US Strategy in the Pacific – Geopolitical Positioning for the Twenty-First Century

This article seeks to apply IR theory to the US presence in the Pacific. It analyses the ways in which geopolitical considerations of position are at the heart of US security strategy in the Pacific. It argues that America's long-term security position in the Pacific is a basic geopolitical matter; be it in terms of traditional geopolitics (regional position as “location”) and in terms of critical geopolitics (regional position as “power and aspirations”). In looking at US security strategy in the Pacific, three geopolitical features are noticeable: (1) Mahanian seapower tenets, (2) overlapping competitive US-China concerns focused around the two island chains in the Western Pacific, and (3) the internal balancing carried out by the US in the Pacific which is particularly focused on Guam.     

Introduction: Postnational Politics in the European Union

During the Cold War, “buffer” or “bastion” seemed a popular metaphor to describe Turkey. After the Cold War, “bridge,” (and, to some extent, the “crossroad”) metaphor started to dominate the Turkish foreign policy D??course. This article traces the use of “bridge” metaphor in this D??course in the post-Cold War period by the Turkish foreign policy elite. It develops two arguments. First, the word bridge is a “metaphor of vision” combining Turkey's perceived geographical exceptionalism with an identity and a role at the international level. As a “metaphor of vision,” the employment of the word “bridge” highlighted Turkey's liminality and justified some of its foreign policy actions to Eurasia and then to the Middle East. Second, because the bridge metaphor was used in different context to justify different foreign policy choices, its meaning has changed, illustrating that metaphors are not static constructs. It concludes by Say?ng that the continuous use of “bridge” metaphor might reinforce Turkey's “liminality,” placing Turkey in a less classifiable category than the regular “othering” practices.     

Global hospital and operative costs associated with various ventral cavity procedures: a comprehensive literature review and analysis across regions

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of this literature review was to provide a comprehensive report on hospital costs, and cost components, for a range of ventral cavity surgical procedures across three regions of focus: (1) Americas, (2) Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and (3) Asia-Pacific.

Methods: A structured search was performed and utilized a combination of controlled vocabulary (e.g., “Hepatectomy”, “Colectomy”, “Costs and Cost Analysis”) and keywords (e.g. “liver resection”, “bowel removal”, “economics”). Studies were considered eligible for inclusion if they reported hospital-related costs associated with the procedures of interest. Cost outcomes included operating room (OR) time costs, total OR costs, ward stay costs, total admission costs, OR cost per minute and ward cost per day. All costs were converted to 2018 USD.

Results: Total admission costs were observed to be highest in the Americas, with an average cost of $15,791. The average OR time cost per minute was found to vary by region: $24.83 (Americas), $14.29 (Asia-Pacific), and $13.90 (EMEA). A cost-breakdown demonstrated that OR costs typically comprised close to 50%, or more, of hospital admission costs. This review also demonstrates that decreasing OR time by 30?min provides cost savings approximately equivalent to a 1-day reduction in ward time.

Conclusion: This literature review provided a comprehensive assessment of hospital costs across various surgical procedures, approaches, and geographical regions. Our findings indicate that novel processes and healthcare technologies that aim to reduce resources such as operating time and hospital stay, can potentially provide resource savings for hospital payers.     

The effect of strategic alliances on firm productivity in South Korea

Using a rich firm-level data set from South Korea, this article analyses the impact of strategic alliances on firm performance, focusing on how firm productivity is affected by alliance types such as joint venture, joint technical development, technical alliance, joint marketing and coproduction as well as alliance structures such as intra- and inter-industry alliances. Total factor productivity (TFP) is estimated through the semi-parametric method suggested by Levinsohn and Petrin (2003). In addition, a two-stage least-squares (2SLS) method is applied to reduce the potential endogenous problem between productivity and strategic alliance choices. The empirical results found in this article indicate that the engagement in joint ventures positively affects firm productivity and that the formation of international intra-industry alliances has a positive impact on firm productivity.     

