Japan's Parliamentary Confrontation on the Post-Cold War National Security Policies

2009 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
TOMOHITO SHINODA

AbstractIn the fall 2007 Diet session, the largest opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) showed strong opposition against the government's proposal to continue the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) refueling operations to support maritime inspections in the Indian Ocean. In order to evaluate this parliamentary confrontation, the article compares the handling of this issue with the six past major post-Cold War national security policies. The DPJ constantly presented its own legislative proposals in order to participate in Diet deliberation. DPJ's counter proposals, however, were not always cooperative with the government. This different attitude by the DPJ could not be explained by the public and media opinions or the position of the supporting organization but by DPJ's political calculation.

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 680-695 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Maxey

Conventional wisdom assumes the best way to mobilize public support for military action is through the lens of national security. Humanitarian justifications provide a helpful substitute when US interests are not at stake, but are less reliable. However, US presidents have provided humanitarian explanations for every military intervention of the post-Cold War period. What, if any, power do humanitarian justifications have in security-driven interventions? The article answers this question by developing a domestic coalition framework that evaluates justifications in terms of whose support matters most in the build-up to intervention. Survey experiments demonstrate that humanitarian narratives are necessary to build the largest possible coalition of support. However, presidents risk backlash if they stretch humanitarian claims too far. Data from thirteen waves of Chicago Council surveys and an original dataset of justifications for US interventions confirm that humanitarian justifications are a common and politically relevant tool. The findings challenge both the folk realist expectation that the public responds primarily to threats to its own security and the constructivist tendency to limit the power of humanitarian justifications to cases of humanitarian intervention. Instead, humanitarian justifications are equally, if not more, important than security explanations for mobilizing domestic support, even in security-driven interventions.


This first-ever history of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) is told through the reflections of its eight chairs in the period from the end of the Cold War until 2017. Coeditors Robert Hutchings and Gregory Treverton add a substantial introduction placing the NIC in its historical context going all the way back to the Board of National Estimates in the 1940s, as well as a concluding chapter that highlights key themes and judgments. The historic mission of this remarkable but little-understood organization is strategic intelligence assessment in service of senior American foreign policymakers. It has been at the center of every critical foreign policy issue during the period covered by this volume: helping shape America’s post–Cold War strategies, confronting sectarian conflicts around the world, meeting the new challenge of international terrorism, and now assessing the radical restructuring of the global order. Each chapter places its particular period of the NIC’s history in context (the global situation, the administration, the intelligence community) and assesses the most important issues with which the NIC grappled during the period, acknowledging failures as well as claiming successes. With the creation of the director of national intelligence in 2005, the NIC’s mission mushroomed to include direct intelligence support to the main policymaking committees in the government. The mission shift took the NIC directly into the thick of the action but may have come at the expense of weakening its historic role of providing over-the horizon strategic analysis.


Author(s):  
Ole Jakob Løland

AbstractThe battle for meaning and influence between Latin American liberations theologians and the Vatican was one of the most significant conflicts in the global Catholic church of the twentieth century. With the election of the Argentinean Jorge Mario Bergoglio as head of the global church in 2013, the question about the legacy of liberation theology was actualized. The canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the pope’s approximation to the public figure of Gustavo Gutiérrez signaled a new approach to the liberation theology movement in the Vatican. This article argues that Pope Francis shares some of the main theological concerns as pontiff with liberation theology. Although the pope remains an outsider to liberation theology, he has in a sense solved the conflict between the Vatican and the Latin American social movement. Through an analysis of ecclesial documents and theological literature, his can be discerned on three levels. First, Pope Francis’ use of certain theological ideas from liberation theology has been made possible and less controversial by post-cold war contexts. Second, Pope Francis has contributed to the solution of this conflict through significant symbolic gestures rather than through a shift of official positions. Third, as Pope Francis, the Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio has appropriated certain elements that are specific to liberation theology without acknowledging his intellectual debt to it.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Forcese

