Human security can be recognized only through its absence. This is one of the oft-quoted observations. How so, is the major concern this week. As a mental exercise, we will reconstruct a profile of a few selected countries by using data availab

Human Security: New Deal for Policy Analyses?

Dec 19th, 2012 1h 7m

Since “Human Development Report, 1994,” a new sort of language has emerged as a way of highlighting the policy issues that most directly affect the lives of people in the world. Human security, as the condition entailing “freedom from threats a

Dethronement of GNP

Dec 12th, 2012 1h 24m

The criticisms of economic development have their roots not only in the perceived income-gap among the nations, but also in other pressing issues that are accompanying policies of economic development. What are the adjustments by the proponents

The Rich and the Poor

Dec 5th, 2012 1h 31m

One of the key issues involved in what appears to be a perpetual experimentation with economic development is the widening gap between the rich and the poor. To what extent, the widening gap discredit the claims of the Bretton Woods System and

Regimes and Globalization

Nov 28th, 2012 1h 11m

An engine of economic development, the Bretton Woods System, before its tenure expired, is claimed to have enriched the world and installed the basic “infrastructure” for the production and distribution of global wealth by non-violent means. Ta

An Entirely Different World...?(2)

Nov 14th, 2012 1h 18m

An examination of changes in economic development theories reveals a number of assumptions that are needed for their hypotheses to work. These are the assumptions which make most of the development theories unrealistic against the backdrops of

An Entirely Different World... ?

Nov 9th, 2012 1h 4m

Are there innovative way(s) of reconstructing the issues of “national security” to meet the need of post-Cold War era? What could be “national security” issues when nation-states are no longer the most dominant actors in International Relations

Cold War and Japan: Defense Policy

Nov 7th, 2012 1h 22m

A postwar invention, the notion of national security, nonetheless, established itself quickly as the underlying theme for any nation’s external contact. However, a twin questions of what is to be “secured” and from what it is to be “secured” tu

“Proxy Wars”

Oct 31st, 2012 1h 28m

As misleading as it is powerful, the notion of a “proxy” dominated much of the decision-makers in the United States throughout the Cold War period. There is no other theater of conflict than Vietnam where this notion served to distort strategic

Beyond the North Atlantic Region

Oct 24th, 2012 1h 24m

Undoubtedly under the immense influence of the bipolarization, the regions outside the North-Atlantic region, nonetheless, had their own policy agenda. De-colonization process needs to be examined in light of its own forces

Conflicting Norms and Policy Agenda

Oct 17th, 2012 1h 21m

The focus here is the normative background which helped promote the tenets of the “Realist” school of International Relations. Though professing to be rooted in the human nature, the realist school in fact represents more of the sense of uncert

The beginnings of Post-World War II world order

Oct 10th, 2012 1h 19m

A historical survey of the beginnings and the closing of the Cold War should help students identify the origins and changes in the policy issues of their choosing. The points should be made that the Cold War itself is a uniquely North-Atlantic

Introdution

Sep 26th, 2012 1h 16m

Introduction to International Relations offers a general perspective on how the course will evolve throughout the semester. Week 1 also offers certain film (video) footage on key issues in International Relations.