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This article approaches Russia’s strategy of countering the United States indirectly by way of intermediate states. It is concerned with the reasons why Russia decided to engage in the Syrian conflict in 2015 and, from this perspective, the real goals of Russia’s policy in the region. These questions cannot be considered without taking account of how they are linked with the all-out confrontation between Russia and the West in Ukraine. The Syrian conflict merely represents an external platform for Russia in countering the United States. Russia is testing her own power to force the United States out of Syria and seeks any opportunity to demonstrate American vulnerability. There is a triangle of interests for the key regional actors—Turkey, Iran, and Russia—that oppose US interests. The rising confrontation with Washington in Syria triggered Moscow to seek ways of using other potential rivals of the United States, given that there are numerous areas of tension and conflict with Washington beyond the Middle East. The author’s analysis of the actors’ behavior is based on the “security dilemma” and the “balance of power” approaches. There are well-known disputes between “defensive” and “offensive” realism in the theory of international politics concerning which of these approaches is more reliable and reasonable when considering costs and results, as well as the risk of tensions spiraling out of control (“security spiral”). The aim of this research is to make a comparison between America’s offensive strategy with Russia’s defensive approach and evaluate the efficiency of both policies. Following a particular scholarly approach, this article presumes that Moscow acquires power via the indirect, “low-cost strategies,” using any opportunity available to counterbalance US power via other countries. It is concluded that offensive or defensive behavior depends on the situation and available resources. The United States has sufficient resources to implement an offensive strategy, and Washington may raise the stakes in confrontation. Russia’s defense approach of a “buck-passing” strategy is more efficient, but Moscow suffers from a lack of resources and chooses indirect countering, using any means necessary to counterbalance US power in Syria and beyond.

A compelling case can be made to develop a NATO’s missile defence system in response to the advancement of missile technology and the danger of nuclear weapons. However, this development also undermines Russia’s retaliatory capacity, and consequently heightens the offensive potential of nuclear weapons. This article explores the offence/defence posture of NATO’s missile defence plans in terms of both capabilities and strategy. It is argued that NATO is incrementally increasing the strength and reach of its missile defence components, while rejecting any international treaty to regulate and limit their future expansion. This corresponds with a strategy of achieving invulnerability through counterforce and utilising NATO as an ‘insurance policy’ against Russia, to be activated when conflicts arise. We conclude that NATO has the capacity to distinguish between an offensive and defensive posture by discriminating between potential targets, but it has displayed no intention to do so.

A year after assuming power, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government faced a political crisis fomented by the pro-military opposition leader Imran Khan, who mobilized his supporters to protest alleged electoral rigging in the 2013 poll. Khan had to call off the protests after the Pakistani Taliban’s grisly terrorist attack on an army-run school in retaliation for the army’s offensive against them in North Waziristan.

We question the justice of using prison sentences to control hate speech. It is argued that prison sentences should be used only to deter offensive and hateful speech that harms others. However, the harm requirement cannot be satisfied merely by demonstrating theoretical harm in the abstract, as Jeremy Waldron does in his recent book. Instead, factual harm has to be demonstrated because prison is in fact very harmful for the expresser of the offensive and hateful speech. There is noting wrong with penal measures being used to deter this kind of speech, but harmful prison sentences should not be used to deter harmless speech. Waldron asserts that the United States should follow the British model, among others, of using prison to control and chill free (hate) speech. Waldron wants a model of unfree speech for some. We aim to show that the United States should resist enacting hate speech laws similar to the unjust laws found in Britain, where people have received long prison sentences for uttering offensive and hateful thoughts. To use prison sentences is to use a sledgehammer to crack a walnut: it is a grossly disproportionate and unjust penal response. Particular issue is taken with Waldron’s harm theory. The core element of the paper is the Waldron debate, because the type of vacuous harm theory he puts forward has the potential to be used by lawmakers to justify unjust penal responses such as harmful prison sentences for harmless (even though grossly offensive) speech.

This article argues that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's policy changes towards the Muslim Brotherhood were based on their ability to effectively challenge the legitimacy of the regime. This rested on the Islamists’ ability to provide social services via a well-organized structure and network of contact with the ultimate result being that the Muslim Brotherhood garnered a de facto societal legitimacy, if not an official one from the state. In the 1990s, this social Islamist legitimacy was politicized and employed to impel the state to officially recognize the banned Islamists. However, instead of conceding to Islamist pressures, the state launched an offensive campaign to uproot their influence.

The 1968 Tết Offensive was the brainchild of Communist Party Secretary Lêê Duẩn and General Văn Tiến Dũũng. The Hàà Nội government wanted to exploit the 1968 US presidential elections by opening negotiations with the United States. When General Võõ Nguyêên Giááp failed to devise a workable plan to win a military victory to give the communists leverage in the planned negotiations, Lêê Duẩn and Văn Tiến Dũũng pushed the risky plan for a nationwide "general offensive" through a reluctant Politburo in spite of opposition from General Võõ Nguyêên Giááp and Hồ Chíí Minh.

