Globalization, the Obama administration and the refashioning of US exceptionalism

The Obama leadership has seemingly gone further than previous administrations in recognizing that globalization has fundamentally reshaped the structure of world politics, and made the idea of US unilateralism deeply problematic. In the words of Susan Rice, while US leadership in the world ‘is necessary it’s rarely sufficient’. But the Obama team’s fresh emphasis on diplomacy, its tilt towards multilateralism and its desire to lighten the US global military footprint has not led to the abandonment of US exceptionalism. Rather, US exceptionalism has been reframed in terms of the resilience and power of the American democratic and economic example in an interconnected world. History, the Obama administration contends, is on the side of the American democratic political system. In contrast to authoritarian rival states, the US democratic model is not only more prosperous and stable, but is also able to more successfully adapt to the pressures and opportunities of globalization

National security and surveillance:the public impact of the GCSB Amendment Bill and the Snowden revelations in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the extraordinary scope of the National Security Agency’s surveillance capabilities and the facilitating role of the Five Eyes alliance converged with increasing public concerns about the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment and Related Legislation Bill in 2013. This generated an intense and sustained debate in the country about surveillance policy. It was a debate in which Prime Minister John Key has featured prominently. While apparently unable to clearly refute Snowden’s claims concerning mass surveillance in New Zealand, Key’s vigorous public interventions helped counter the short-term political and diplomatic fallout. However, the long-term impact of public concerns over the surveillance policies of the Key government may be much harder to predict in what is an intimate democracy, and the prospect of substantial political blowback cannot be ruled out

Globalization and conflict : national security in a new strategic era/ Edit. : Robert G. Patman

xii, 266 hal.: tab.; 21 cm