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"DOMESTIC SOURCES"
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Can China Back Down?
Many analysts argue that public opinion creates pressure on Chinese leaders to act coercively in territorial disputes, and that it also limits their options to de-escalate once crises have broken out. Evidence suggests, however, that Chinese leaders may prefer having more flexibility rather than less in a crisis. Using original data generated by a survey experiment conducted in China in 2015, this article examines several strategies that Chinese leaders could use to reduce public pressure so as to make concessions in a crisis easier. These strategies include pledging to use economic sanctions instead of force; invoking China’s “peaceful identity”; citing the costs of conflict to China’s development; accepting United Nations mediation; and backing down in the face of U.S. military threats. In all cases except one, approval for the leader increases over a baseline level of support for making concessions. The exception is if the leader backs down in the face of U.S. military threats. Here, approval drops below the baseline level of support, especially for nationalists and hawks. The findings suggest that if one assumes that Chinese leaders are constrained by public opinion, a U.S. cost-imposition strategy to compel China to back down in crises may have the opposite effect—tying Chinese leaders’ hands even tighter.
Journal Article
Myths of Empire
\" Myths of Empire offers the best-developed
theory to date of the domestic sources of international conflict
and security policy... Snyder has taken a major step toward ending
the theoretical impoverishment of the study of the domestic sources
of international conflict.\" ― American Political
Science Review
Overextension is the common pitfall of empires. Why does it
occur? What are the forces that cause the great powers of the
industrial era to pursue aggressive foreign policies? Jack Snyder
identifies recurrent myths of empire, describes the varieties of
overextension to which they lead, and criticizes the traditional
explanations offered by historians and political scientists. He
tests three competing theories-realism, misperception, and domestic
coalition politics-against five detailed case studies: early
twentieth-century Germany, Japan in the interwar period, Great
Britain in the Victorian era, the Soviet Union after World War II,
and the United States during the Cold War. The Resulting insights
run counter to much that has been written about these apparently
familiar instances of empire building.
Overextension is the common pitfall of empires. Why does it
occur? What are the forces that cause the great powers of the
industrial era to pursue aggressive foreign policies? Jack Snyder
identifies recurrent myths of empire, describes the varieties of
overextension to which they lead, and criticizes the traditional
explanations offered by historians and political scientists.He
tests three competing theories-realism, misperception, and domestic
coalition politics-against five detailed case studies: early
twentieth-century Germany, Japan in the interwar period, Great
Britain in the Victorian era, the Soviet Union after World War II,
and the United States during the Cold War. The resulting insights
run counter to much that has been written about these apparently
familiar instances of empire building.
eBook
Study on the coupling environmental and engineering remediation effects of biochar on domestic source contaminated soils
The degradation of organic contaminants from domestic sources can lead to a reduction in soil strength and the emission of greenhouse gases such as methane (CH
4
) and carbon dioxide (CO
2
). It is crucial to explore green and low-carbon disposal methods for domestic-sources-contaminated soil. In this study, biochar was utilized to remediate domestic-sources-contaminated soil due to its stable performance and excellent adsorption and fixation of organic matter. The geotechnical tests and thermogravimetric analysis were investigated to evaluate the remediation effects of biochar dosage and particle size from environmental and engineering viewpoints. The results identified clear and effective ranges for biochar dosage and particle size in remediation of domestic-sources-contaminated soil, and biochar can simultaneously achieve environmental and engineering remediation. The optimal remediation effect was observed with a biochar dosage of 6% and a particle size of 1–3 mm. The remediation mechanisms of biochar on domestic-sources-contaminated soil primarily consisted of adsorption and aggregation, regulation of physicochemical properties, and alteration of structural. At lower biochar dosages and smaller particle sizes, adsorption and aggregation and regulation of physicochemical properties were dominant, while at higher dosages and larger particle sizes, alteration of structural became the main factor. This study preliminarily confirmed the feasibility of biochar in the synergistic environmental and engineering remediation of domestic-sources-contaminated soil, providing a basis for the development of coupling technology for carbon sequestration and remediation with biochar of such soil.
Journal Article
Shifts in Warfare and Party Unity
Since 1949, China has adopted nine national military strategies, known as “strategic guidelines.” The strategies adopted in 1956, 1980, and 1993 represent major changes in China’s military strategy, or efforts by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to wage war in a new way. Shifts in the conduct of warfare in the international system offer one explanation for why China, a developing country for most of this period, pursued major change in its military strategy. Such shifts in the conduct of warfare should be especially powerful if a gap exists between a state’s current strategy and the requirements of future warfare. The PLA has only been able to change strategy, however, when the Chinese Communist Party leadership is united and agrees on basic policies and the structure of authority. When the party is united, it delegates substantial responsibility for military affairs to the PLA leadership, which changes or adjusts military strategy in response to changes in China’s security environment.