The concept of anomie, as originally developed by Emile Durkheim more than one hundred years ago, connotes a state of lawlessness. What happens in this state is of continued and increased concern, for example, if a government collapses, as in the case of Nazi Germany, or as a consequence of natural disasters, such as hurricane Katrina. Detached evaluation of recent events is impaired because it requires some lapse of time. The essence of lawlessness also prevents resort to traditional legal sources. Thus one is confined to empirical evidence and whatever norms can be derived from them. Essentially, unwritten law emerges in groups of people and in neighborhoods under circumstances of extreme emergencies and in the absence of any organized communal or state power. The evidence from the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945 and taken from the cities of Frankfurt and Berlin indicates a spirit of excitement and raw energy, in other words, an upsurge of vitality that facilitates improvisation under conditions of severe threat to survival. Standards of morality and legal behavior are temporarily suspended in the interest of coping with immediate emergencies. Yet the more serious the state of anomie, the more reactive forces come into play that ultimately gravitate toward reestablishing traditional legal controls. The evaluation is rendered difficult because standards of analysis shift. What seemed to be plausible under circumstances of threat to life and health may appear at a later time to be questionable if not offensive. Throughout these processes traditional criminal law leads a shadowy existence in the minds of people who continue to adhere to core values regardless of the fate of government.

This article explores the strategy deliberation leading up to Hàà N 4i's decision to go to war in 1959, to embark on a "bigger" war in 1963, and to launch the Tet Offensive in 1968. The militants who controlled the party apparatus advanced their agenda for armed conflict in the South at the expense of socialist transformation in the North. While battling their internal opponents, these hardliners also had to navigate the Sino-Soviet split to advance their war agenda. This article reveals that the launching of the Têêt Offensive signified the militants' neutralization of domestic opposition and foreign obstruction through the implementation of a mass purge known as the "Revisionist Anti-Party Affair."

Smell, often characterized as our least evolved or most "base" sense, is often invoked in ethnocentrist and racist discourse intended to create barriers between groups. The offensive smells of a given group's foods are often cited as a reason why they must be kept out of a pre-existing community. This essay argues that the reasons for this phenomenon are rooted in our anxiety about smell itself: it represents a pathway through which the particles of food literally penetrate us: a point of vulnerability. By examining a range of cases, from that of the medieval "Jewish odor" to the modern smells of Indian cooking in middle American kitchens, this essay explores the persistent connection between food smells and inter-ethnic tension.

President Putin started his second term in Russia with overwhelming popularity and power. Ironically, however, since that time he has been confronted with mounting domestic and international problems. The most serious issue is how to deal with increasing terrorist attacks. Putin's political initiatives of centralizing state power in the Kremlin has been criticized domestically and in the West as an attempt to strengthen his grip on power, thereby endangering democracy in Russia.

iPresente! The Young Lords in New York THE BRONX MUSEUM OF THE ARTS JULY 2-OCTOBER 18, 2015 As with any exhibition that attempts to cover a movement--artistic, political, or otherwise--the challenge lies in telling its multiple histories. This past summer, the Bronx Museum of the Arts organized an artistic and cultural exhibition of the Young Lords Organization, the Puerto Rican nationalist group made up of political activists and community organizers. One way the museum tackled the multifaceted aspects of the organization was by spanning the exhibition across three institutions: the Bronx Museum of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, and Loisaida, Inc. The venues had diverging but overlapping content, and were thus able to focus on the relationship of the Young Lords to the Bronx, East Harlem, and the Lower East Side, respectively. iPresente! The Young Lords in New York was a well-researched, engaging, and much-needed presentation that situated the group within a broader historical context. Through photographs, prints, ephemera, and archival material, the exhibition illuminated how the Young Lords successfully harnessed the power of media, worked across organizations, and presented themselves as a strong, unified coalition. Launched on July 26, 1969, as a branch of the Young Lords Organization of Chicago, the New York Lords were comprised of predominantly college-educated and politically active young people. From the beginning, this Latino group acknowledged its multiethnic constituency. Afro-Latinos were active members and leaders within the organization, and the group aligned itself closely with the concerns of the Black Panther Party. In May 1970, the New York group changed its name to the Young Lords Party to reflect its political intentions and activist agenda. Over the course of their relatively brief existence, the group took over a church to provide a free breakfast program, organized a "garbage offensive" in demonstration of substandard sanitary conditions, and set up free health clinics. In addition, they demanded health-care reform, a more holistic approach to education, access to housing, and employment opportunities in their communities. At the Bronx Museum, the main gallery space was organized into ten distinct sections, beginning with a reproduction of the Lords' thirteen-point program, which declared that the organization was a "Revolutionary Political Party Fighting for the Liberation of All Oppressed People." The exhibition also featured a number of visually striking black-and-white images by photographers such as Michael Abramson, Maximo Colon, and Adal Maldonado, who documented important rallies and initiatives, as well as key members in the organization. In Abramson's Augie Selling "Potante," Randall's Island (July 1970), for example, we see a young boy selling copies of Palante (a contraction of "para adelante," meaning "forward" or "right on"), the newspaper written, published, and distributed by the Young Lords. With his outstretched arm and head cocked back mid-yell, the photographer's perspective makes the young boy seem larger than life. It serves as an apt image for the organization itself: a David against the administrative Goliath of a city that had long ignored the predominantly Puerto Rican and Black neighborhoods. Palante was one of several ways in which the Young Lords harnessed the power of media. The bilingual newspaper, issued twice monthly, presented a critique of the current state of affairs to the community. In addition, it was a venue for advocating for a socialist and liberal political ideology. iPresente! displayed several of the paper's front covers, and made available a replica of the July 17, 1970 issue for visitors to take away. In this edition of Palante, a print by Denise Oliver-Velez was included featuring a caricature of two doctors as pigs standing over an operating table. One clumsily attends to the patient while the other clutches a pile of money. …

