Some commentators predict that the 21st century will be the ‘Asian century’, marking a significant shift in power from West to East. If so, it will not be so different from the global order of the 19th century, says Thomas DuBois. As late as the 1990s the global dominance of western ideals, values and institutions seemed unassailable. The Soviet Union had collapsed and China was in disarray. The California dotcoms were booming. The Asian financial crisis of 1997 looked like the final vindication of the clean and open economic institutions of the West over the back room crony capitalism of…

A review of From the Khmer Rouge to Hambali: Cham Identities in a Global Age, by Kok-Thay Eng. The Cambodian Genocide: most scholars have heard of it. It is a critical case in ongoing studies of Genocide Studies, International Law as well as Memory and Social Trauma that many teachers will have to address. From forensic anthropologists to criminal investigators, journalists to historians—and even experts in literature—the case of a series of mass killings that emerged out of Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 under the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) regime, most frequently referred to as the “Khmer Rouge”(Kh.: Khmer Kraham), will be…

The political transition that took place in Germany and Europe when theBERLIN Wall collapsed also has a natural dimension, and nowhere is this more evident than in the so-called Green Belt. Before the fall of the Wall, experts had long been aware that the border strip between East and West Germany was teeming with life. In the 1970s, members of the Bavarian Society for the Protection of Birds systematically recorded populations of bird species along the inner German border zone. The diversity they discovered can be found in only a handful of other places in Germany. The explanation for this is…

  “I often think it comical How nature does contrive That every body and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or a little Conservative.” W.S. Gilbert, Iolanthe, II. « ...if these people regard themselves for all practical purposes as Muslims, it is difficult to maintain that scientific research has come to the conclusion that they are not. ...one is inclined to feel that if an Indonesian says he is a Muslim, it is better to take his word for it. » C.A.O. van Nieuwenhuijze (1958: 40) There seems to have been an extraordinary…

Many of the United States’ diplomatic difficulties with Iran began with the 1979-81 Iranian Hostage Crisis. The crisis resulted in a number of complex challenges for the Carter administration. On November 4, 1979, militant Iranian students stormed the American Embassy in Tehran, taking hostage the embassy staff in a gesture of protest against American  foreign policy. The political nature of a revolutionary Iran greatly prolonged the crisis and forced President Jimmy Carter to explore many different avenues for the hostages’ release. International and domestic concerns further complicated any possible response from the Carter administration. Carter initially sought to secure the release of the hostages…