. McAlister's singular achievement is to illuminate the contexts of these five images both at the time they were taken and as they relate to current events, an accomplishment all the more remarkable since—to paraphrase her new preface—we are today struggling to look backward at something that is still rushing ahead.
What are the relative merits of the American and European socioeconomic systems? Long-standing debates have heated up in recent years with the expansion of the European Union and increasingly sharp ...political and cultural differences between the United States and Europe. In Inequality and Prosperity, Jonas Pontusson provides a comparative overview of the two major models of labor markets and welfare systems in the advanced industrial world: the "liberal capitalist" system of the United States and Britain and the "social market" capitalism of northern Europe. These two models balance concerns of efficiency and equity in fundamentally different ways. In the 1990s the much-heralded forces of globalization (together with demographic changes and attendant political pressures) seemed to threaten the very existence of the social-market economies of Europe. Were the social compacts of Sweden and Germany outmoded? Would varieties of capitalism remain possible, or were labor-market and social-welfare arrangements converging on the U.S. norm?
Pontusson opposes the notion of inevitable convergence: he believes that social-market economies can survive and indeed flourish in the contemporary world economy. He bases his argument on an enormous amount of highly specialized research on eighteen countries, using national-level data for the last thirty years. Among the areas he explores are labor-market dynamics, income distribution, employment performance, wage bargaining, firm-level performance, and the changing possibilities for the welfare state.
Written by Joong-Seok Seo, an eminent Korean historian and a thinker of rare originality, this book examines the tumultuous history of modern Korea from the perspective of nationalism. The book goes ...to the heart of critical questioning about the political uses and abuses of nationalism by the ruling elites of post-liberation Korea.
Korean endgame Harrison, Selig S
2002., 20090210, 2009, 2002-01-01
eBook
Nearly half a century after the fighting stopped, the 1953 Armistice has yet to be replaced with a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War. While Russia and China withdrew the last of their ...forces in 1958, the United States maintains 37,000 troops in South Korea and is pledged to defend it with nuclear weapons. In Korean Endgame, Selig Harrison mounts the first authoritative challenge to this long-standing U.S. policy. Harrison shows why North Korea is not--as many policymakers expect--about to collapse. And he explains why existing U.S. policies hamper North-South reconciliation and reunification. Assessing North Korean capabilities and the motivations that have led to its forward deployments, he spells out the arms control concessions by North Korea, South Korea, and the United States necessary to ease the dangers of confrontation, centering on reciprocal U.S. force redeployments and U.S. withdrawals in return for North Korean pullbacks from the thirty-eighth parallel.
What do we really mean when we say a political party has changed? And exactly what is it that drives that change? Political scientists working in the comparative tradition have come up with a general ...explanation that revolves around the role of election defeats and loss of office, and around changes of leader and factions. But how well does that explanation cope when subjected to a historically-grounded and therefore robust examination? This book attempts to answer that question by subjecting the common wisdom to a real-world, over-time test using half a century in the life of one of the world’s oldest and most successful political parties to provide a series of in-depth case studies. What do the periods spent in both opposition and government by the British Conservatives since 1945 tell us about what drives parties to change their sales-force, the way they organise, and the policies they come up with? Using internal papers, memos and minutes of meetings from party archives, along with historical and contemporary accounts, memoirs and interviews, this book maps the extent of change and then explores what may have driven it. The conventional wisdom, it turns out, is not necessarily wrong but incomplete, requiring both qualification and supplementation. This approachably-written book suggests when, how and why.
This volume provides a comprehensive account of the many different facets of the Swiss political system and of the major developments in modern Swiss politics. The chapters offer analyses relevant ...not only to political science but also to international relations, European studies, history, sociology, law, and economics.
Offering a radical interpretation of a major political issue, Chris Gifford moves beyond existing narrative and institutional accounts of Britain and Europe to present a theoretically coherent and ...unique perspective on this troubled relationship. He acknowledges that populist Euroscepticism has become fundamental to constituting Britain and 'Britishness' in a post-imperial context, despite membership of the European Union. Organized chronologically, this interesting study provides lucid overviews of key periods in the British-European Union relationship. It combines political economy with political identity to illustrate how forms of Euroscepticism have become embedded across the British political class and culture. The book focuses not on outlining history or the impact of British integration on British institutions, but on the ways in which elite behaviour towards European integration should be analyzed as practices and discourses that use Euroesceptism to construct Britain and distinctive British political projects.
Equality of opportunity is about leveling the playing field so that circumstances such as gender, ethnicity, place of birth, or family background do not influence a persons life chances. Success in ...life should depend on peoples choices, effort and talents, not to their circumstances at birth. Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean introduces new methods for measuring inequality of opportunities and makes an assessment of its evolution in Latin America over a decade.An innovative Human Opportunity Index and other parametric and non-parametric techniques are presented for quantifying inequality based on circumstances exogenous to individual efforts. These methods are applied to gauge inequality of opportunities in access to basic services for children, learning achievement for youth, and income and consumption for adults.