Several provisions of the German Penal Code deal with conduct perceived to be intolerable and offensive. Punished are public sexual acts, dissemination of certain obnoxious kinds of pornography, (e.g., pornography with children), public display of pornography in general, and incest. Also offensive are abusive statements against minorities, denial of the Nazi genocide, insults against religious denominations, disturbance of religious ceremonies, mistreatments of dead bodies, and desecration of burial sites. Attempts to justify the prohibition of such behavior within the framework of contemporary German penal theory has led to difficulties. Most of these acts do not result in tangible harm to a specific person. In the absence of obvious damages, it is difficult to reconcile these parts of the German Penal Code with general principles concerning the proper range of the criminal law. The most straightforward explanation would simply point to the fact that the actor violated a moral rule. It would be easy to make that claim for most of the listed acts; their prohibition, indeed, is compatible with prevailing moral standards. Such a moral justification, however, runs contrary to the premises of modern German penal theory.

What should film studies do with blatantly racist cartoons from Hollywood's past? This article investigates one test case, George Pal's Little Jasper cartoon series from the 1940s—which provides an array of offensive racist stereotypes—arguing that film historians must confront both its racist strategies and its fascinating mode of production. The cartoons were created from 3D models with exquisite depth and color at a time when cel animation was the norm. Pal's works are complex ideological and aesthetic products that deserve to be studied and debated within the animation canon.

In April 1891 two ships, the Remus and Pemptos, arrived on the Pacific shores of the United States carrying, respectively, fifty-three and twenty-two "low class and densely ignorant" Japanese men and women. The Japanese consulate in San Francisco, alarmed at the adverse publicity and embarrassed by accusations that the Japanese were not adhering to the congressional contract labor laws of 1885, sent two offensive clippings from American newspapers to the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo and exhorted the Japanese government to take quick action to limit emigrants from Japan to the United States.1 The consulate's embarrassment was compounded by congressional legislation later in 1891 which strengthened

Students learn science best by doing science. Therein lies the value of the laboratory experience. Yet, rather than employ cookbook type exercises and predescribed protocols for laboratory work, students come away with a much better experience of what science is when they conduct studentdesigned research projects. Engaging students in research can teach critical thinking, problem solving and analytical skills to all students. Introducing the concept of research/ problem solving to students can be a difficult endeavor. They often believe research and the scientific method are lofty goals for only the brightest students rather than tools to be used in solving everyday problems. Therefore, I start with a fun in-class activity designed to get students thinking about problem-solving utilizing research as a process and have them apply it to a problem to which most can relate. This activity can be completed in as few as 30 minutes or span several weeks coupled with a variety of written exercises. This activity is called "Double Dipping with Seinfeld." Double dipping is the process whereby an individual takes a chip, dips into a dip, bites off a section, and dips a second time with the same chip that has contacted the mouth, possibly returning germs to the dip to which others can be exposed. Most people consider this very offensive behavior, if not an unhealthy practice. Aside from its social considerations, is this really a poor health practice? I challenge the students to come up with a scenario to solve this problem in the following handout (Figure 1). Note that very few instructions accompany the handout. I actually conduct this exercise twice, both times as paper exercises (i.e., no

ghanistan as a countermove to a U.S. diplomatic offensive in the Gulf region that commenced after the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. Faced with the Soviet-backed Tarahki coup in Afghanistan, the removal of the Shah-chief protector of Western interests in the Gulf-and its strained relations with Pakistan, Washington intensified its efforts to safeguard U.S. interests in the area. This drive was manifest as much from the statements made by high U.S. officials in the wake of the Shah's downfall' as from such U.S. actions as the dispatch of an aircraft carrier (ordered by President Carter on March 6, 1979) to the Gulf, the supply of two AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia to monitor the North Yemen-South Yemen fight, delivery of arms to North Yemen, overt and covert attempts to influence and divert the tide of Iran's revolution, and Washington's alleged support to anti-Tarahki Afghan factions. These moves obviously provoked Moscow's reaction. By overreacting to the emerging inevitable realities in the region, Washington thus provided Moscow with the necessary pretext to intervene in Afghanistan. Apart from other consequences, the Soviet action in Afghanistan had a direct bearing on Pakistan's policy. On the one hand, it increased tension in Pakistan-Soviet relations, and, on the other, once again pushed Islamabad towards Washington. The crisis gave new twists and turns to Pak-Soviet ties. But having applied varying pressure devices against one another in the past two years, both countries now appear to be in the mood for a reconciliation. Pakistan's relations with the USSR had begun to show signs of stress following the Afghan coup in April 1978. The Daud government was overthrown by the leftist-oriented Tarahki at a time when it was trying to balance its ties with the West and Pakistan. This created an impression in some

