Articles

Cell phone use has grown faster in Africa than in any other region of the world since 2003....Of course, South Africa—the most developed nation—still has the highest penetration, but across Africa, countries have leapfrogged technology, bringing innovation and connectivity even to remote parts of the continent, opening up mobile banking and changing the way business is done.

Realist scholars have long debated the question of how much power states need to feel secure. Offensive realists claim that states should constantly seek to increase their power. Defensive realists argue that accumulating too much power can be self-defeating. Proponents of hegemonic stability theory contend that the accumulation of capabilities in one state can exert a stabilizing effect on the system. The three schools describe different points along the power con­tinuum. When a state is weak, accumulating power increases its security. This is approximately the situation described by offensive realists. A state that con­tinues to accumulate capabilities will eventually triggers a balancing reaction that puts its security at risk. This scenario accords with defensive realist as­sumptions. Finally, when the state becomes too powerful to balance, its oppo­nents bandwagon with it, and the state’s security begins to increase again. This is the situation described by hegemonic stability theory. These three stages delineate a modified parabolic relationship between power and secu­rity. As a state moves along the power continuum, its security increases up to a point, then decreases, and finally increases again. This modified parabolic re­lationship allows scholars to synthesize previous realist theories into a single framework.

"It might be relatively easy, but actually quite unfortunate, for countries to achieve what some people might define as 'success' in Cancun:  a signed international agreement, followed by glowing press releases.  I say it would unfortunate, because such an agreement could only be the Kyoto Protocol on steroids: more stringent targets for the original list of industrialized countries (Annex I) and no meaningful commitments by the key rapidly-growing emerging economies, such as China, India, Brazil, Korea, Mexico, and South Africa."

Several years of economic growth before the 2008-09 economic crisis allowed the Russian government to steadily increase its defense expenditures, extending their conventional forces' reach, while Russia's foreign policy ambitions also grew in scope and scale.  Just as important as the boom-driven rise in defense spending was the fact that, as the economy grew, so did Russian companies and individuals' activities abroad, including both shipping and fishing. Thanks to the expansion of the media industry's reach, and the globalization of news in general, the Russian public's awareness of piracy incidents in general, and particularly those involving Russian citizens, grew as well.

"Diplomatic sanctions...entail a number of often overlooked consequences for the United States. The potential costs of diplomatic sanctions include not only a substantial loss of information and intelligence on the target state, but also a reduction in communication capacity and a diminished ability to influence the target state. Ironically, diplomatic sanctions may even undermine the effectiveness of other coercive policy tools, such as economic sanctions. These adverse effects ought to cause policymakers to reassess the value of diplomatic isolation as a tool of foreign policy and recognize the inherent value of diplomatic engagement."