American Overreach: Strategic Interests and Millennial Ambitions in the Middle East

This article argues that American actions in the Middle East designed to advance democracy and/or ‘moderation’ tend to yield perverse outcomes that frustrate the aspirations of local actors while undermining the values purportedly being promoted by the US. In order to explain these contradictions, we emphasise the linkage between policies of democracy promotion and long-standing American commitments both to millennialism and geographical omnipresence. As a result of these policies and geopolitical vision, we argue that ‘democracy promotion’ often devolves into a simple defence of American interest – by producing electoral outcomes intended to strengthen local agents seen as compliant with US regional priorities. In this context, the shift from democracy promotion to a policy of pursuing ‘moderation’ in the region, understood as support for American policies, is entirely coherent. Commentators tend to present this shift (particularly in the wake of the Iraq War) as recognition by US political actors of the imperial overtones embedded in more heavy-handed approaches to regime change. Yet, the call for moderation is itself profoundly intertwined with American millennial aspirations, while remaining remarkably devoid of clear content and thus equally amenable to manipulation for strategic ends. By way of conclusion, we suggest an alternative basis for a less intrusive American position in the region, one that rejects the need for an overstretched territorial presence and that is grounded in a substantive respect for local self-determination.     

Border Bargains and the “New” Sovereignty: Canada-US Border Policies from 2001 to 2005 in Perspective

From 2001 to 2005 Canada and the US dramatically altered the way each country views its border. In response to the attacks on New York City and Washington DC, Canada and the US entered into three important partnerships: the Smart Borders Agreement (SBA), the Container Security Initiative (CSI), and the Security Prosperity Partnership (SPP). These arrangements will be conceptualised here as “tacit bargains” whereby Canada provided the US with security in hope of renewed trust and economic accessibility. These “tacit bargains” required a concession of traditional state sovereignty so that stable and predictable relations between both countries could continue. While this process is ostensibly a violation of state sovereignty, the argument presented here is that these three “tacit bargains” represent a transition of “old” sovereignty to “new” sovereignty.     

Life Science Innovation and the Restructuring of the Pharmaceutical Industry: Merger, Acquisition and Strategic Alliance Behaviour of Large Firms

This article explores the transformative nature of the life sciences in the context of pharmaceutical mergers, acquisitions and strategic alliances. Drawing on interviews with senior scientists and managers from large pharmaceutical firms, and secondary data on general industry trends, it identifies diverse company strategies for capturing and exploiting new technologies/knowledge and explores their implications for innovation. The article suggests that mergers, acquisitions and strategic alliances represent a cluster of related activities that provide various strategic options for managing innovation and productivity deficit. However, because the preferred balance between in-house R&D and externally sourced knowledge depends on a number of firm-specific factors, as well as challenges posed by the external operating environment, there is increasing variation between large companies in how these activities are exploited and strategically managed.     

The ‘Greater Middle East’ as a ‘Modern’ Geopolitical Imagination in American Foreign Policy

This article aims at analysing how the September 11 terrorist attacks have caused the formation of a new geopolitical vision of an area called the ‘Greater Middle East’ and how this formation has led to changes in US foreign policy towards this region. To do that, the article first presents a theoretical background against which the modern geopolitical imagination of the USA is formulated. It considers the links between national traumas/myths, geopolitical codes and visions, and foreign policy actions. The article then applies this analysis to the case of the Greater Middle East with respect to how this imagined geography shapes the foreign and security policy of the USA. It concludes that even though this imagined region has been presented in texts as justifying US-led policies with liberal underpinnings, it has in reality laid the ground for and been used for justifying US extra-territorial intervention in the region.     

China Bashing: Does Trade Drive the “Bad” News about China in the USA?

A monthly index of “bad” news about China as reported in the USA from January 1990 to December 2008 is developed in this paper. “Bad” is defined as news touching on the following issues: human rights, Tibet, child labor, democracy, and repression. Using this bad news index, this paper documents a peculiar finding: 3–4 months after a trade deficit shock to the US–China bilateral trade balance, the frequency of bad news published about China by US media outlets rises sharply, then dies off slowly. Statistical analysis reveals that the likelihood that this finding is just a coincidence is relatively small—about 1%. In addition, this paper finds a robust association between the annual number of Congressional hearings on China and the US–China bilateral trade deficit. These results suggest that “China bashing” may be endogenous to fluctuations in the US–China bilateral trade balance.     

国际经济格局变动中的区域主义发展新趋势

本文研究指出全球化再造过程中新区域主义的特点和发展趋势,以及由此引发的学术界研究方法的巨大变革和对世界经济格局变动的影响,通过对美墨加协定、下一代欧盟复苏计划、东亚一体化RCEP协定的研究,论证了区域主义和全球化之间的关系,研究RTA本身与WTO是否一致,梳理并分析区域贸易协定是全球自由贸易的绊脚石还是垫脚石的争论,得出北美和欧盟的区域主义是全球化的“绊脚石”,更多是替代作用且具有防御性,而东亚的区域主义则是全球化的“垫脚石”,发挥互补作用且具有开拓性,RCEP在内容上是WTO的升级版,在范围上是WTO的降级版,中国未来在WTO改革、全球治理和人类命运共同体构建方面将担负更大的使命,通过新区域主义的形式推进全球化治理与改革,从“外围”走向“中心”。     