The expression "national security" or its close similes lacks a precise meaning, even in the public policy literature. Nevertheless, the concept appears in over 30 federal statutes. In most instances, the term is undefined, an important oversight in light of the significant powers these statutes accord the government. Under these circumstances, how courts review government invocations of "national security" is of real importance. With some exceptions, courts applying s. 7 of the Charter and standard administrative law doctrines have accorded substantial deference to government national security determinations. When largely deferential substantive review of the ambiguous concept of national security is coupled with the ex parti and in camera context in which these cases are often heard, the net effect is to leave government with a freer hand in national security matters than in other domains of administrative decision making. Several possible responses to this problem are proposed.


Author(s):  
Damien Van Puyvelde

This chapter charts and explains the rise of intelligence outsourcing in the post-Cold War era. In the 1990s, the private sector led the information technology revolution and became an indispensable asset for the intelligence community. Meanwhile government policies downsized the government intelligence workforce and a number of experienced officials moved to the private sector. Intelligence contracting boomed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks because the private sector offered a pool of knowledge and capabilities that managers deemed necessary at the time. The government hired thousands of contractors to intensify the national intelligence effort rapidly, and outsourcing diversified to an unprecedented level. In the atmosphere of emergency that characterized the early days of the global war on terrorism, this expansion was not planned, and a variety of contractors related to the intelligence community in ways that were not always harmonious and economically viable.


Author(s):  
Ellen Nakashima

This essay examines how the Washington Post dealt with the tension between its duty to inform the public and its desire to protect national security when it received documents leaked by Edward Snowden. The essay describes the push-and-pull between the media and the government. Journalists try to advance the public’s right to know, particularly about potential government encroachment on civil liberties, and the government tries to defend the security of the country while respecting civil liberties. Reporters with a bias for public disclosure voluntarily withhold certain documents and details based on a careful consideration of harm, and intelligence officials with a bias toward secrecy do not fight every disclosure. The Post’s coverage of the Snowden leaks provides an opportunity to gain insights into how to navigate the inevitable conflicts between journalists’ desire to inform the public and the government’s desire to protect its secrets from foreign powers.


Author(s):  
Beverley Hooper

From the early 1970s, the US-China relationship was central to diplomatic reporting, with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s visit to Peking in October 1971, President Nixon’s historic visit in February 1972, and the establishment the following year of small liaison offices in Peking and Washington. Following each of Kissinger’s further visits in 1973 and 1974, senior diplomats virtually queued up at the liaison office to find out what progress, if any, had been made towards the normalization of US-China relations. Peking’s diplomats, like some of their colleagues elsewhere in the world, did not always see eye-to-eye with their foreign ministries. There was little chance of their becoming overly attached to Communist China, as the Japanologists and Arabists were sometimes accused of doing for Japan and Arab countries. At the same time, living and breathing the PRC led some diplomats to regard Chinese Communism as being rather more nuanced—and the government somewhat less belligerent—than the Cold War images portrayed in the West, particularly the United States.


2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-127
Author(s):  
Brent D. Maher

Stanford University's indirect cost rates for federally sponsored research dramatically increased from 58 percent in 1980 to 78 percent in 1991. Faculty frustration with increasing rates and scrutiny from a zealous government contracting officer culminated in a congressional inquiry into Stanford's indirect cost accounting practices in 1990 and 1991. The investigation revealed controversial luxury expenses charged to the government, including a yacht and antiques for the Stanford president's home, which attracted extensive public attention. Stanford president Donald Kennedy admitted some expenses were accounting errors but defended many expenses as permissible under government rules. Stanford's aggressive overhead recovery practices represent the institution's struggle to adapt to a changing economy for sponsored research in the twilight of the Cold War. The congressional response, which included a cap on administrative cost recovery for all universities, highlighted how shifting federal priorities—from defense research to deficit reduction—strained the relationship between the federal government and academic science.


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