The Inter-American Security Agenda

1994 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 111-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Perry ◽  
Max Primorac

The circumstances of the diverse nations of the Western Hemisphere have been dramatically transformed over the course of the past few years - as has the relationship among them. During the 1980s and early 1990s, a wave of democracy swept over most of Latin America and the Caribbean, placing almost all of the societies in the region under the rule of elected civilian governments. At the same time, the nationalist-statist development models of the past have been virtually abandoned and much more open, market-oriented lines of economic policy have been adopted. Moreover, many previously contentious issues that troubled relationships among the countries of the region and separated them from the United States appear to be in abeyance.

1966 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 404-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold F. Smith

The Nearness of Cuba to the United States, lying as it does a scant ninety miles from the coast of Florida, has always provided a strong reason for American preoccupation with the “Pearl of the Antilles.” This geographic proximity has been a source of political consideration and concern for over a century. The historical roots of the western hemisphere, with Columbus’ landings in the Caribbean, the Spanish, English, and French colonization and imperialism, and our own interest, expressed most notably in the Monroe Doctrine, have kept Cuba central in our thoughts. Our continued interest during the twentieth century, following the removal of Spanish control from the island at the turn of the century, has intensified through the years, partly because its sugar has been important to our economy, and partly because the island has become politically unfriendly in the past decade.


1987 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Abraham F. Lowenthal

The Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, and consequently their relations with the United States, have changed considerably during the past 25 years. Latin American and Caribbean nations are more populous, urban, industrialized, organized, and assertive than they were a generation ago. Even in a period of extensive economic difficulty, Latin America's nations are today more prosperous than in 1960. Most are better integrated into the world economy and are much more involved in international politics.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Argenyi ◽  
Poorna Kushalnagar

BACKGROUND About 46% of US adults obtain recommended HIV screening at least once during their lifetime. There is little knowledge of screening rates among deaf and hard-of-hearing adults who primarily use American Sign Language (ASL), or of social media as a potentially efficacious route for HIV prevention outreach, despite lower HIV/AIDS-specific health literacy and potentially higher HIV seropositivity rates than hearing peers. OBJECTIVE We investigated both the likelihood of HIV screening uptake among deaf adults in the past year and over one year ago, and the relationship between social media use and HIV screening uptake among deaf adult ASL users. METHODS The Health Information National Trends Survey in ASL was administered to 1340 deaf US adults between 2015-2018. Modified Poisson with robust standard errors was used to assess the relationship between social media usage as a predictor and HIV screening as an outcome (screened more than one year ago, screened within the past year, and never been screened), after adjusting for sociodemographics and sexually transmitted disease (STD) covariates. RESULTS The estimated lifetime prevalence of HIV screening uptake among our sample was 54% (719/1340), with 32% (429/1340) in the past year. Being of younger age, male gender, black, lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer, or having some college education or a prior STD were associated with HIV screening uptake. Adjusting for correlates, social media use was significantly associated with HIV screening in the past year, compared to either lifetime or never. CONCLUSIONS Screening falls well short of universal screening targets, with gaps among heterosexual, female, Caucasian, or older deaf adults. HIV screening outreach may not be effective because of technological or linguistic inaccessibility, rendering ASL users an underrecognized minority group. However, social media is still a powerful tool, particularly among younger deaf adults at risk for HIV.


Author(s):  
Patrick J. Kelly

In the decades before the Civil War many Southerners argued that their slaveholding region should expand territorially beyond the boundaries of the United States into Latin America and the Caribbean, especially Cuba. Instead, during the Civil War the Confederacy renounced the capture any new territory in the Americas. Historians have neglected to explain fully the South’s failure to to fulfill its prewar ambitions to expand territorially in the New World after secession. Patrick J. Kelly argues that examining the Southern rebellion from the perspective of Mexico City, Havana, London and Paris reveals the stark geopolitical realities facing the Confederate nation in the New World. Instead of dominating the New World, the Southern rebellion served as a pawn, especially to the French Emperor Napoleon III, in hemispheric affairs. Ultimately, the Confederacy proved too weak internationally to to capture any new hemispheric territory or gain the foreign recognition it sought in order to operate as a sovereign state in the family of nations. In an ironic twist, instead of insuring the future of Southern slavery, secession marked the death knell of the South’s dream of creating an empire for slavery in the Western Hemisphere.


2020 ◽  
pp. 345-394
Author(s):  
Jerome Slater

This chapter begins with extended summary of the main arguments of this book, especially that Israel has missed or refused a number of opportunities to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict. Almost all the wars could have been avoided if Israel had agreed to fair compromises. The second half of this chapter examines possible solutions to the conflict, arguing that the standard two-state solution is dead. Various proposed alternatives, such as a binational single Israeli-Palestine state, are either impractical or undesirable. A mini-Palestinian state is proposed—a “Luxembourg solution”—and the reasons that it could prove acceptable to both sides are examined. If Israel refuses, the United States should employ both pressures and incentives to overcome its opposition. The national interest of the United States in the Middle East is reviewed, in the past and today. The pros and cons of offering Israel a formal mutual defense treaty in the context of a political settlement with the Palestinians are explored.