In 1986 high drama, drastic and decisive events, and extreme change or renewal, the traditional hallmarks of the Year of the Tiger, were expected in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) and for good reason. The nation faced the lunar New Year in March reeling from economic crises, dissatisfied with a faltering leadership, frozen in ideological conflict, and suffering from disarray in its foreign relations. Drastic change seemed imperative. As 1986 drew to a close some of the most severe domestic problems had been addressed, but with mixed results. Important leadership changes, both before and after the death of General Secretary Le Duan in midyear, were made to bolster the party line that policies to achieve economic reform undertaken in 1985 are "basically" correct although implementation has been faulty. Nevertheless, despite widespread criticism and self-criticism campaigns and important leadership shifts, economic conditions remained critical and the party appeared to be resorting to rationalizations to reinforce its control. In foreign affairs Vietnam rejected the proposals of the border-based Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) to resolve the standoff in Kampuchea between the Vietnamese occupiers and the resistance movement backed by ASEAN; it refrained from mounting a spring offensive; and it courted the United States by agreeing to provide a full MIA accounting by the end of 1989.

The war in Kampuchea escalated once more in 1983: the dry season offensive, which lasted through April, was more serious, expensive, and bitter than the previous four years of fighting. Both sides displayed a renewed commitment to the battlefield with increased arms build-up, recruitment, and preparations for the 1984 dry season. Coincidentally, neither side presented a compromise that might have broken the diplomatic deadlock over a search for peace. They grew further apart in their appreciation of what is at stake in the Kampuchea conflict, what is the cause, and what are the essentials required for peace. Both sides felt they had strengthened their own institutions and progressed along their chosen paths towards victory to such a degree they believed their opponent had to be weakened as a result. Accordingly, at year's end each side believed the situation had turned in its favor. The Cambodians resisting the Vietnamese occupation took heart from the fact the Vietnamese declined to challenge their credentials at the United Nations in 1983 and from the success of their guerrilla operations in western Kampuchea. The Cambodians of the Heng Samrin regime, installed by the Vietnamese in 1979, were encouraged by the growth of their army and the fact that after five years of fighting the resistance continues to be largely restricted to fighting along the border area with Thailand. Moreover, the Heng Samrin regime consolidated its political control through renewed efforts to build up the communist party in the country, primarily through mass organization. The two sides escalated their political attacks on each other, whittling their rhetoric to one issue. The Heng Samrin regime inaugurated a "National Day of Hatred" (May 20), annually commemorating the horrors of the Pol

THE YEAR BEGAN, like so many before, with a communist dry season offensive in Indochina and the U.S. Congress and administration locked in disagreement over how the United States should respond. However, it was soon plain that this year was not like any of the rest. For one thing, many key figures of past debates-Nixon, Johnson, Fulbright and others-were gone, and their successors had barely begun to learn their lines. More important, the New Year's eve offensive in Cambodia soon placed the Khmer communists in position to choke off vital traffic on the Mekong River. This was the strategy that military observers had long feared would doom Phnom Penh. Yet most of Lon Nol's forces failed to respond. They seemed to have learned from their leaders' actions that the country's fate depended not on what they did but on the unpredictable whims of far-off Washington. Americans, even those who still hoped that Cambodia could, by some miracle, be saved from communist rule, now asked if it was too late to help ease the transition to communism as had been done in Laos. President Ford and Secretary Kissinger argued that the U.S. must aid the Cambodians as long as they wanted to resist their enemy. But to many members of Congress and the American public the argument sounded hollow. President Nixon had done his best to build a back-fire in Cambodia in 1970 in order to gain a "decent interval" for U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. The U.S. had given the Cambodians the means to fight each other, but had given them nothing to fight for, not even a promise of continued U.S. support. Thus, to a growing number of Americans, the least cruel choice seemed to be to try to end the war on the best terms possible. Then, while a Congressional "fact-finding" mission was studying the situation in Phnom Penh, the communists launched their offensive in Vietnam, and Thieu withdrew his forces from several key provinces. The collapse of public confidence in his regime was swift and seemingly

For the past seven years, China has carried out a series of intensive campaigns to woo the Nationalists in Taiwan to accept peace talks, to foster another "united front" cooperation between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT), and to reunify the Chinese mainland and Taiwan under Deng Xiaoping's "one country, two systems" formula. Although Beijing's reunification policy has been carefully and masterfully planned, directed, and pushed, and its peace-talk drive has been extensive and overwhelming, so far these efforts have met with little success. This article aims to examine critically Deng's reunification policy and peace-talk offensive, to look into the main features of his "one country, two systems" formula, to pinpoint the basic policy contradictions in the formula, and to explain why Chiang Ching-kuo and his KMT could not have accepted and will not accept this proposal for peace talks and reunification.

