The Limits of Multilateralism: Making Policy for the Philippines, 1945–1950

On 1 September 1969, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi seized power in Libya, abolishing a pro-Western monarchy and launching a revolution that combined elements of Nasserism and Islamic radicalism. American policymakers quickly came to regard the Libyan revolution as anathema after Qaddafi expropriated U.S. oil companies and forced the Pentagon to relinquish its air base outside Tripoli. Misinterpreting the new regime's increasingly radical nationalism as evidence of Soviet subversion and failing to appreciate the broad appeal of resurgent Islam, the Nixon and Ford administrations froze arms sales to Libya and provided covert support for anti-Qaddafi forces. After Jimmy Carter's bid to improve relations with Libya backfired, tensions escalated dramatically during the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan branded Qaddafi as a terrorist and a Soviet stooge and unleashed the Sixth Fleet and the CIA in an unsuccessful bid to effect regime change in Libya that was punctuated by the U.S. air raid on Tripoli in April 1986. Qaddafi's erratic behavior and his supersized ego, of course, always made dealing with him a diplomatic nightmare, but the blend of covert action and gunboat diplomacy that Nixon preferred and that Reagan perfected only made a bad situation worse.     

‘An ally for all the years to come’: why Australia is not a conflicted US ally

In 2011, Australia communicated a clear choice about its strategic future. It would continue to cleave tightly to the US alliance, expand its military links and work to advance the USA's conception of regional order. Given its economic interests, why has Australia bound itself to the US alliance? What lies behind this strong commitment and what would it take for Australia to change its relationship with the USA? This article presents an analysis of the current state of the US–Australia alliance and argues that Canberra's pursuit of close relations with the USA reflects the interaction of a rational calculation of the costs and benefits of the alliance with a set of resolutely political factors that have produced the current policy setting. The article first assesses the security cost and benefit behind the alliance. It then argues that the move also derives from the strong domestic support for the US alliance, a sharpened sense that China's rise was generating regional instability that only the US primacy could manage and the realisation that the economic fallout of such a move would be minimal. It concludes with a brief reflection on what it might take to change the current policy settings.     

Experimentation as infrastructure: Enacting transitions differently through diverse economy-environment assemblages in Aotearoa New Zealand

Radically new economic arrangements are needed for just and sustainable transitions to a more environmentally and ecologically resilient world. Yet little progress is being made to imagine the new economy-environment relations around which resources, actors, and ethics might be configured to enact the novel economic forms needed. This article uses a Social Studies of Economisation and Marketisation (SSEM) approach to examine a suite of differently scaled and structured environmentally focused economic development initiatives in New Zealand. We explore how the initiatives have assembled diverse actors and investment projects into experimental economy-environment relations. Our account highlights experimentation as a pivotal mode of economisation, and we argue that the initiatives studied by us expose a new experimentation-led agenda for transitioning to more environmentally and economically just futures. Working with the idea of experimentation in an SSEM framework, we also argue that the diverse initiatives are creating an experimentation infrastructure that provides a more generative platform for novel economy-environment relations than top–down models of change such as transition pathways. The article opens up a critical politics of environmental economy that focuses attention on emergence, agency, and practice and allows us to reimagine processes of transitioning.     

The English Medieval First-Floor Hall: Part 1 – Scolland’s Hall,Richmond, North Yorkshire

A new survey of Scolland’s Hall in Richmond Castle identifies it as an early example of an integrated hall, chamber and garderobe. The hall was entered at one corner and the entrance to the chamber was at the opposite corner, suggesting that it had a low end and high end of the conventional form better known from buildings of the thirteenth century and later. The chamber was relatively small and had a mural fireplace set in the middle of the longer wall. It had a door to a projecting balcony, while a further balcony was provided overlooking the River Swale alongside the undercroft. The building is dated to the 1080s. It is argued that the features which appear to be unusual at Scolland’s Hall – the location of the hall at first-floor level, the organization into a low and high end, the integration of the hall and chamber, and the use of viewing balconies – have parallels in other near-contemporary buildings.     

The English Medieval First-Floor Hall: Part 2 – The Evidence from the Eleventh to Early Thirteenth Century

The concept of the first-floor hall was introduced in 1935, but Blair’s paper of 1993 cast doubt on many of those buildings which had been identified as such. Following the recognition of Scolland’s Hall, Richmond Castle as an example of a hall at first-floor level, the evidence for buildings of this type is reviewed (excluding town houses and halls in the great towers of castles, where other issues apply). While undoubtedly a number of buildings have been mistakenly identified as halls, there is a significant group of structures which there are very strong grounds to classify as first-floor halls. The growth of masonry architecture in elite secular buildings, particularly after the Norman Conquest, allowed halls to be constructed on the first floor. The key features of these are identified and the reasons for constructing the hall at this level – prestige and security – are recognized. The study of these buildings allows two further modifications to the Blair thesis: in some houses, halls and chambers were integrated in a single block at an early date, and the basic idea of the medieval domestic plan was already present by the late eleventh century.     

The Middle Palaeolithic of the Nejd,Saudi Arabia

The Pleistocene archaeological record of the Arabian Peninsula is increasingly recognized as being of great importance for resolving some of the major debates in hominin evolutionary studies. Though there has been an acceleration in the rate of fieldwork and discovery of archaeological sites in recent years, little is known about hominin occupations in the Pleistocene over vast areas of Arabia. Here we report on the identification of five new Middle Palaeolithic sites from the Nejd of central Arabia and the southern margins of the Nefud Desert to the north. The importance of these sites centers on their diversity in terms of landscape positions, raw materials used for lithic manufacture, and core reduction methods. Our findings indicate multiple hominin dispersals into Arabia and complex subsequent patterns of behavior and demography.     

The Japan-Australia security declaration and the changing regional security setting: wheels,webs and beyond?

The March 2007 Japan-Australia Security Declaration has garnered more than its share of hyperbole. Described variously as an historic milestone for peace or an agreement designed to encircle China; the declaration's actual strategic consequences are somewhat unclear. The purpose of this article is to provide a critical analysis of the security declaration and to assess its impact in the context of the changing patterns of the region's security setting. Some have argued that it marks a small but qualitatively significant shift in the essential features of the regional security architecture. The article assesses this claim and argues that while the declaration is of some diplomatic importance, and clearly contributes to improving cooperation in disaster relief and other humanitarian operations, it is of little strategic significance to the broader patterns of East Asian security over the short to medium term. Each side's operational constraints, their different strategic priorities, most obviously their perceptions of China, as well as the continued military predominance of the US, means that the agreement will be of little immediate significance for East Asian security. That said, it remains an important development for the respective parties and is a leading edge indicator of broader forces for change that are increasingly present in East Asia.