Whither State? The Institutional Politics of American Nation-building Policy
This article discusses the difficulties associated with military-led stability and nationbuilding operations and argues that the United States’ current policy negatively affects defence capabilities, unduly influences how stability operations are prioritized and conducted, limits State Department capacities, and allows the military to be seen as the ‘face’ of American foreign policy. Several options exist for the United States to adequately address this issue to include the working within the established system, a reassignment of leadership responsibilities, or restraining the American tendency to intervene. The United States’ military has proven that it is capable of conducting nation-building operations, but at the cost of global misperception, painful inefficiency, significant risks to United States’ overall defence capabilities, and the issues of civilian control that follow from reliance on warriors in the role of diplomats.
Global Violence Against Women as a National Security "Emergency"
This article analyzes the way that global violence against women is presented as a national security emergency in the United States. In the post-9/11 era, women's issues, including violence against women, have become central in American foreign aid and policy objectives. In particular, American national security, including the threat of terrorism, is now casually connected to gender inequalities abroad. This article investigates the implications of state-based strategies to end violence against women as a means to eradicate national security threats. Using the concept of a "development and in/security nexus," the article explores what has been branded "The Hillary Doctrine" to denote Hillary Clinton's promotion of women's rights during her tenure as Secretary of State alongside the proposed US International Violence Against Women Act in order to assess the impact of "doing" security and "doing" development within anti-violence strategies. The current US foreign policy focus on global violence against women functions to "genderwash" American foreign interests and facilitates the securitization and militarization of programs designed to end violence at the expense of women's well-being.
The influence of military policy on Algerian rural settlement
The rural settlement system of Algeria had long been characterized by a highly dispersed poorly structured pattern until a large proportion of the rural population was resettled by the French army during the War of Independence (1954-1961). Evidence during the 1960s suggested that many of these temporary resettlement [centres] remained in existence. Data from the 1977 population census permitted a sample of the centres to be traced and an assessment to be made of their role in the rural settlement pattern. The acquisition of service functions by the permanent centres was a significant factor in the restructuring of several rural regions. (EXCERPT)