DURING THE MONTHS of March and April of 1975, the U.S. news media were filled with stories about the hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese fleeing before the advancing Front for the Liberation of the people of the southern region of Vietnam (NLF) and North Vietnamese forces. Scenes of masses of humanity clogging the roadways moving from one city to another and people clamoring to get on evacuation aircraft and boats became commonplace on the TV screens throughout the U.S. The reporting of these events was generally filled with much speculation concerning the reasons why people were moving. Various explanations for such a massive movement were put forth. Some correspondents felt that the people were fleeing to escape living under the Communists; others that they were moving to avoid expected battles. Still other reporters saw the massive uprooting as a result of some form of mass hysteria that was sweeping over the people. A few accused the Government of South Vietnam (GVN) of forcing people to move into its rapidly shrinking territory so it could retain control over them. At the time that most of these stories were written events were moving too fast for the journalists to find out more accurately what was actually going on with the refugees. Western correspondents, who did not usually speak Vietnamese, would spend at most a day in the

It is no longer a profanation of Art to assert that political conditions influence creative expression by defining the range of acceptable discourse and by determining who has access to what means of expression. The history of the New Latin American Cinema movement verifies the hypothesis. The revolutionary optimism of the sixties was accompanied in the closing years of the decade by an unprecedented cinematic offensive. Antonio das Mortes, Glauber Rocha's allegory of the Brazilian Northeast, coincided with the epic underground documentary from Argentina, The Hour of the Furnaces. A group of Bolivian film-makers took their cameras to the Andean highlands to film Blood of the Condor. Miguel Littin's The Jackal of Nahueltoro, a documentary-style reconstruction of the crime and punishment of an illiterate peasant, broke Chilean box-office records much as Blood of the Condor's denunciation of forced sterilization did in Bolivia. Cuba produced the complex and compelling Memories of Underdevelopment and, months later, Lucia. Despite variations in form, style, and method, these films shared a common genesis and a common goal. Deeply rooted in the needs and aspirations of their own people, they were determined to preserve and cultivate their countries' cultural heritage and to reinforce it against deforming cultural exports from the developed world. Such simultaneity was no coincidence; it was the product of common conditions which generated a similar awareness and sparked a parallel response. As Brazilian film-maker Leon Hirszman has ob

"IN THE FALL the war was always there, but we didn't go to it any more." While for the first time in a decade it was entirely a Vietnamese war, I came away from interviewing official and involved Americans with a sense of deja vu as profound as that evoked by the opening lines of Ernest Hemingway's "In Another Country." As he has for four years, President Thieu of South Vietnam maintained that the North Vietnamese would try one more offensive before "fading away" and as American officials in Saigron and Washington have warned since the Tet Offensive of 1968: "The real battleground for Vietnam is capitol hill." Nineteen seventy-four was the first year, however, when many officials thought they would actually lose the battle for a Vietnam aid appropriation, and there was genuine uncertainty among U.S. officials about whether the Thieu government and the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) could withstand a full scale North Vietnamese offensive. As this article appears, the outcome of both battles may already be in doubt.

BECAUSE NO POLITICAL SYSTEM can be regarded as intrinsically peaceful towards other systems, the intentions of the actors in a situation of potential conflict cannot be taken as a reliable basis for peace. It might be more reasonable to think that peace under a condition of mutual distrust is a function of deterrence-i.e., a potential aggressor is restrained from aggression for fear that the victim and/ or its allies will retaliate and inflict an unacceptable level of damage on the aggressor. It is assumed that a potential aggressor makes a more or less conscious effort to be rational and engages in a sort of cost-benefit analysis before launching an attack.1 Deterrence would be extremely difficult to achieve if actors were regarded as highly irrational. In considering the case of the Korean peninsula as a potential situation of conflict, it is assumed that neither North Korea nor South Korea is intrinsically peaceful or aggressive. Whether one launches an attack against the other will be more extrinsically than intrinsically determined. In such a determination, each country's estimate of the other's war-related capabilities will be critical. In a situation where nuclear weapons are present and accompanied by a willingness to use them, deterrence may not require a military balance. Even if it is inferior, the defensive side would still have sufficient means of inflicting an unacceptable level of damage to the offensive side. However, in a non-nuclear situation, military balance seems to be a necessary if not sufficient condition for deterrence.2

