The National Interest on International Law and Order


Book Description

International law and the nature of the global order is regularly examined and debated among specialists. This volume brings together in one place twenty-four articles addressing these subjects, written by some of America's leading academics, lawyers, and policymakers, and originally published in The National Interest, a leading realist journal of international affairs.Prominent jurists, lawyers, and practitioners debate the role that international law should play in the formulation of policy in the first section, and whether 'international law' really exists. Authors explore such questions as the enforceable norms of global behavior, and if American foreign policy should conform to such regulations. A second section looks at the viability and utility of international institutions in advancing U.S. interests. Included are debates over the role and purpose of the United Nations and the International Criminal Court. A third Section deals with the intersection of law enforcement and foreign policy. It explores such questions as whether primary responsibility for combating global terrorism and the international drug trade should be vested with law enforcement agencies or whether it should fall under the purview of foreign policy.The final portion of the book is devoted to the question of human rights, particularly the tripartite debate between Robin Fox, Francis Fukuyama, and William F. Schulz over the nature and origins of human rights. Among the questions considered are whether human rights are an outgrowth of natural law, or are natural imperatives at odds with protecting individual dignities and freedoms. Is there a universal standard of rights, or are human rights norms derived from majority consensus?The list of distinguished contributors to this volume include John Bolton, Robert Bork, Lee Casey, Douglas Feith, Owen Harries, Senator Jesse Helms, Alan Keyes, Irving Kristol, Joseph Nye, Jeremy Rabkin, David Rivkin, Alfred P. Rubin, and Abrahama Sofaer. This volume will be of interest to legal scholars, political scientists, and students of diplomacy and international relations.




Foreign Policy in the Age of Globalization, Populism and Nationalism


Book Description

This book propounds the thesis that it was the dysfunction of globalization and liberalism that prompted the rise of nationalism and populism. Recent developments in global affairs are challenging assumptions and the basis upon which international relations, as a broad field of specialization, and foreign policy analysis, as a sub-field, rests. In a world that is changing in fundamental and irreversible ways, this book intervenes to enable an improved sense of understanding of these developments and what they mean for people-people, state-state, continent-continent, and global relations, moving forward. The author shows anti-globalization and the growth of nationalism and populism have been particularly necessitated by the failures of liberalism and America’s abdication from the world. With reference to Brexit, the pandemic, the US 2020 elections and consequent shifts in power, with a focus on their respective impacts on Africa, and Africa-Sino relations particularly, and developing countries, more broadly, this book situates these discussions within a global context. It effectively illustrates the insufficiency of the West’s soft power, especially as it is foisted or supposedly imposed on the rest of the world without regard to the demands of cultural relativity. Relevant to postgraduate students, researchers, and policymakers, this is must-read within the fields of international relations and political economy.




Armed Drones and Globalization in the Asymmetric War on Terror


Book Description

This book is a critical exploration of the war on terror from the prism of armed drones and globalization. It is particularly focused on the United States’ use of the drones, and the systemic dysfunctions that globalization has caused to international political economy and national security, creating backlash in which the desirability of globalization is not only increasingly questioned, but the resultant dissension about its desirability appears increasingly militating against the international consensus needed to fight the war on terror. To underline the controversial nature of the war on terror and the pragmatic weapon (armed drones) fashioned for its prosecution, some of the elements of this controversy have been interrogated in this book. They include, amongst others, the doubt over whether the war should have been declared in the first place because terrorist attacks hardly meet the United Nations’ casus belli – an armed attack. There are critics, as highlighted in this book, who believe that the war on terror is not an armed conflict properly so called, and, thus, remains only a law enforcement issue. The United States and all the states taking part in the war on terror are obligated to observe International Humanitarian Law (IHL). It is within this context of IHL that this book appraises the drone as a weapon of engagement, discussing such issues as personality and signature strikes as well as the implications of the deployment of spies as drone strikers rather than the Defence Department, the members of the U.S armed forces. This book will be of value to researchers, academics, policymakers, professionals, and students in the fields of security studies, terrorism, the law of armed conflict, international humanitarian law, and international politics.




Africa and International Criminal Justice


Book Description

This book provides an overview of crimes under international law, radical evils, in a number of African states. This overview informs a critical analysis of the debates surrounding the African Union’s call for withdrawal from the International Criminal Court and proposes a way forward with a more pertinent role for the Court. The work critically analyzes the arguments around withdrawal from the ICC and the extension of the jurisdiction of the African Court into criminal matters. It is held that this was not intended in the spirit of complementarity as envisaged by the Rome Statute, and is subject to political calculation and manipulation by national governments. Recasting the ICC as a court of second instance would provide a stronger institutional and jurisdictional regime. The book will be a valuable resource for students, academics, and policymakers working in the areas of international humanitarian law, international criminal law, African studies, and genocide studies.