Does Inter‐jurisdictional Competition Engender a “Race to the Bottom”? A Meta‐Regression Analysis

A growing literature documents the existence of strategic political reactions to public expenditure between rival jurisdictions. These interactions can potentially create a downward expenditure spiral (“race to the bottom”) or a rising expenditure spiral (“race to the top”). However, in the course of identifying the existence of such interactions and ascertaining their underlying triggers, the empirical evidence has produced markedly heterogeneous findings. Most of this heterogeneity can be traced back to study design and institutional differences. This article contributes to the literature by applying meta‐regression analysis to quantify the magnitude of strategic inter‐jurisdictional expenditure interactions, controlling for study, and institutional characteristics. We find several robust results beyond confirming that jurisdictions do engage in strategic expenditure interactions, namely that strategic interactions: (i) are weakening over time, (ii) are stronger among municipalities than among higher levels of government, and (iii) appear to be more influenced from tax competition than yardstick competition, with capital controls and fiscal decentralization shaping the magnitude of fiscal interactions.     

Innovation and new public water

ABSTRACT

Technological innovation has made significant improvements to water services but water delivery remains largely unchanged since Victorian times. This is because water is an essential, non-substitutable resource with little potential for economies of scale. By contrast, there has been dynamic innovation in the governance of water services, with privatization now giving way to a significant shift back to public ownership and management, with new and creative forms of societal engagement. This article reviews these governance changes through the lens of a “hydrosocial cycle”, arguing that innovations in “new public water” can only be achieved by recognizing how water-society relations take place.     

Breaker of Barriers? Notes on the Geopolitics of the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham

In the last two years, the so-called “Islamic State in Iraq and Sham” has transformed the Syrian Civil War, effecting serious confrontations in Iraq and Lebanon, dismantling security regimes along the Iraq-Syria border, and causing the mass exodus of ethno-religious communities across the region. These dramatic events are often interpreted through the official rhetoric of the group itself, which draws on discourses of the “Sykes-Picot” conspiracy and narratives of returning to Islamic principles. Tempting though it is to deconstruct such rhetoric on its own, efforts in this direction have over-emphasised its Islamic and territorial elements to the detriment of a deeper understanding of the locally varying, strategic nature of ISIS’s activities in the Middle East. Accordingly, this paper considers how local interests articulate with ISIS’s transnational movement, looking at their activities along the border region of Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. It begins with a discourse analysis of one important narrative in early analysis of ISIS’s “border-breaking” rhetoric, the narrative of Sykes-Picot, before laying out how geographers have engaged with the geopolitics of radical Islamist militant groups more generally. Then drawing on a combination of secondary sources and ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey and Jordan, it elaborates how the politics of place shapes ISIS’s political practice, using the example of the Syrian-Iraqi borderland (the Jazirah). In doing so, I hope to emphasise the relative importance of historical-geographic context over discourse and narrative for understanding the actions of ISIS.     

Geopolitics and the Genealogy of Free Trade Zones in the Persian Gulf

Free trade zones have been championed by policy makers as important mechanisms for the “economic liberalisation” and “globalisation” of the Middle East. While a growing number of political economists have begun to investigate the performance of these projects, few have considered why states voluntarily limit their sovereign powers by establishing these liberalised territories. To address this question, this paper studies the Jebel Ali free trade zone in Dubai (UAE) and the Kish free trade zone in Iran, two of the earliest such projects in the region. Rather than being products of neoliberal ideology or pressure from advanced industrial economies, the essay argues that paradoxically these zones were developed by the Iranian state and Dubai emirate to project territorial sovereignty in turbulent geostrategic settings and moments as well as nodes to circulate rent to domestic and international members of ruling coalitions. The geostrategic and state-building logics informed when, where, and how these projects were developed. More generally, this analysis illustrates that the Middle East is neither absent from the process of globalisation, nor does it simply respond passively and reactively to this complex process. Free trade zones are an example of local strategies working in consort with international processes to fashion new forms of economic and political interconnectedness.     

