Articles

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi was in Bangladesh this past week launching his global “100 Million for 100 Million” children’s rights campaign. The initiative’s name is derived from a simple but powerful objective: for 100 million young people to pledge to help the 100 million children worldwide who are suffering from the worst forms of exploitation and abuse, including child trafficking, forced labor and prostitution.

India and South Asia Project Affiliate Ronak Desai investigates the reasons for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's consistent popularity after two years in office.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi traveled to Washington last week, making his fourth trip to the United States since taking office just two years ago. India and South Asia Program Fellow, Ronak Desai examines the strategic approach to India's relations with the United States.

"This article first considers the ways in which experimental psychology and psychoanalysis hastened the obsolescence of ideas about the so-called 'primitive mind' and, in some cases, served the purposes of overtly anti-colonial politics. It then surveys the history of intelligence testing in the British Empire, which originated in the aftermath of the First World War, expanded in scale after the Second, and ultimately contributed to post-colonial development. Finally, it asks how far the case of psychology puts the very concept of 'colonial science' into question."

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 is a mistake to see high prices as a proxy for actual hunger. Most of the world's hungry citizens do not get their food from the world market, and most who rely on the world market are not poor or vulnerable to hunger."

A major natural gas pipeline that would stretch from the fields of southern Iran to Pakistan and India — itself a remarkable prospect — is being planned. But it faces serious hurdles, not least the fierce opposition of the U.S. government.

"This introductory essay explains how this new technology is being driven by the actors (multinational corporations), markets (large global markets) and rules (intellectual property) of globalisation."

Paradoxically, counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan frequently complicate counterterrorism and counterinsurgency objectives and can even undermine democratization. Counternarcotics strategy should concentrate instead on strengthening the Afghan state’s capacity.