FOREIGN POLICY QUESTIONS preoccupied the attention of the North Korean leadership to an unusual degree in 1974 in response to the fundamental changes taking place in the Asian international environment. The major foreign policy goals continue to be completion of the revolution in all of Korea and promotion of socialist construction and, by so doing, contribution to the development of a world revolution. No distinction between domestic policy objectives and foreign policy objectives is entertained. Foreign policy is viewed as another instrument, or a set of undertakings, for implementing important national tasks. To increase solidarity with international revolutionary forces, North Korea must: 1) strengthen ties with the third world countries as well as socialist countries; 2) establish diplomatic relations with South Korea's allies and, if possible, cut off South Korean ties with these nations; 3) forestall South Korea's effort to develop ties with socialist countries; 4) seek membership and participation in all types of international organizations, and 5) capture the allegiance of overseas Korean residents and mobilize them for its cause. The Soviet Union and China: From the North Korean perspective, the Soviet Union and China provide assurance for North Korean independence and security. These fraternal socialist countries are the forces to be relied upon in order to neutralize U.S. and Japanese capabilities. North Korea depends on the Soviet Union and China as a springboard for its diplomatic offensive, expecting to ride on the coattails of their power and influence in the international arena. North Korea's anguish over the Sino-Soviet conflict is tempered by an awareness that it provides the country with a measure of maneuverability and it attempts, with considerable success, to maintain a neutral stance. The Soviet Union and China have so far refrained from responding to South Korea's overtures for the development of contacts. North Korea's objection is not the sole reason for their negative attitude, but it is a powerful and effective one. Whether the public positions taken by the Soviet Union and China in support of North Korea's position represent pro-forma diplomatic support or genuine feeling, is another matter. Despite North Korea's apparent and professed confidence in the loyalty of its allies-specially China, whose relationship is characterized by "friendship and military unity forged and sealed in blood"-Western observers claim to perceive contra

THE NATURE OF THE PROTRACTED conflict within and over Kampuchea has made it most unlikely that any form of political settlement can precede a decisive change in the military fortunes of the belligerent parties. In practical terms, such a change would mean either the elimination of the Khmer Rouge resistance or the inability of the Vietnamese to sustain their expeditionary force in the field, whether as the direct result of a loss of political will or from their Soviet patron's unwillingness to continue in the role of quartermaster. Neither of these two prospects materialized during the course of the year. The Vietnamese expeditionary force has remained entrenched within Kampuchea, sustained and reinforced by Soviet benefaction but without being able to destroy the military arm of the Khmer Rouge. For their part, the Khmer Rouge have demonstrated a resilient capacity for survival as a viable insurgency but have not posed a major immediate threat to the security of the government in Phnom Penh. Nonetheless that capacity for survival has been significant in servicing a process of attrition designed to inflect a breaking strain on Vietnamese society. An anticipated dry season offensive by the Vietnamese did not occur in any conventional sense. Counterinsurgency operations were stepped up from the beginning of 1980 in western Kampuchea with the object of exercising more effective control of the border area with Thailand. Limited sweeps were undertaken but actual engagements were not decisive. For example, in January an attack was launched on a Khmer Rouge position at Phnom Chat north of Poipet which could not be pressed home because the defending force was able to retreat through mined and booby-trapped jungle. Less accessible Khmer Rouge redoubts to the south in the Phnom Malai and the Cardamom Mountains were not the object of direct attack.

A MAJOR TURNING POINT of the war in South Vietnam was the loss of Phuoc Long Province 70 miles north of Saigon on January 7, 1975, after a three-week communist offensive. It was not of great strategic importance but it was the first province to fall since the temporary loss of Quang Tri in 1972, and this time national mourning was proclaimed. To the writer, in Saigon at the time, the public reaction was one of mounting apprehension mixed with widespread cynicism; corruption in the Army was believed by many to be so gross that outpost defenders were having to pay other units for artillery support and air supply. The dread in Saigon was compounded by the knowledge that the North Vietnamese gradually had extended the "Ho Chi Minh trail" after the 1973 ceasefire into a network of all-weather roads from the North through Laos and Cambodia, cutting down travel time to the Mekong delta from four months of night marches to 17 days.' The government had moved belatedly in August 1974 to thin out and consolidate its over-extended outpost system in the delta (as the communists had done earlier), abandoning a considerable number in the process since it could no longer afford the prodigious artillery and air support to which it had become accustomed through American training.2 The communists had built up their forces considerably and varying estimates of their eventual total strength in the South ranged up to 350,000 regular northern combat and supply troops plus 100,000 southern guerrillas. The government had about 465,000 regulars plus 1,400,000 local defense personnel and over a half million men in other paramilitary formations; its airforce of about 1200 operational aircraft at any given time was the only one used in action (aside from two small

THE GOVERNMENT IN Seoul is preoccupied with the question of how to defend South Korea from a possible renewed attack from North Korea. Many officials in Seoul believe that Pyongyang's demand for a U.S. military withdrawal from South Korea is part of an overall strategy of forcing a military showdown with the South. North Korea's military plans might include, according to observers in Seoul: (1) a conventional military attack on Seoul, using either a limited "lightning war" action or an all-out offensive; (2) initiating guerrillatype operations by infiltrating a force of its troop to the rear in the guise of a rebellious South Korean unit; and (3) calling for an immediate ceasefire after the initial thrust to increase world sympathy for its cause.' To demonstrate such a possibility, South Korea points out that Seoul, with a population of close to seven million, is militarily vulnerable to an all-out North Korean attack because it is only 30 miles from the border; that North Korea constructed a series of so-called underground invasion tunnels across the Demilitarized Zone, two of which have been uncovered so far; and that Pyongyang has obtained increased diplomatic support from nonaligned third world countries in recent years.2

