American Policy towards the Soviet Union in the 1980s: Objectives and Uncertainties
Anyone who is reckless enough to accept as impossible an assignment as to write on the goals and uncertainties of American policy towards the Soviet Union in the 1980s should at least — to use one of Secretary Haig’s contributions to political discourse — caveat his answers in so many ways that the caveats risk filling the whole of the Paper. This is even more so when the writer, aware of his own characteristics, has to top it all with a caveat about his caveats.
Military intervention, local wars and superpower policies, 1950-83 : towards a conceptual framework
There is wide recognition of the fact that superpower competition may be increasingly manifested in "second area" political and military actions to protect perceived "security interests" in contested areas of the world--provided of course that the central nuclear balance remains "stable". The invasions of Grenada and Afghanistan have fuelled the debate on whether the superpowers are increasingly inclined to use military force in challenging each other's influence and presence outside the European theater. The debate is more sharply focused when we take into account that, in recent years, and while United States policies continue to be influenced by the "Vietnam syndrome", the Soviet Union has established distant power projection capabilities and has steadily increased its involvement with Marxist movements and regimes in the Third World. Superpower military intervention in local conflicts could be therefore a critical, if not the decisive, element in the maintenance of world peace in the 1990s and beyond. The central thesis of this work is that the "incremental" methods, employed widely in the study of the uses of military force as an instrument of policy by the superpowers, albeit useful in examining individual cases of military incursions, are of limited value in the construction of a generalized conceptual framework which, in turn, may lead to a diachronic model of superpower military intervention and involvement in local wars. This
Cultural constraints on the delivery of HIV/AIDS prevention in Ireland.
HIV appeared in Ireland following an opiate epidemic in the early 1980s. Initially, however, the gay community mounted the only response to the spread of the virus while the implementation of early actions by the government was hampered by the constructions of the disease within Irish society. This paper considers the influence of the religious hierarchy in both the development of AIDS policy and in the shaping of public perceptions of the disease and those affected. A qualitative methodology is used to examine the role of such cultural constraints in an evaluation of the social context within which the prevention of HIV infection occurs. Three key issues pertinent to the policy context in Ireland are explored in depth. These are the role of the Catholic Church, the influences on health education programmes, particularly information giving, and the development of services and other interventions. These findings are discussed within the social and political contexts in which health policy is formulated.