Nuclear Iran is Not an Option: A new negotiating strategy to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons

The negotiations between Iran and the P5+1¹ over Tehran's nuclear enrichment activities have not only failed to reach an agreement but have brought Iran much closer to the threshold of mastering the technology to produce nuclear weapons. There are many factors that precipitated this breakdown, including the West's inability to understand and deal with the Iranian psychological disposition, the failure to present to Iran the severity of the punitive measures that could be inflicted as a consequence of their defiance, and the US administration's misleading policy that gave Iran the room to maneuver. There is an urgent need to adopt a distinctively new strategy toward Iran consisting of three tracks of separate but interconnected negotiations: The first should focus on the current negotiations on Iran's enrichment program and the economic incentive package; the second should concentrate on regional security and the consequences of continued Iranian defiance; and the third track should address Iran's and the United States' grievances against each other. The United States must initiate all three tracks without which future talks will be as elusive as the previous negotiations, except this time the West and Israel will be facing the unsettling prospect of a nuclear Iran.     

Ceramic production and provenience at Gordion, Central Anatolia

Phrygian Gordion was the political center of an influential Iron Age polity that extended across west central Anatolia during the first half of the 1st millennium BC. Though the borders of this polity remain vague a characteristic of the Phrygian “footprint” is the distribution of highly distinctive ceramics. The extent to which Gordion potters were the originators of these wares remains uncertain. In this paper we use Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) to establish the local signature of predominantly Iron Age ceramics for this site by combining samples from several decades of excavation with an extensive regional sediment sequence. We also compare previous NAA work at Gordion to suggest that the formative stages of the Phrygian state appears to have involved a more extensive network of non-local specialist producers than previously thought.     

The Developmental State Is Dead—Long Live Social Capital?

At the same time that the World Bank appears to be going through a process of replacing the Washington consensus with the Post-Washington consensus, the notion of social capital is coming to the fore both in development studies and social science more generally. These developments are closely connected to one another analytically: they are liable to stake out a new development agenda based on new Keynesianism and social capital in place of state versus the market; and they reflect more generally the growing influence of mainstream economics over other social sciences.     

中国古代采矿工程技术史研究的几个问题

采用矿山考古、模拟实验等方法,对中国古代采矿技术的起源与发展进行系统论证后,得出三个论点：一是关于中国古代采矿工程技术的历史进程,可分为萌芽期(史前时期)、形成期(商代中期)、初步发展期(西周时期)、创新期(春秋至战国中期)、充实提高期(秦汉至元代)、全面发展期(明清时期)这六个发展阶段。二是中国古代采矿工程技术有着浓重的中国特色并具独特的发展体系,其多种技术的配合,在很大程度上基于中国古代各种社会要素的综合。三是中国古代采矿技术观是一种有机的、整体和综合的“和”的技术观,“和”明白地表述了采矿技术观的本质特征。