The Arab Peace Initiative: Now or Never

It has been almost a year now since President Obama set out for Cairo to deliver what has been seen as one of the largest overtures by the United States to publicly engage the Middle East. Unfortunately, despite the high hopes that this new administration garnered and the continuous efforts of high‐level American officials to put an end to the Arab–Israeli conflict, there is little fruit to bear on the ground. More often than not, the diplomatic breaches and hurdles to even get to the negotiating table have consumed the headlines, and 1 year later the multilateral relations in the region seem tepid at best. The repeated failures of the bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel and Syria may be attributed to a number of factors, including a deep‐seated mistrust that has not been addressed, concerns over the long‐term security, and domestic political constraints to make the required concessions to reach an agreement. Yet while all of these elements contributed to the despondent current state of affairs, the one critical missing ingredient has been the absence of a comprehensive framework for peace representing the collective will of the Arab states. Now more than ever, the Arab Peace Initiative (API) offers the best possible chance of achieving an inclusive peace, provided that all parties to the conflict understand its significance and historic implications that have eluded all parties for more than six decades. The likelihood that the current lull in violence will continue if no progress is made on the political front is slim. If the Arab states want to show a united front, especially as the Iranian nuclear advances threaten the regional balance of power, they must finally and publically resolve to promote the API in earnest.     

The Peace Movement: A Necessary Corrective

Book reviewed in this article:
Cecilia Lynch, Beyond Appeasement: Interpreting Interwar Peace Movements in World Politics     

战争与和平历史运动的转折--一个中国学者对第二次世界大战的思考

今年是第二次世界大战——世界反法西斯战争——胜利60周年。     

从积极和平到消极和平——满洲危机与美国和平运动的转折(1931-1933)

九·一八事变后,美国的和平团体试图通过一战后建立的国际和平机制来维护远东的和平。他们要求美国政府与国联合作援引国际公约,利用世界舆论的谴责以及联合制裁的方式遏制日本侵略者。但最终的事实证明,和平机制根本无力阻止日本的侵略和维护远东的和平,国联和国际和平条约的公信力也因而丧失殆尽。在满洲危机的沉重打击下,美国和平运动的主流理念逐渐从维护世界和平退缩到固守本土安全,从支持国际合作转向坚守严格中立。满洲危机导致美国和平运动的目标发生了重大转折,即从建立积极的和平转向追求消极的和平。     

战与和的变奏——重庆谈判至政协会议期间的中国时局演变

重庆谈判至政协会议期间的中国时局演变,反映出战后中国面临的最重要问题,即战争还是和平,这是国人关注的主题。也是各种政治力量争执的焦点。国共两党虽然经过重庆谈判签订了“双十协定”,但由于并未解决军队和地盘这两个根本问题,因此仍然因为实际利益之争而发生了大规模武装冲突。其后,由于军事较量的相持,更由于外部环境的变化。国共实现了停战,并召开政协,讨论战后中国问题。但是国共停战的实现,缺少真正的内在动因。因此,在外部压力下实现的停战,其延续的环境十分脆弱。国共两党最终仍回复于战争,某些暂时的妥协只能是一时的“迂回”。并不妨碍双方实现其基本方针的决心与努力。在这样的形势下,所谓战与和的变奏,和不过是插曲。战才是主旋律。     

Fools Crow Versus Gullett: A Critical Analysis of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act

Historically, American Indian religions have been repressed in the United States out of the conviction that traditional indigenous beliefs would hinder the Indian's "progress toward civilization." While the First Amendment protects the freedom of religion, it has not done so for American Indian religions. In 1978, Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA), which was designed to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right to believe, express and exercise their traditional religions. This paper will analyze the effectiveness of AIRFA through an examination of one court case, Fools Crow v. Gullett, which involved a Cheyenne and Lakota sacred place, Bear Butte. It will conclude that AIRFA cannot prevent the desecration of a sacred place. It will also extend some arguments of legal scholar Ellen Sewell to the Fools Crow case, arguing that the courts misunderstand the unique nature of American Indian religions and disregard the trust relationship between American Indians and the federal government. It will conclude with further observations about liberalism, justice and property rights in the judicial system.     

Feminism,Pacifism and Political Violence in Europe and China in the Era of the World Wars

This article examines international collaboration between Western and Chinese feminists in the interwar decades. Focusing on the 1927–28 ‘mission to Asia’ sponsored by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the article shows that, contrary to what existing historiography would lead us to suspect, neither feminist Orientalism nor colonial nationalism stood as a serious impediment to the formation of a truly international feminist alliance. Instead, European and Chinese women's varying experiences and memories of international conflict, and their varying understandings of the relationship between feminism, pacifism, militarism and political violence, defined the limits of global feminist collaboration in the late 1920s. The WILPF delegates, like many European women in the 1920s, were living in the shadow of the First World War, a conflict they condemned as futile and barbaric; their Chinese ‘sisters’ were living in the midst of a battle to determine the political future of their nation. For both sets of women, the question of women's emancipation was fundamentally entwined with broader national and international struggles. This article incorporates reports, personal letters and diaries of WILPF delegates as well as articles, speeches and letters by Chinese women to offer new insights into one of the earliest efforts to build a truly international women's movement and draw our attention to the centrality of warfare in defining the limits of global feminist collaboration in the twentieth century.     

A mbassador of Israel: Peace for Peace

[Israeli Ambassador to the United States Zalman Shoval spoke in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 20, 1992. The ambassador's presentation was a session in the Wisconsin International Trade Conference at the Pfister Hotel.]     

Social Movements,Political Elites and Political Opportunity Structures: The Case of the Woman Suffrage Movement from 1890-1920

Many contemporary theories of party leadership derive their concepts from organization theory and economic theories of rational choice. They stress the institutional contexts that shape leadership possibilities and the relationship between members (principals) and leaders (agents) in shaping leadership decisions. Both the macro (institutional context) and micro (principal-agent) theories assume that the main role of party leaders is to marshal majority support for legislation on which the party takes a position. Focussing on party position legislation, however, provides only a partial view of party leadership. This article expands this perspective by considering the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration reform bill, in which party leaders avoided taking a clear policy stand and pursued other interests instead. In broadening the assumptions inherent in organization theory to include behavior beyond taking party policy stands, we uncover leadership roles that are missed by those who adopt the policy-centered approach. Applying other organization theory concepts, we broaden principal-agent theories by explaining divergent leadership roles in the consideration of non-party position legislation as behavior that is typical for legislative leadership. We conclude that the nature of non-party position legislation provides party leaders a greater latitude to diverge from their expected party leadership roles and to behave according to their different strategic situations, district and state interests, philosophies, and personalities.