Communist China's trade and aid relations with the economically underdeveloped countries of the non-communist world would appear to be more purely political in inspiration than her economic contacts with the industrialized powers of the West. Seen from the standpoint of longrange Chinese objectives, trade with and credits from the West help in the development of China by providing urgently needed industrial equipment denied it by the U.S.S.R., while China's trade with and aid to the noncommunist countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America may in time help spread Chinese-type communism in vast and key strategic areas of the world. In China's present thin-cabbage soup era, such trade and aid are economic luxuries indulged in out of political necessity. They are in the nature of political insurance for the future. The Chinese leadership did not take long to realize that their dispute with the Soviet Union made an active foreign policy necessary if China was not to be isolated and her theories on the construction of a world communist system frustrated. The threat of isolation from the existing world communist movement was countered by the Chinese in a variety of ways which included the setting up of Chinese factions within non-ruling communist parties, as well as trade with and aid to Albania, Cuba, North Korea, North Vietnam, and Outer Mongolia.' The danger of losing an important voice in the conduct of world affairs is being combatted by a diplomatic, cultural, and economic offensive in the newly independent countries of Asia and Africa. The theoretical counterpart of these policy measures is the doctrine of the primacy of the "national liberation movements" in the struggle to build a world communist system.

In a session devoted to the British Empire, in which British policy towards native races and questions of early settlements in the overseas dominions have been discussed, a place may perhaps be found for a short discussion of a phase of the most pressing problem in the world today, the preservation of peace among nations. The wide-flung British Empire has a very special interest in this problem. Although it is impossible to make a distinction between a "peace world" and a "war world," it is possible to differentiate between a world in which the vast majority of nations is attempting to maintain peace by means of collective agreements, and a world in which the nations are proceeding individually or in small groups to achieve this purpose and are forming defensive and offensive alliances. Since 1919 the tendency has been towards closer international co-operation for the preservation of peace. But there has been a counter tendency towards economic nationalism, which if pursued to the uttermost would produce not only economic conflicts but even military operations between nations.

ened splits within various Sohyo affiliates, particularly the miners, teachers, electrical and auto workers. Encouraged by employers, rival unions were set up in a number of enterprises. The "peace force" theory also shook the Left Socialists. Some Sohyo unions, such as the synthetic chemical workers, criticized it as a departure from strict neutralism, and a splintering of the party was narrowly averted at its January convention, when an attempt by Sohyo to capture the party ma? chinery was thwarted. The fail of 1953 saw a lessening of union political pressure, with economic issues coming to the fore, as unions regrouped their forces. However, a spring offensive in 1954 fed not only on wage demands but on other issues, many of them political: the MSA agree? ment, rearmament, restrictions on political activities of public school teachers, revision of labor relations ma? chinery in government enterprises, dismissals of govern? ment railway union officials, reductions in government personnel, relaxation of the Labor Standards Law, re

On February 10, 1965, the Socialist Party rocked the Japanese political scene with a charge that the Japanese military was planning a coup d'etat and reestablishment of an authoritarian type of government. Socialist representative Okada Haruo stated that the plan to take over was detailed in the 1963 General Defense Plan of Operation. The furor was intensified by Premier Sato's confusing answer, first denying the existence of such a plan, and later not only acknowledging its existence but defending it.' Okada reported that the plans, now publicly referred to as Mitsuya Kenkyu (Three Arrows Study), contained the following points: 1. Japan will be an integral part of the United States Far Eastern strategy and as such will serve as the base for U.S. operations. 2. The Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF) will train jointly with U.S., South Korean and Formosan troops. 3. In case of another Korean crisis, the SDF will fulfill defensive assignments which include helping to blockade the eastern coast of China and supporting U.S. offensive action by serving as a reserve force in Japan as well as in Korea and Manchuria. 4. During the emergency period, all activity will be conducted on a basis of total mobilization. Necessary agencies to control and regulate industry, communications, transportation, information media and all economic activity, including the allocation of civilian and military material, and prices, banks and financial institutions will be established.2

The cruel frontless war against the Communist-directed guerrilla movement dwarfed or directed all other policies of the Republic of Vietnam during 1962. As the year began, the Communists were in the clear ascendancy. Radio Hanoi had claimed in late 1961 that the National Liberation Front, as the movement calls itself, had "liberated" 1,100 of 1,290 villages in the southern region of the Republic and 4,000 of 4,400 hamlets in the central highlands. The claim does not appear to be too much inflated, for the Communists had in fact extended their influence, in varying degrees, to about 80% of the Vietnamese countryside. Where this influence was strong, the government administration had been ejected entirely from the villages and hamlets or else was hemmed into well-protected district or village centers. Where this influence was partial, officials lived in constant fear or followed government orders by day and Communist orders by night. The Civil Guard, a paramilitary organization under the jurisdiction of the province chiefs, and the village-based Self-Defense Corps made little effort to seek out the enemy but rather holed up in their defense posts and bunkers; and even regular troops ran strong risks when they entered areas of heavy Communist control. The erosion of government authority outside the cities had been moving at an accelerated pace since late 1959, when the Vietnamese Communists launched their military offensive in an already politically prepared countryside. The Communist advance was slowed down, if not halted, during 1962. Primarily responsible was the tremendous build-up in the Vietnamese government's armed capability during the year, and a determination to drive the Communists away from the cities, out of the villages, and back into their base areas in the mountains, swamps, and other uninhabited parts of the country. In the first place, the size of the government's armed forces increased by two-thirds, the army rising to 200,000, the Civil Guard to 72,000, and the Self-Defense Corps to 80,000. In addition, the government began arming special defense groups formed in loyal villages and hamlets. Secondly, the quality of the armed forces was improved appreciably. The Civil Guard and Self-Defense Corps, which had been ragamuffin outfits, ill-trained, ill-equipped, and generally neglected, at last received the attention which their important auxiliary role in the country's defense deserved. The United States provided the financial support and military hardware for this build-up. Indeed, it has given the Ngo Dinh Diem government all needed means to fight the war, including attack bombers, troop-carrying helicopters, amphibious assault vehicles, and patrol vessels.

