Strategic Interests in Australian Defence Policy: Some Historical and Methodological Reflections

The first, and often the hardest, step in any defence policy is to define strategic objectives—what we want our armed forces to be able to do. This is especially hard for a country like Australia, because most of the circumstances in which we would rely on the Australian Defence Force most heavily are only credible if the international order in Asia were to have changed significantly. How can we decide what we would want our armed forces to do in a region very different from the one we know today? This problem has become more acute since the early 1990s, because the end of the Cold War and the rise of China have increased the probability of major systemic change in Asia. This essay explores an approach to identifying long-term strategic objectives in these circumstances. The approach it is based on a specific conception of strategic interests, defined as those factors in the international order that significantly affect the likelihood or seriousness of armed attack on Australia. This essay also describes how this approach was developed in the 1990s and applied in the 2000 White Paper, and considers its applicability in future defence policy

Interpreting the Outsider Tradition in British European Policy Speeches from Thatcher to Cameron

The article investigates how British European policy thinking has been informed by what it identifies as an ‘outsider’ tradition of thinking about ‘Europe’ in British foreign policy dating from imperial times to the presen. The article begins by delineating five phases in the evolution of the outsider tradition through a survey of the relevant historiography back to 1815. The article then examines how prime ministers from Margaret Thatcher to David Cameron have looked to various inflections of the outsider tradition to inform their European discourses. The focus in the speech data sections is on British identity, history and the realist appreciation of international politics that informed the leaders’ suggestions for EEC/EU reform. The central argument is that historically informed narratives such as those making up the outsider tradition do not determine opinion-formers’ outlooks, but that they can be deeply impervious to rapid change

Africans Investing in Africa: Building Prosperity through Intra-African trade and investment

Africa is on the global corporate agenda. A series of announcements from multi-nationals such as Coke, GE, Nestlé and Samsung regarding billion-dollar investments on the continent, have caught the attention of the global media. Management consultancies, development agencies and financial institutions have followed swiftly with increasingly positive reports on the business opportunities, which go far beyond the traditional perception of Africa as a resource story and a recipient of charity.The African macroeconomic environment is transforming, as policy makers have pushed through painful structural adjustment programmes, established independent central banks and adopted pragmatic fiscal and monetary policies -- all of which have helped to create a more business enabling environment. Also critical has been the decline of armed conflict -- once the scourge of Africa, intra- and interstatewars have declined by over 60 per cent since the beginning of the millennium. In turn, political stability, in much of Africa, is becoming the norm rather than the exception as countries democratise and begin to set their own agendas.What has been less noticed is the role and influence of African businesses, entrepreneurs, policy makers and consumers in this revolution. A new generation of African entrepreneurs has been created -- new African-owned and managed businesses are challenging traditional incumbents and introducing new business models and strategies that are driving domestic growth.Our objective is to ensure that this profound change receives the attention it deserves, providing a rigorous analysis of the drivers of Africa's entrepreneurial-led growth, but also identifying the continuing barriers to progress and the means by which Africans themselves can overcome those barriers

Dostoevsky, Raskolnikov, and Freedom in Crime and Punishment

An analysis of the character of Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky\u27s Crime and Punishment and his journey towards a truer understanding of freedom. This paper comments on \u27freedom\u27 as understood by St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, and applies this view of freedom to the characters of Raskolnikov, Sonya, Svidrigailov and Porfiry. The paper shows how the Thomistic-Aristotelian view of freedom is prevalent in this work by Dostoevsky

IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 5, Issue 2, Summer 2016

Impact: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning is a peer-reviewed, biannual online journal that publishes scholarly and creative non-fiction essays about the theory, practice and assessment of interdisciplinary education. Impact is produced by the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning at the College of General Studies, Boston University (www.bu.edu/cgs/citl)

Public Health in the Age of Ebola in West Africa

The Ebola epidemic, with its fast-growing toll and real potential for spreading into much of Africa, including major cities, has the makings of a “Black Swan” event. Such events, using the term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, are: 1) unpredictable, outside the realm of regular expectations; 2) have a major impact, and; 3) are rationalized after the fact as being explainable and predictable. We have learned from this outbreak the potential for an infectious disease to be politically, economically, and socially destabilizing, and that what kills us may be very different from what frightens us or substantially affects our social systems. This has important implications for resource allocation. Health threats like Ebola may not have historically have not killed large numbers of people, but because of possible scenarios under which they can have a devastating impact, require a greater share of limited resources, such as for developing a vaccine. More creative imagination is needed in considering future infectious disease scenarios and in planning accordingly. Further, this Ebola epidemic could transform global governance for health. It demonstrates the need for fundamental reform at the WHO, including for greater funding, as WHO\u27s response–unable to mobilize sufficient funding, too slow to declare this a Public Health Emergency of International Concern–indicates that the Organization is presently poorly positioned to fulfill its constitutional role as the global health authority. Meanwhile, the leadership role that the United Nations is assuming suggests the emergence of an era of direct United Nations engagement in health threats that could destabilize nations and regions

State Failure, Crisis of Governance and Disengagement from the State in Africa

This paper examines the phenomenon of citizen's disengagement from the state in Africa in the post-colonial era. The paper observes that the declining capacity of the state for social provisioning provides the context for citizens' withdrawal from the public space occupied by the state