Current global imbalances and the Keynes Plan: A Keynesian approach for reforming the international monetary system

This paper proposes a “logical experiment”, illustrating how alternative international monetary systems may produce opposite results in the global economy. In the current organisation, “key currencies” work as international money. Keynes, by contrast, proposed that this role should be assigned to a supranational, “credit” money. While the world currently lives in an asymmetric regime, which lead to what has been defined as a “balance of financial terror”, Keynes tried to achieve a more peaceful type of “international balance”. I argue that the structural reform and the technical provisions proposed by the “Keynes Plan” may still – at least in principle – provide useful remedies for international disequilibria, by remedying the asymmetries of the current international payments architecture and helping to curb both inflationary and deflationary pressures on the world economy.     

Along the Borgesian Frontier: Excavating the Neighbourhood of “Wider Europe”

What would a non-Eurocentric European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) look like? Starting off with this perhaps “impossible” question, the first half of the article traces recent shifts in thinking about ENP on the part of EU administrators and intellectuals who argue for a strengthened and reinvigorated neighbourhood policy around the Southern Mediterranean, Middle East and CIS countries, through what has now been termed a differentiated “ENP plus”. Parsing recent EU reports, opinions and speeches, it isolates a crucial ambiguity within this re-framed policy landscape regarding ENP's relationship to the previous round of EU expansion, which has important political consequences for how ENP currently envisions the thorny problem of transition within the neighbourhood. The second half of the article draws on a parable by the Argentinean novelist-philosopher Jorge Luis Borges to frame more sharply the problem of cartographic representation embedded within ENP. Applying the neologism of a “Borgesian frontier” to the space of the European Neighbourhood, the paper concludes by suggesting some potential pathways for re-imagining this space in ways that work along with, rather than are “blind” to, contradictions inherent to Europe's newly minted external borderland. At stake, the article argues, is a politics that can properly re-envision regions of the world located at the limits of Europe's sovereign spatial imagination.     

知识联盟阶段性演化的四维透视

作为战略联盟的高级形态,知识联盟将随着经济业态和企业发展目标的变化而不断演进。在对国内外文献进行系统梳理的基础上,从企业联盟能力变迁、联盟生命延续周期、知识投入产出变迁以及企业间信任水平变迁4个维度,透视了知识联盟演进的阶段特征,试图找出该领域进一步研究的方向。     

Managing Strategic Alliances in China （2） ——- Analysis and Successful Factors

A creating effective strategic alliance is a useful method for the global expansion of intemational companies and managing strategic alliances is an important research project to the success of strategic alliances. This paper focuses on the practical problems of strategic alliances in China and explores how to manage such alliances. This research aims to introduce the basic background of strategic alliances, analyze the primary reason for the current situation of strategic alliances, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of strategic alliances, then give the successful factors managing strategic alliances and discuss what should be done in future research about strategic alliances.     

Bordering Borderscapes: Australia’s Use of Humanitarian Aid and Border Security Support to Immobilise Asylum Seekers

This article documents Australia’s use of border security support and humanitarian aid as border externalisations immobilising asylum seekers as far from Australia as possible. The Australian Government frames border securitisation through regionalism, as an effort to achieve a “regional solution” to asylum seeking irregular migration. Correspondingly, scholars have documented Australia’s externalisations in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. However, Australia’s efforts are not regionally circumscribed and this article analyses the spatial and temporal flexibility of Australia’s border externalisations; Australia’s strategy of targeting borderscapes of asylum seeking as they emerge and change. In doing so, the article examines how the Australian Government has assembled externalisations in South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Australia’s use of humanitarian aid to make places housing asylum seekers more hospitable, yet confining, to the displaced is detailed. Also analysed is Australia’s border security support to source countries and countries of first asylum to immobilise asylum seekers. The article demonstrates that Australia has sought to manifest not only a territorial buffer zone in Southeast Asia, but use border externalisations in the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa to secure places and displaced populations. This is argued to be a preventative strategy of risk management designed to preempt future asylum geographies and forge extraterritorial migration control.     

US Policy and the Geopolitics of Insecurity in the Arab World

In the wake of 9/11, President George W. Bush downplayed traditional ‘realist’ security concerns by defining America's goal as countering threats generated by the internal characteristics of Arab societies. Bush advanced a strategy of regional transformation based on regime change in Iraq and economic, social, and political reform across the Arab world. This strategy, however, failed to address the security interests of regional governments while generating insecurity for Arab societies. To explain these results, the article develops a framework for understanding the Middle East regional system that recognises the role of societal discourses of insecurity and the system's multipolar structure. The framework is used to suggest an alternative strategy for US Middle East policy. Rejecting both a renewed project of regional transformation and a return to neorealism, the paper outlines a strategy based on managing a multipolar, pluralist system.