Sociology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Simko

Collective memory encompasses both the shared frameworks that shape and filter ostensibly “individual” or “personal” memories and representations of the past sui generis, including official texts, commemorative ceremonies, and physical symbols such as monuments and memorials. Sociological work on collective memory traces its origins to Émile Durkheim and his student, Maurice Halbwachs. In the United States, the contemporary sociology of memory coalesced in the 1980s and 1990s, after Barry Schwartz brought renewed attention to Durkheim’s focus on commemoration as well as Halbwachs’s interest in how the past is reconstructed in the present, in the service of present needs, interests, and desires. Though this line of research initially emphasized heroic pasts—particularly national commemorations that bolstered state legitimacy with reference to triumphant episodes—scholars quickly began to address the ways that collectivities grapple with “difficult pasts,” or episodes that evoke shame, regret, and/or dissensus, and that threaten to “spoil” national identity. What is the relationship between memory and forgetting, and related concepts such as silence and denial? Can the increasingly pervasive language of “trauma” help us understand the current preoccupation with difficult pasts in both scholarly literature and public culture? More recently, scholars have critiqued the field’s overwhelming focus on national memory from two angles. First, studies of micro-level memories have revived Halbwachs’s initial interest in the social frameworks that structure (seemingly) individual memories. Second, globalization facilitates connectedness and identification beyond and/or outside of national frames of reference, and thus scholars have pointed to the emergence of “cosmopolitan” memories that create community and solidarity beyond and outside formal political borders.


2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANTHONY PAYNE

United States–Caribbean relations over the period of the last thirty or forty years have rarely—if ever—been analysed in a thoroughly satisfying way. It is a strange omission in the international relations literature given the proximity of the United States to the Caribbean, and vice versa. But the fact is that most accounts of the relationship have fallen prey to a powerful, but ultimately misleading, mythology by which small, poor, weak, dependent entities in the Caribbean have either created trouble for, or alternatively been confronted by, the ‘colossus to the north’ that is the United States in whose ‘backyard’ they unfortunately have to reside. Virtually all analysts of the US–Caribbean relationship have thus drawn a picture marked at heart by the notion of an inherently unequal struggle between forces of a different order and scale. Within this broad metaphor the only major difference of interpretation has reflected the competing theories of power in the international system developed by the realist and structuralist schools.


Plant Disease ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 88 (5) ◽  
pp. 523-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Pivonia ◽  
X. B. Yang

Soybean rust (Phakopsora pachyrhizi Sydow) has been known to occur in eastern Asia and Aus-tralia for decades. In recent years, the disease entered Africa and South America and has spread rapidly in these continents. It has become a concern to the U.S. soybean industry. To assess the threat of soybean rust, we used a modeling approach to determine the potential geographical zones where the fungus might overwinter and serve as source areas for seasonal epidemics. Long-term meteorological averages were used to assess the temperature stresses by using CLIMEX, and the dry stress with an algorithm developed in this study. Integration of stresses was used to predict the likelihood of survival of the rust in a defined location. Our results suggest that the new soybean rust invasions in Africa and South America occurred in the areas where the fungus might persist year-round. The main regions where rust has not been reported but might overwinter are located in the western hemisphere, including northern South America, Central America, the Caribbean, Mexico, southern Texas, and Florida. Southeastern China and neighboring areas are suggested as the primary regions where initial spores for soybean rust epidemics in central China are produced. If the disease is to establish in the United States, it is likely to be restricted to parts of Florida and southern Texas during the winter in the frost-free areas or areas where the fungus could overcome short periods of below-freezing temperatures. Occurrence of rust epidemics within the U.S. soybean belt would depend on south-to-north dispersal of uredospores.


2000 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 379-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
John B. West

Studies of physiology in microgravity are remarkably recent, with almost all the data being obtained in the past 40 years. The first human spaceflight did not take place until 1961. Physiological measurements in connection with the early flights were crude, but, in the past 10 years, an enormous amount of new information has been obtained from experiments on Spacelab. The United States and Soviet/Russian programs have pursued different routes. The US has mainly concentrated on relatively short flights but with highly sophisticated equipment such as is available in Spacelab. In contrast, the Soviet/Russian program concentrated on first the Salyut and then the Mir space stations. These had the advantage of providing information about long-term exposure to microgravity, but the degree of sophistication of the measurements in space was less. It is hoped that the International Space Station will combine the best of both approaches. The most important physiological changes caused by microgravity include bone demineralization, skeletal muscle atrophy, vestibular problems causing space motion sickness, cardiovascular problems resulting in postflight orthostatic intolerance, and reductions in plasma volume and red cell mass. Pulmonary function is greatly altered but apparently not seriously impaired. Space exploration is a new frontier with long-term missions to the moon and Mars not far away. Understanding the physiological changes caused by long-duration microgravity remains a daunting challenge.


1994 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bernell

The bitter rivalry between the United States and Cuba has occupied a position as one of the principal political disputes in the Western Hemisphere for the past 35 years. Since the rise of Fidel Castro, the governments of these two countries have placed themselves on opposite sides of almost every major regional and global issue. They have long held vastly different ideas about what constitutes a good and just government, what kind of international behavior is legitimate, and the ends that foreign policy should serve. Moreover, they have not only harbored political differences but also maintained a very intense dislike of one another. The United States has attempted to sustain a picture of Cuba as an international outlaw, the source of much turmoil, crisis, and mischief in the world. Adding a personal dimension to the attacks, the United States has also sought to demonize Castro, creating and continually portraying an image of him as the embodiment of evil.


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