The SAIS Review of International Affairs
Review of: Neil Shenai, Escaping the Governance Trap:Economic Reform in the Northern Triangle, (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Pivot, 2022). David F. Varela Sr. is a second-year Doctor of International Affairs (DIA) student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Escaping the Governance Trap by Neil Shenai arrives at a perfect time to enrich a […]
Review of: Aid imperium: United States Foreign Policy and Human Rights in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia by Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr. University of Michigan Press, 2021. How does foreign aid affect recipient nations’ human rights conditions? What determines whether foreign aid will strengthen or undermine civil liberties? In his book Aid imperium: United States […]
Of all the myths and fabrications that exist in political discourse, few are more stubbornly persistent than the scarcity of resources and the policies supposedly needed to control them. Today, that discourse has converged around one definitive commodity: oil. The omnipresence of oil in the modern economy is eclipsed only by the persistent belief in […]
Kashmir and the Future of South Asia edited by Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal examines the Kashmir crisis from a people-centered approach using a framework of state sovereignty and national security. The authors use the Kashmir crisis to illustrate how internal wars of partition continue to haunt South Asia as a result of its colonial […]
In the waning days of Hong Kong’s 2014 student-lead Umbrella Movement, a hanging black banner read a prophetic message: We’ll Be Back. In 2019, those words came to fruition. The controversial introduction of a proposed extradition bill, allowing individuals in Hong Kong to face trial in Mainland Chinese courts, rocked the city and drew hundreds […]
In her book, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West, former British investigative journalist Catherine Belton argues that the former KGB officer is determined to continue the Cold War in order to crush the West. The article evaluates Belton’s claims and logic on the nature of Putin’s regime.
Review of Buchanan, Ben. The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2020) Juniper Networks, a Silicon Valley company that makes networking products, made headlines in early June. Sixteen members of Congress sent a letter to the company’s CEO wanting to know why some of the […]
Review of Hill, Christopher. The Future of British Foreign Policy: Security and Diplomacy in a World After Brexit (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2019) On January 31, 2020, the United Kingdom formally left the European Union. For most observers, Brexit Day meant the conclusion of a long drawn out negotiation process lasting for more than three-and-a-half years […]
In the 1920s, the ACLU brought civil liberties to the forefront of political discussion. Despite the Bill of Rights being in place, the inability of the judiciary to act on civil liberties caused constraints on the relationship between the state and its citizens. As a result, civil liberties had limited effects on society. As an example of the shifts in civil liberties, Weinrib focuses on the creation of the ACLU as an offshoot of the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM) with an agenda to press the U.S. government for the expansion of civil liberties during WWI. In doing so, the author illustrates the conflict between citizens and the state over civil liberties and the aim of the AUAM to create a balance between social interests and to promote civil liberties.