D ERIDED, MALIGNED, and glossed over by critics as he has been, Thackeray's narrator in Vanity Fair demands reappraisal: Vanity Fair succeeds because of its narrator, not despite him. The narrator is the principle of unification for the book: his attitudes unify its plot and modulate its tone. A perpetual moralist, here guiding the reader's reaction to events, there calling attention to his own realistic craftsmanship, he consistently rejects vain standards in both life and literature. If such "overt, distinguishable rhetoric" (to use Wayne Booth's phrase)1 of a reliable narrator's continual presence is offensive to many contemporary critics,2 for them to argue the narrator away as an unfortunate excrescence is to deny the book. Thackeray uses his rhetoric so that the reader will realize the truth of the theme of Vanity Fair and will sense the

LAST YEAR, in the pages of The Reporter, Marya Mannes praised without discrimination all the British Broadcasting Corporation's programs for children. It was not clear from her article how much of what she praised she had seen or listened to; she had, at any rate, looked at the Radio Times and noted what was available. Certainly, what is available is less offensive than much of what American radio and television provide for children, but this is negative praise. I have had nearly two years of the B.B.C. now, and my enthusiasm is more restrained than Miss Mannes's. During the debate on "horror comics" which engaged everyone's attention in England last year, the National Union of Teachers published a list of approved comics, which were described as "harmless or educational [my italics]." I am afraid that the "Children's Hour" on the B.B.C. television and radio falls too often

In early 1968, the official news agency of the Pathet Lao insurgents reported on meetings being held in the areas under their control to celebrate the victory of the "liberation forces" in Laos and in neighboring Vietnam. Whether the Tet offensive, which was so costly to the Viet Cong, can be termed a "victory" is debatable, but there is no doubt that the Pathet Lao in 1968 had every reason to be pleased with their military position. In 1963, Prince Souphanouvong, titular head of the "leftist" faction in the tripartite government of national union, left the capital of Vientiane to resume the military struggle to "liberate" Laos. The country has been devastated in that renewed civil war, which has had international overtones because of Laos' strategic location in Southeast Asia, particularly its logistic importance to North Vietnam. Ever since World War II, the North Vietnamese Communists have sponsored and nurtured Laotian insurgency, furnishing guidance, training, material and weapons, and military manpower.1 The massive military presence of the North Vietnamese in Laos in recent years has had a dual function: to protect the Ho Chi Minh Trail access to South Vietnam and to provide the punch behind the Lao insurgents' challenge to the Royal Lao Government (RLG). In 1968, total North Vietnamese military strength in Laos was placed at about 40,000 men, augmenting the 30,000 indigenous Pathet Lao forces.2 To fight them, the RLG has put 70,000 men in the field, with substantial U.S. economic and military assistance.

I GREATLY esteem the honor of having been invited to deliver this Charter Day Address to the great University of California. The Australian prime minister thought it important that I should accept your gesture as further proof of your desire that our countries should work together as closely and harmoniously in the Pacific after the war as we have been compelled by stern military necessity and a common vital interest to work together since December, 1941. For without evidencing the slightest trace of complacency we can look back with justifiable pride at what has been accomplished in the Pacific since the black months of 1942. First, the enemy's powerful and determined southern and eastern thrusts were arrested. Later a purely defensive or holding war was, under American leadership, gradually converted into a developing and enveloping offensive. Despite the great sacrifices involved in the waging of total war by the democracies, not only our two governments but also our two peoples are sternly resolved to pursue the Pacific enemy until final victory is achieved, even though further ordeals are ahead of us. We know that this is the very first condition of a sound postwar order in the Pacific. At the same time successes both in Europe and in the Pacific permit us, indeed compel us, to plan now lest our children or their children be afflicted with the tragedy of a third world war. After the First World War the victorious democracies had the ball at their feet, but they fumbled their opportunities. Between the two world wars preventable poverty and unemployment afflicted our peoples, especially our youth. Because we did not work together,, fascism was allowed to become a menace, first to a few countries, and then to the peace of the whole world. You can be sure that not only in Germany, Italy, and Japan, but elsewhere persons of fascist conviction or sympathy will endeavor to repeat the machinations which between ! 918 and 1939 nearly succeeded in the establishment of a world dictatorship without even a fight. Indeed but for the tenacity of a few-a very few-nations, the war would have ended in irreparable disaster. The great question is-will all this be allowed to happen again? That depends upon the strength and direction of our common will.