Is Drift a Serious Alternative to Natural Selection as an Explanation of Complex Adaptive Traits?

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 10-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elliott Sober
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Adaptive Traits ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Known Unknowns ◽  
Donald Rumsfeld ◽  
The U.S

‘There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.’ —Donald Rumsfeld, 2003, President George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense, on the subject of the U.S. government’s failure to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq

Is Drift a Serious Alternative to Natural Selection as an Explanation of Complex Adaptive Traits?

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 125-153
Author(s):  
Elliott Sober
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Adaptive Traits ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Known Unknowns

‘There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.’

Syria under Pressure

2004 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 53-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDERS STRINDBERG
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Economic Sanctions ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Wrong Side ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
Sharp Criticism ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

Syria's sharp criticism of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 opened a particularly tense phase in Syrian-American relations, culminating in the May 2004 imposition of U.S. economic sanctions under the Syria Accountability Act. While accusing Damascus of being on the ““wrong side”” in the wars against terror and Iraq, Washington has raised a number of other issues, including Syria's military presence in Lebanon, its support for Hizballah and various Palestinian factions, its alleged ““interference”” in Iraq, and its possible possession of weapons of mass destruction. This report, based on numerous interviews with government officials, analysts, opposition figures, and ordinary citizens, examines Syria's reactions to these allegations, gradual changes in Syrian political culture, and various domestic developments.

9/11 and American Foreign Policy

2019 ◽  
pp. 281-302
Author(s):  
Melvyn P. Leffler
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Threat Perception ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Level Of Importance ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Threat Environment

This chapter emphasizes that 9/11 dramatically altered the threat perception of U.S. policymakers. “The greater the threat,” said the strategy statement, “the greater the risk of inaction.” In this new threat environment, policymakers declared that the old tactics of deterrence and containment could not work. Although the employment of preemptive or preventative action was not entirely new in the U.S. diplomatic experience, the emphasis accorded to it was much more pronounced. Threat perception altered tactics, not goals. To justify the new tactics, President George W. Bush raised the rhetorical trope of democracy promotion to a new level of importance, and this was even more true after weapons of mass destruction were not located in Iraq. For this chapter, 9/11 raised interesting and complicated questions about the relationships between interests, values, threat perception, and the employment of power.

What We Know Now

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. G. Runciman
Keyword(s):  
Iraq War ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Suez Canal ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
Intelligence Services ◽  
British Prime Minister ◽  
The Government ◽  
The U.S

This chapter discusses the information provided by the Hutton Report and the Butler Report concerning the bases of the British government's decision to join the U.S. in overturning Saddam Hussein for his alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It suggests that nothing revealed in the reports could bring an agreement to whether British Prime Minister Tony Blair was right in his decision, but those who have read the reports could surely conclude that the government, the intelligence services, and the BBC fell short of what have been expected of them at a time when Britain was on the brink of being taken into a war. It discusses the similarities between the Iraq War and the Suez Canal conflict.

Evidence, Inference and Enquiry

2011 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Health History ◽  
University College London ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Evidence For Policy ◽  
Based Medicine

Evidence — its nature and interpretation — is the key to many topical debates and concerns such as global warming, evolution, the search for weapons of mass destruction, DNA profiling, and evidence-based medicine. In 2004, University College London launched a cross-disciplinary research programme ‘Evidence, Inference and Enquiry’ to explore the question: ‘Can there be an integrated multidisciplinary science of evidence?’ While this question was hotly contested and no clear final consensus emerged, much was learned on the journey. This book, based on the closing conference of the programme held at the British Academy in December 2007, illustrates the complexity of the subject, with seventeen chapters written from a diversity of perspectives including Archaeology, Computer Science, Economics, Education, Health, History, Law, Psychology, Philosophy, and Statistics. General issues covered include principles and systems for handling complex evidence, evidence for policy-making, and human evidence-processing, as well as the very possibility of systematising the study of evidence.

scholarly journals Cheater's Dilemma: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Path to War

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-89
Author(s):  
Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer
Keyword(s):  
Gulf War ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Principal Agent ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
Cover Up ◽  
The U.S

Between the 1991 Gulf War and the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the Iraqi regime faced a cheater's dilemma: how much should it reveal of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities when each additional revelation made it less likely that the country would be rewarded, while continued denial also prevented the lifting of sanctions. The Iraqi leadership struggled to resolve this dilemma, as elites pursued competing policies and subordinates did not consistently obey Saddam Hussein's orders. These difficulties reflected principal-agent problems that were aggravated by the leadership's initial attempts to deny and cover up Iraq's WMD capabilities. Together, the cheater's dilemma and principal-agent problems explain a range of puzzling Iraqi behaviors that came across as calculated ambiguity to the outside world. These findings offer insights into the incentives and constraints that shape how other authoritarian regimes respond to external pressures to eliminate their WMD, and the extent to which they are willing and able to disclose information about past programs and their past efforts to conceal this information from the outside world.

scholarly journals Os herdeiros de todos os medos: a dissuasão nuclear para os EUA e a Rússia (2000-2005) / The heirs of all fears: nuclear deterrence for the U.S. and Russia (2000-2005)

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-339
Author(s):  
Diego Santos Vieira de Jesus
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Nuclear Forces ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Regional Powers ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

O objetivo deste artigo é examinar as perspectivas para a dissuasão nuclear para as duas principais potências nuclearmente armadas - EUA e Rússia - durante os cinco primeiros anos da década de 2000. O argumento central aponta que as duas potências preocuparam-se com a dissuasão de ameaças advindas das principais potências, mas se mostraram mais preocupadas com as ameaças de potências regionais com armas de destruição em massa. Elas reduziram suas forças nucleares desde o fim da Guerra Fria, manifestaram um maior interesse em capacidades não-nucleares para a dissuasão e tentaram definir opções para o uso limitado de armas nucleares.     The aim of this paper is to examine the approaches for nuclear deterrence for the two greatest nuclear-weapon states - the U.S. and Russia - in the first half of the 2000s. The central argument shows that the two powers were concerned with deterrence of threats stemming from major powers, but were more concerned about the threats from regional powers with weapons of mass destruction. They have reduced their nuclear forces since the end of the Cold War, showed a greater interest in non-nuclear capabilities for deterrence and tried to define options for the limited use of nuclear weapons.      

scholarly journals Features on Sale in Dual-Use Items

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-45
Author(s):  
Vasile Dinu ◽  
Cristina Lazar ◽  
Ion-Stelian Chihai
Keyword(s):  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Dual Use ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Military Applications ◽  
The Subject

Abstract This study addresses a very special issue, i.e. the import-export of those products, goods and technology that normally have civilian uses, but which, because of their nature, may also have military applications. In our opinion, the subject is particularly interesting since these products are related to the development and production of weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, we aimed at highlighting the most important aspects of the marketing standards and practices for the control on dual-use items, with reference to the national and international legal systems in the field. We used the latest bibliography, focusing on documentary sources for certain credibility.

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