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Ostensibly, Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential elections should have placed United States international policy back on a familiar path. However, despite the prevalence of a highly traditional vision of US foreign policy, the Biden administration has maintained significant continuities with the previous administration, as reflected in the policy towards China and the withdrawal from Afghanistan. In part, this is due to the constraints produced by the deep divisions that exist at domestic level. This paper aims to unravel the fundamental elements of Biden's foreign policy, focusing on possible ideological and doctrinal elements, strategic priorities, and any continuities and changes relative to his predecessor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The economic viability of new energy technologies is held as a central tenet to their future deployment; conventional wisdom posits economically rational decision-makers will readily invest in proven low-risk and affordable technologies. But what happens when this is not true. This paper examines the non-financial barriers facing economically viable Combined Heat and Power (CHP) projects. CHP is a mature and lower carbon technology that efficiently uses waste heat from thermal electricity generation; CHP can also provide flexibility services to help integrate variable renewable resources. CHP is low risk and many industrialized countries, particularly those in colder climates in Northern Europe and Russia, generate as much as 50% of their electricity and heat needs from CHP, but United States deployment remains low and investment hurdle rates high. While lower U.S. energy costs make some projects un-economic, many economically-viable CHP projects are stalled or killed by non-financial barriers. To better understand why financially viable CHP projects are not getting built, developers, owners and operators, regulators, and other stakeholders of this technology were interviewed and three major barriers emerged a) the business model of the electrical utility b) negative subjective impressions and c) challenges in allocating the risks and benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper covers issues of Russia's national security in the Arctic as viewed from the military perspective. It examines the trends in the development of a reliable defense system for this country. It postulates the importance of greater defense capacity in the Russian Arctic, as nATO relentlessly builds up its military forces next to Russian borders, and the US military infrastructure continues to develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the turn of the twenty-first century, Russia entered into a unique relationship with the US dollar: it became the only major country with both a highly dollarized economy and extensive dollar reserves. Russia also played a pivotal role in the international gas and oil markets, where resources are priced in and sold for US dollars. This paper argues, however, that three trends had converged by 2006 to challenge the US dollar's pre-eminence in Russia. First, President Vladimir Putin's efforts to strengthen the state required reasserting Russia's monetary sovereignty. Second, opposition to US foreign policy and a re-emergent Russian nationalism prompted many politicians to denounce Russia's dependence on the dollar. Finally, the dollar's increasing weakness internationally led Russian economic officials to worry that over-reliance on the dollar threatens Russia's economic stability. This relative weakness also encouraged ordinary Russians to rethink their relationship with the dollar. Together, these three trends led to a political anti-dollar campaign, gradual reserve diversification away from the dollar, and moves to substitute rubles or euros for dollars in domestic pricing, sales, and savings. This paper explores these trends and discusses their potential ramifications for the international dollar regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents two sets of arguments: one theoretical and one analytical. The theoretical arguments concern the relationship between regional ordering and systemic change. The paper questions the usefulness of the unipolar conception of the contemporary system arguing that the interaction of the Great Powers cannot be understood without reference to regional dynamics. Thus, a unipolar system implies considerable potential for U.S. hegemonic intervention at the regional level but in East Asia, we find an equilibrium constructed out of both material and normative forces, defined as a concert, which presents a considerable restraint on all powers, including the U.S. The paper then proceeds to examine these claims through an analysis of the foreign policies of the U.S., Russia, and China over the North Korean nuclear problem that emerged after 2002. It finds that China and Russia have substantive common interests arising from internal and external re-ordering in which they look to strategic partnerships, regional multilateralism, and systemic multipolarization as inter-locking processes. The paper finds that they have collaborated over the Korean crisis to prevent a U.S. unilateral solution but that this should not be construed as a success for an open counterhegemonic strategy as it was only under the constraining conditions of East Asian concert, including the dynamics within the U.S. alliance systems, that this collaboration was successful. Nevertheless, the paper concludes that regional multipolarity and systemic unipolarity are contradictory: a system that exhibits multipolarization at the regional level cannot be characterized as unipolar at the global level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The boards of directors are subject to strong political and contextual pressures that on one side, make difficult the practice of an instructional leadership and, on the other, head for a bureaucratic, managerial and perpetualizing development of its function. The situation is revised by means of resources and significant experts from so disparate locations as the United States of America, Finland, Russia or South Africa. The paper also makes evident the role the main international journals about that field are playing, being one of them directed by one of this paper's author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thesis of this paper is that governments of some otherwise enlightened states are increasingly fearful of acknowledging the restraints imposed on them by existing international law. They are also reluctant to enter into new commitments by way of international conventions that would expand the reach of international law. The paper asks whether these fears are based on a true understanding of international law or on some distorted view of it. It will draw comparisons and some contrasts between Australia and the United States in their reactions to a number of recent events as well as to some enduring situations of contemporary relevance. Had time (and the limits of my research) permitted, one might also have examined public attitudes toward international law in China, Japan, and Russia in this context, where similar fears appear to be entertained. France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, also enlightened states, appear by contrast to belong to a group more dedicated to international law. As Robert Kagan has recently remarked, the experience of two world wars at close quarters, and the formation of the European Union, have made the European countries more dedicated to process, where the United States is more interested in