Theories and Practice of State Succession to Bilateral Treaties: The Recent Experience of Kosovo
This article explores the most recent practice, as exemplified by the case of Kosovo, concerning succession to treaties in international law. In doing so, it examines the precise meaning and legal effects under international law of relevant provisions of the Declaration of Independence (DoI) of Kosovo with respect to international treaties concluded by the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) or, as applicable, any other predecessor entity. More specifically, the aim is to identify and comprehend the fundamental principles underlying the existing or developing practice of treaty succession, and to situate it within a broader framework of succession in international law. Kosovo's absence from key multilateral regimes, in particular the United Nations, dictates a focus on succession to bilateral treaties. Kosovo is in the process of establishing with its partners the status of its bilateral treaties undertaken by way of succession.
A Middle‐Triassic Paleomagnetic Pole for the Eurasian Plate from Heming (France)
The paleomagnetic study of Middle Triassic limestones (91 cores, 160 samples) from a 40 m thick section in Heming (France) yields a paleomagnetic pole for stable Europe at lat=53.5°N, lon=140.8°E, dp=2.3°, dm=3.9°. This pole fills an important gap of the apparent polar wander path (APWP) of the Eurasian plate. The comparison of this pole with available data shows a standstill of the Eurasian plate from the Late Paleozoic to the Middle Triassic, followed by a rapid drift until the Lower Jurassic. The beginning of the rapid drift is contemporaneous with the initiation of main rifting processes in the Tethyan Oceans.
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