Journal Article
Reconsidering NATO expansion: a counterfactual analysis of Russia and the West in the 1990s
This article re-examines the history of NATO’s original post-Cold War enlargement to include the Visegrad states of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. It uses both published materials and the author’s new interviews with key US and Russian policymakers, and employs robust qualitative counterfactual methods to ask two questions: whether there were any realistic alternatives to NATO enlargement, and whether NATO enlargement was responsible for the downturn in Russian relations with the West. It concludes that domestic politics were the dominant factors explaining policy directions on both the US and Russian sides; that NATO enlargement was probably inevitable given US domestic political factors and West European acquiescence; that Russia’s turn against the West preceded the NATO expansion discussion in the US; that the tenor of the Russian turn is explained by status concerns rather than military threat perceptions, and that it was aggravated most by Western unilateral airstrikes rather than NATO’s geographical enlargement; and that the one policy initiative that might have realistically slowed NATO enlargement if it had been adopted differently, Partnership for Peace, did not affect those Russian status concerns and thus could not have redirected the relationship.
Journal Article
Plastics debris characteristics in Cikapundung River
River plays the important role for transporting plastics from land to the ocean. Cikapundung river is one of tributary rivers which contributes significantly to Citarum River. The Cikapundung river transports the riverine plastic debris from the area of Bandung City and Bandung District to Citarum River that finally flows to the North Java Sea through its estuary at Muara Gembong-Bekasi. The aim of the study is to monitor plastic debris characteristic of in Cikapundung. It is important to understand the characteristic of plastic debris from the settlement area which potentially contaminates the sea. Monitoring was conducted in April to June 2021 by using net sampler 2x1x3 meters. The sampler was set at two transversal sites across the river in 15-30 minutes each. The observations were conducted three times (morning, noon, and afternoon) of each sampling day. Collected plastics were estimated the weight and the volume, and were separated, enumerated and classified afterwards. The top three common plastic types both in weight and number founded in Cikapundung river including plastic bags, clear plastic bags and sachet. The majority of commonly encountered plastics were clear plastic bags, plastic with aluminum, sachets (plastic packing), plastic bags, and plastic cups. It reflects the dominance of domestic source wastes rather than industrial plastic debris.
Journal Article
Macroeconomic volatility and its significance to the rising external indebtedness of Nigeria
The motivation of this study has been to identify the effects of the
multidimensional perspectives of macroeconomic volatility on the
growth of external debt in Nigeria from 1970 to 2018. Methodologically,
the Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model and the Toda-
Yamamoto causality approach were adopted. For the purpose of
understanding the multidimensional perspective of macroeconomic
volatility, macroeconomic volatility was disaggregated into three different
perspectives which are: volatility from macroeconomic outcomes,
domestic sources, and external sources. Findings from the study suggest
that while volatility from macroeconomic outcomes exclusively affects
external debt in the long-term, effects from the three sources were very
substantial in the short-term. Furthermore, the causality result indicates
bidirectional nexus between volatility from macroeconomic outcomes
and external debt. Also, the irregular variations in the Nigerian political
space, unanticipated disease outbreaks, and the effects of the 1986
recession in the country all significantly worsened the country’s external
debt situation. Thus, the study recommended amongst others that since
developing countries such as Nigeria cannot do away with the demand
for external debt to finance its economic growth, it is also important to
count the cost such financing provides even if faster growth is actually
realise.
Journal Article
The Russian Federation, the USA and European security
Russian relations with the West have deteriorated significantly in the past two decades, in particular after the rise of Vladimir Putin. The factors leading to this shift included domestic issues such as the role of the military and security elite, as well as the reemergence of authoritarianism and growing concern in Russia for the expansion of Western influence in post-Soviet space.
Journal Article
The Effect of Soluble Sugar Degradation on the Evaporation of Compacted Clay
In arid climates, evaporation and water loss in surface soil can lead to the development of shrinkage cracks in the soil. The crack network in contaminated soil sites can become a rapid pathway for the infiltration and transport of contaminations, thereby increasing the range of soil contamination. Dense contaminated clay samples were prepared by using glucose as a representative soluble sugar of domestic source contaminations. Through indoor evaporation simulation tests, the effect of soluble sugar anaerobic degradation on the water loss, deformation, and crack growth of compacted clay was analyzed, and the mechanism of this effect was revealed. The results showed that glucose increased the water-holding capacity of clay, while the anaerobic degradation of glucose decreased the water-holding capacity of clay. Although glucose anaerobic degradation reduced the overall deformation of dense clay, it promoted the development of evaporative cracks on the surface of dense clay. Soluble sugar anaerobic degradation mainly affected the evaporative cracking of clay by “forming hydrogen bonds to reduce the rate of evaporative water loss in clay” and “generating CO2 to alter the structure of the clay”.
Journal Article