results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to his 1922 emigration to Europe and thence to the United States, Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin had an exceptional intellectual and political career in Russia and the Soviet Union (Sorokin , ; Johnston ; Krotov ). Indeed, he was among the early founders of the science of sociology in his native land, where, according to a relatively recent bibliography (Sorokin ), he produced 162 Russian-language publications between the ages of 21 and 33. This listing includes not only book reviews and journal articles, but also substantial monographs and a two-volume theoretical treatise. While still a relatively young man, Sorokin had thus gained widespread recognition as a scholar of the first rank. He was also the initial chairperson (from 1919 to 1922) of a fledgling department of sociology at the University of Petrograd (St. Petersburg), an elected member of the national Constituent Assembly and an appointed staff member of the 1917 Provisional Government, the first democratic regime in Russia. This much would have sufficed for an entry in a sociological encyclopedia, and Sorokin's political career has few parallels in the history of the field, other than the involvement of Emile Durkheim in French educational policy and the participation of Max Weber in creating the Weimar Republic in Germany. Nevertheless sociologists in the United States and most western historians of the field have not yet appreciated the full influence of the formative period, especially from 1905 to 1922. Lacking familiarity with Russian culture of that era and knowing little about the larger Russian socio-historical milieu, its intellectual discourse and collective memory, they have not been able to comprehend Sorokin's outlook, behavior and professional output in the United States in relation to these earlier contextual factors. This is arguably a fundamental reason why many U.S. sociologists have tended to see Sorokin, especially since 1937, as a marginal figure and to regard his works largely as deviations from accepted social scientific practice. This paper will argue that a more adequate appreciation of Sorokin's background and early adult life illumines both stylistic features of his works in America and also places into proper perspective several of his substantive foci that did not accord with contemporary 'normal science' (Kuhn ). In short, despite his overall assimilation into American society and higher education, including his appointment at Harvard University and his election as president of the American Sociological Association, Sorokin should be understood in large measure as a life-long Russian intellectual. His was a Russian-born sensibility and consciousness-indeed a 'Russian soul'-so deeply ingrained that it stamped his entire professional career in the United States, including his published researches, his popular sociology and his university teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given their complexity and tight coupling, one of the most serious challenges high-reliability organizations (HROs) face is how to innovate, learn, and adapt without upsetting the internal processes that lead to their reliability. This paper describes the success of the United States Navy in using a "platform strategy" to facilitate modular innovation in its attack submarine program while maintaining high reliability. We compare the United States' submarine development program against that of the Soviets, who innovated by building a number of different types of nuclear attack submarines to test their new design concepts and thereby aggressively push both manufacturing and performance limits. We illustrate that, by adopting a platform strategy, the U.S. development program was able to sustain reliability by controlling factors that derived from four classes of concern: 1) operational; 2) manufacturing and design; 3) resource limitations, and 4) cultural constraints. The use of a platform strategy assists in maximizing systemwide organizational learning, which helps enrich a culture of reliability. However, at the same time, a platform strategy can hinder revolutionary and architectural innovation and reduce op- erational flexibility. Finally, we consider whether an HRO's innovation strategy is partially shaped by its decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tremendous progress has been achieved in the last ten years with respect to modeling the combustion of solid propellants. The vastly increased performance of computing capabilities has allowed utilization of calculation approaches that were previously only conceptual. The paper will discuss three areas of emphasis: first, numerical modeling of premixed flames using detailed kinetic mechanisms; second, development of packing models to calculate a geometrical distribution of particles simulating a heterogeneous solid propellant; and finally, calculation of diffusion same effects that are critical in the combustion of AP/hydrocarbon solid propellants. The capability of modeling premixed combustion using detailed kinetic mechanisms has been evolving and successfully applied to solid propellant ingredients based on a one-dimensional approach. Much of the early work was performed at Novosibirsk. The approach allows calculating the burning rate as a function of pressure but also the temperature sensitivity and spatial distributions of temperature and species concentrations. Generalized mechanisms have been developed and applied to many ingredients such as HMX, GAP, RDX, NG, AP, etc. The gas-phase kinetic mechanisms seem to represent the chemistry of these monopropellants and pseudo-propellants consistently well. The burning rates of these monopropellants vary by almost an order of magnitude but are essentially independent of the flame temperature. Various model calculations agree reasonably well with available experimental data. Recent work in the USA has been aimed at describing the geometrical packing of a solid propellant. These models represent significant progress toward such a description. Combining the packing model with a realistic flame model is still a significant challenge. Preliminary results are encouraging, but obviously further work is needed. Also, fundamental calculation of two-dimensional diffusion flames, incorporating realistic kinetics has progressed significantly. Recent results show encouraging promise toward simulating the minute detail involved in determining the burning rates of AP containing propellants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to address the unresolved issue of the degree to which attitudes toward pornography are symbolic of attitudes toward key political organizations. This paper examines the relationships between opposition to commercial nudity as a type of pornography and attitudes toward four political organizations about which conservatives generally display strong feelings. These organizations are the police, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States and Russia. To guard against the possibility of uncontrolled variables distorting the analysis, simultaneous controls for nine additional variables will be employed.

The article discusses the historiography of Russia developed in North America in the post-Soviet period. Topics include the generations of scholarship in Russian historiography and the connections between the generations, with scholarly biographies, as well as anomalies; a discussion of the Bolshevik overthrow of the Tzarist government in 1917 and the consequences of the October Revolution; and the development of historiography as a field within the North American scholarship on post Soviet Russia.