The two faces of Germany: how Germany’s support for refugees could counteract criticism of its handling of the Greek debt crisis

Throughout the Greek debt crisis, the majority of criticism from those who support a more lenient deal for Greece has been directed at Germany. As Simon Reich writes, however, Germany has also taken on a leading role in the migration crisis that has developed in southern Europe during 2015, which has placed a disproportionate burden on Greece due to its status as a transit route for refugees. He argues that German willingness to accept high numbers of asylum seekers could go some way toward counterbalancing the rise of anti-German sentiments that has occurred during the debt crisis, and that these twin crises represent the two ‘faces’ of Germany: the old and the new

What will the US presidential election mean for Europe?

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are now in the final week of campaigning before the US presidential election on 8 November. Simon Reich examines what the result of the election could mean for Europe. He writes that although Clinton has far more support among Europeans, both candidates may well continue the trend of pivoting away from Europe in their efforts to shape global foreign policy

Miraculous or mired? Contrasting Japanese and American perspectives on Japan's current economic problems

The current banking crisis in Japan illustrates two major points. The first is the renewed emphasis on the importance of market-based solutions to policy problems by American policy makers. The second is the broader point, that differences in the structures and operation of capitalism persist in the two countries despite the purported homogenising influences of globalisation. These two points are both analyzed in this paper through a systematic examination of the varied and contrasting positions in both Japan and the United States among policy makers and commentators regarding what kind of policies Japan should institute and the prospective success of such proposals. The paper offers a pessimistic conclusion that the most appropriate policy prescription requires bilateral policy coordination, a option that the United States has so far rejected and seems unlikely to initiate at this point

Hedging by default: the limits of EU "strategic autonomy" in a binary world order

For some time, international relations has trended in the direction of an American and Chinese dominated binary world order. While the Trump administration has been an accelerator not a cause of this trend between 2016 and 2020, not coincidentally the post 2016 era has also seen key EU figures move to develop a strategy of greater "strategic autonomy". This interest in strategic autonomy was, in no small part, a reflection of growing European distrust in the reliability of both China and, increasingly, the USA. The paper shows, in contrast to the Cold War era during which the EU was unambiguously aligned, how the EU now appears to have embarked on a hedging strategy, albeit implemented more by default than design. In its desire to defend its core interests the EU appears to lean to one side or the other on an issue by issue basis in at least seven key policy domains identified in the paper. This approach is seen to be the outcome of its dual desire to articulate the values of its much touted “Geopolitical Commission" at the same time as it tries to continue its traditional institutional commitment to multilateralism. The paper concludes that the ambiguity present in this endeavour to straddle the realist-liberal fence only serves to expose the limitations of the strategy

Fine Structure of the Radial Breathing Mode in Double-Wall Carbon Nanotubes

The analysis of the Raman scattering cross section of the radial breathing modes of double-wall carbon nanotubes allowed to determine the optical transitions of the inner tubes. The Raman lines are found to cluster into species with similar resonance behavior. The lowest components of the clusters correspond well to SDS wrapped HiPco tubes. Each cluster represents one particular inner tube inside different outer tubes and each member of the clusters represents one well defined pair of inner and outer tubes. The number of components in one cluster increases with decreasing of the inner tube diameter and can be as high as 14.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Globalisation and sites of conflict: towards definition and taxonomy

'Globalisation' is rapidly replacing the 'Cold War' as the most overused and under-specified explanation for a variety of events in international relations. For some, it represents a natural, indeed inexorable, progression towards a 'borderless world' signalling the end of the modern international state system as we know it. Analysis is underwritten by faith in, and exhortation to, the future. For others, the concept is over-stated and its benign influences are exaggerated. Indeed, globalisation is dangerous and perhaps even non-existent as a phenomenon. Furthermore, its invocation generates fear and resistance. This difference in interpretation has given rise to a dispute between those who see the emergence of a number of salient alternative authority structures, especially in the corporate world, that compete (increasingly successfully) with states in determining the direction of the global political economy (globalisers or globalists) and those who still see the states as the principal actors in global political and economic orders (internationalists) with security issues as still paramount. It is more accurate (albeit less parsimonious for theorising) to see state and non-state authority existing in a much more contingent, interactive and dynamic manner. We identify four definitions of globalisation in common use in both the scholarly and the policy community. These are we call (i) globalisation as historical epoch; (ii) globalisation as the confluence of economic phenomena; (iii) globalisation as the triumph or American values; and (iv) globalisation as sociological and technological revolution. Then we identify four propositions central to any understanding of the emerging field of 'globalisation studies' in international relations: (i) the Redistributive thesis, (ii) the Regionalism thesis, (iii) the Modernisation thesis and (iv) the Internet thesis. As analytical approaches they reflect the ontologies and epistemologies of the definitions from which we argue they are derived and help identify the arenas of power and policy contest and the principal actors involved in the changing relationship between market power and state authority thereby revealing significant contextual, empirical and normative variation in the authoritative relationship between states, markets and civil society