Why Fletcher Cannot Rest On Its Laurels
Dean Theodore L. Eliot, Jr.
The World Economy: An Interview with C. Fred Bergsten, F’62
Benjamin J. Cohen
International Finance: An Interview with Walter B. Wriston, F’42
The Political-Military Challenge: An Interview with RADM Jonathan T. Howe, F’68
Energy, Investment, Trade: The U.S. and the Gulf
Odeh F. Aburdene, F’68
The OPEC Role Until the Year 2000
Rene G. Ortiz, F’76
The Transformation of Diplomacy
William H. Sullivan, F’47
The Case of German Rearmament: Alliance Crisis in the ‘Golden Age’
Thomas Schwartz
The ambiguities and complexities of recent NATO crises have given rise to a nostalgic yearning for a return to the days of unity that seemed to characterize the Alliance in its formative years. In this article, Thomas Schwartz challenges this notion of early solidarity by revealing the divisions and delays that marked NATO’s first security crisis – the 1950 decision to rearm Germany. Making use of recently released governmental sources, personal papers and memoirs, both European and American, the author provides a more complete and well-rounded picture of the crisis. In his account, Mr. Schwartz argues that particular solutions can best be understood by looking at the relative strength of the cross-national bureaucratic coalitions that form around them. Mr. Schwartz concludes that NATO’s history reveals a recurrent pattern in the origin, development and resolution of security crises. This pattern of historical resiliency, he suggests, should caution against the tendency to view present discord as a threat to the future viability of the Alliance.
Compassion Versus Self-Interest: Who Shall Be Given Asylum in the United States?
W. Scott Burke
One of the consequences of being a society that considers itself a global ideal of freedom and prosperity is the powerful attraction this ideal holds for millions of nationals of other countries that suffer from widespread injustice and poverty. For the United States the result has been unprecedented pressure on and questioning of its immigration policies generally, highlighted by thousands of evocative pleas for political asylum. Facing a dilemma of conscience and self-interest, United States officials have tried to fashion a policy that accommodates both concerns. W. Scott Burke, an official who has helped formulate such policies in the Reagan Administration, explains the difficulty of this problem and defends the government’s solution in this thought-provoking article.
Transborder Data Flow and the Protection of Privacy: The Harmonization of Data Protection Law
David M. Cooper
Recent developments in computer and communications technologies have facilitated the flow of information across national borders. The ease of gathering and transferring data has raised serious questions regarding the protection of the individual from the compilation and misuse of personal information. Governments have an interest in restricting some information flow, hut many businesses depend on the ability to send information freely across borders. In this article, David M. Cooper explores the complexity and variety of interests related to the problem of transborder data flow. He reveals how differing national interests in limiting the flow of data have led to the enactment of significantly different national data-protection and privacy laws in the United States and Europe. After surveying the developments in privacy legislation, Mr. Cooper reviews the recent attempts to harmonize these disparate national laws by implementing international guidelines and conventions. The author concludes by proposing several measures that can be taken by the United States to aid in efforts toward the harmonization of privacy law.
Public Diplomacy and the Past: The Search for an American Style of Propaganda (1952-1977)
Lois W. Roth
From the outset, the U.S. government’s decision to practice the art of propaganda has been clouded by dissension over the scope and method of its mission. Definitions of propaganda, information and cultural affairs – the fundamental elements of public diplomacy – have consistently been obfuscated by canny bureaucrats and congressmen. Each administration has sought to devise formulae to create a program to best meet the perceived needs of the day. The present administration is no different from its predecessors in attempting to put its own imprimatur on its public diplomacy program. Under the direction of Charles Z. Wick, the United States Information Agency’s visibility has heightened. Congress has rewarded the USIA’s ambitious “offensive” programming plans with increased funding, especially those targeted at television, Voice of America and exchange programs. In this article, Ms. Roth emphasizes the 45-year debate concerning which elements should or should not be included in a public diplomacy program. Such an historical approach emphasizes the still-undefined character of USIA’s role. It is of particular value in lending perspective and vision to those contemplating the future nature of public diplomacy programs in a representative democracy.
Subsidies Law and Adjustment Policies: The 1982 EEC-US Steel Dispute Revisited
Brian L. Zimbler
In recent years most of the developed nations have shared problems of competitiveness and obsolescence in the manufacturing sectors of their economies, especially in the steel industries. Proposals for domestic adjustment policies, including government intervention to revitalize these industries, have prompted increased attention in some countries and implementation in others. Brian Zimbler explores the ramifications of such government intervention to support industrial competitiveness by examining the relationship between adjustment policies and the traditional agreements and rules which govern international trade. Finding that present rules are ill-suited for coping with widespread use of adjustment policies, Zimbler suggests – reasoning from the U.S. and international legal experience with the 1982 EEC-US steel dispute – that the developed countries should develop a cooperative and complementary set of adjustment policies through international negotiation in order to concentrate on sharing gains rather than apportioning losses.
Carter’s Constitutional Conundrum: An Examination of the President’s Unilateral Termination of a Treaty
Alan M. Wachman
Although the U.S. Constitution defines the procedure for the Executive to enter into treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate, it says nothing about how such obligations may be terminated. This open constitutional question, a true conundrum, was directly raised by the Carter Administration’s unilateral termination of the United States’ Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan, upon normalization of relations with the People’s Republic of China. Alan M. Wachman explores the constitutional origins of this problem and analyzes the development of the legislative and legal approaches to resolving it which, he contends, have raised as many questions as they have answered about this important issue in the separation of American foreign policy powers.
Inevitable Revolutions: The U.S. in Central America
by Walter LaFeber
Merchants and Migrants of Nineteenth-Century Beirut
by Leila Tarazi Fawaz