The U.S.-Taiwan-China Relationship in International Law and Policy


Book Description

For a country of its size, Taiwan has a tremendous influence on world affairs and U.S. policy. The U.S.-Taiwan-China Relationship in International Law and Policy describes the central issues animating the dynamic U.S.-Taiwan-China relationship and the salient international and domestic legal issues shaping U.S. policy in the Asia Pacific region. In this book, Lung-chu Chen gives particular attention to Taiwan's status under international law, and the role of the U.S. Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) in the formulation and execution of U.S. policy toward Taiwan. This book endorses the central purpose of the Taiwan Relations Act--achieving a peaceful resolution to the Taiwan question--while offering policy alternatives that will empower Taiwan to participate more actively in the international arena. This book follows in the tradition of the New Haven School of international law. As such, it defines the common interests of the world community, which include demands for human dignity and security and the protection of human rights in accordance with bedrock norms such as the right to self-determination and the peaceful resolution of conflict. Chen proposes that in accordance with international law, historical trends, and contemporary political conditions, the people of Taiwan should ultimately determine a path to normalized statehood through a plebiscite under the supervision of the international community.




National Interest and International Solidarity


Book Description

Focusing on a range of regional cases, the book evaluates the respective weight of national interest and internationalist (solidarity) considerations. Ultimately, while classical national interest considerations remain to this day a powerful motivation for power projection, the book shows how an enlightened conception of national interest can encompass solidarity concerns, and how such a balancing of the imperatives of both national interest and solidarity is the major challenge facing decision-makers.--Publisher's description.




Nigeria's Soft Power in Anglophone West Africa


Book Description

This book investigates Nigeria’s soft power capabilities in West Africa, demonstrating the extent to which the power of attraction may serve the country’s foreign policy interests. With the increasing popularity of internationally acclaimed cultural outputs, including afrobeat, Nollywood, and charismatic Pentecostalism, and a foreign policy disposition that is altruistic and sparsely transactional, there is increasing interest in how these soft power attributes influence perceptions of Nigeria in Africa. Drawing on extensive original research in Ghana and Liberia, this book highlights the attractive and unattractive elements of Nigeria’s soft power potential. In so far as it makes the case for Nigeria’s soft power in West Africa, it also discusses the challenges encumbering the effective deployment of the full range of Nigeria’s soft power capabilities in the operationalization of its African policy. This book is a timely contribution to prevailing scholarly discussions about the nature and utility of soft power in Africa. It will be of interest to both Africanists and researchers of international relations, foreign policy, and political science more broadly.




Who Controls the Internet?


Book Description

Is the Internet erasing national borders? Will the future of the Net be set by Internet engineers, rogue programmers, the United Nations, or powerful countries? Who's really in control of what's happening on the Net? In this provocative new book, Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu tell the fascinating story of the Internet's challenge to governmental rule in the 1990s, and the ensuing battles with governments around the world. It's a book about the fate of one idea--that the Internet might liberate us forever from government, borders, and even our physical selves. We learn of Google's struggles with the French government and Yahoo's capitulation to the Chinese regime; of how the European Union sets privacy standards on the Net for the entire world; and of eBay's struggles with fraud and how it slowly learned to trust the FBI. In a decade of events the original vision is uprooted, as governments time and time again assert their power to direct the future of the Internet. The destiny of the Internet over the next decades, argue Goldsmith and Wu, will reflect the interests of powerful nations and the conflicts within and between them. While acknowledging the many attractions of the earliest visions of the Internet, the authors describe the new order, and speaking to both its surprising virtues and unavoidable vices. Far from destroying the Internet, the experience of the last decade has lead to a quiet rediscovery of some of the oldest functions and justifications for territorial government. While territorial governments have unavoidable problems, it has proven hard to replace what legitimacy governments have, and harder yet to replace the system of rule of law that controls the unchecked evils of anarchy. While the Net will change some of the ways that territorial states govern, it will not diminish the oldest and most fundamental roles of government and challenges of governance. Well written and filled with fascinating examples, including colorful portraits of many key players in Internet history, this is a work that is bound to stir heated debate in the cyberspace community.




Multinationals and the National Interest


Book Description