ARMAMENT ESCALATION AND REGIONAL SECURITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
This paper is a critical evaluation of the challenges of the insecurity posed by the production of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in the Middle East. It argues that the insecurity in the Middle East particularly arise as a result of the alteration of the regional military balance, destruction as a result of covert means and as a result of defense mechanism which has consistently endangered the lives and properties of the inhabitants of the Region. The paper concludes that unless the crisis between the Israelis and the Arab World is resolved and Arabs are prepared to accept the existence of the State of Israel and as long as the Israelis face what they regard as an existential threat, they are going to be reluctant to surrender what they see as an ultimate guarantor of their security. Keywords : Proliferation, security, defence, destruction.
Public Debt and External Reserve: The Nigerian Experience (1981–2013)
Nigeria is confronted with the issue of limited capital and has to resort to foreign debt in order to augment domestic savings, balance of payment deficits, and shortfall in revenue which induce continuous raise in the debt stock at an alarming rate. In the light of this, this study assesses the impact of public debt on external reserve in Nigeria. The objectives of this study include the assessment of the trends and relationship between public debt and external reserve in Nigeria, using the Johansen cointegration and FMOLS technique on the secondary data from 1981 to 2013. The result revealed that public debt has a positive and significant effect on external reserve stock in the long run suggesting that the nation’s debt crisis can be attributed to both exogenous and endogenous factors such as the nature of the economy, economic policies, high dependence on oil, and swindling foreign exchange receipt. This study recommends that the federal government should employ more superior method to negotiate for fixed interest payment and varying amortization schemes, as well as seek multiyear rescheduling rather than year by year basis.
The Internet and the Changing Beijing-Taipei Relations: Toward Unification or Fragmentation?
Information and its technologies facilitate the exercise of what has been called “soft power,” a concept that differentiates information from the conventional dimensions of “hard power,” which is mainly associated with military force and economic influence. Soft power, according to Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, means that “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons.”1