James Johanes

The government’s decision to intervene in the American economy through the 2009 stimulus package was a necessary and effective course of action, because it created millions of jobs for Americans and stopped the economy from declining any further. Through its impact and success in reversing the country’s economic decline, the ARRA is one of President Obama’s most significant achievements as president of the US.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are fast becoming the weapon of choice of the United States in its ongoing War on Terror. Due to their precision and high level of effectiveness, the United States government is increasingly using UAVs to target its adversaries in various conflict zones in place of conventional units such as marines. This is because drones offer relatively fewer risks in comparison to conventional forces, thus giving the US an advantage over its adversaries. However, despite the effectiveness of the program from the United States’ perspective, the use of drones to combat adversaries in nations such as Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan has led to various accusations of human rights abuses and the violation of international law. Current expectations are that drones will become even more popular in the future, as other countries adopt their own programs and seek to use the UAVs for their own uses. Accordingly, there is a need to understand the intricacies surrounding the United States’ drone program and determine whether the use of UAVs falls within existing international law and the jus in bello principles that govern warfare.

The growth of Christianity and other religions in China is an interesting phenomenon given the country’s communist history. The rise of the Communist Party in China coincided with the persecution of people from all religions.These attempts at persecution increased significantly during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), when the Communist government tried to purge the country of its religious beliefs. Although the end of the Cultural Revolution resulted in a reduction in this persecution, the atheistic grounding of the ruling Communist Party means that religious people still face many difficulties in China. Interestingly, despite the incessant persecution and the existence of harsh anti-religion policies in the country, different religions have been growing significantly in China since the latter years of the 1970s

Many scholars consider realism to be a fundamental approach in the field of international relations.  While events such as the Second World War and some incidents from the Cold War have served to justify the arguments of realists, issues such as the relative success of the United Nations have forced a reconsideration of their ideas (Mearsheimer " Structural Realism " 86). These paradigm shifts within the realist school of thought appear to have had a profound impact on the way that people perceive the approach, as some scholars even seek to redefine it. Although many of the key tenets of realism remain within the paradigm, the addition of new ideas and the removal of others allude to a significant change in the way that realists themselves see the world. Indeed, the emergence of structural realism through the works of Kenneth Waltz is a clear indicator in the changes that have occurred within the realist school of thought since the end of the Second World War. However, even with the emergence of a new way of thinking within the realist school of thought, some questions remain over the relevance of the approach and its acceptance within the world. While both approaches to realism bear some credence in the state of international relations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the relative success of international

The emergence of Brazil, Russia, India and China as dominant powers in the global arena has led to a debate regarding the supposed decline of the American hegemony. Nye and Kupchan discuss the issue in a similar manner in their works, by comparing the US's current predicament with that of the BRIC nations, particularly China. Through their analysis, Nye and Kupchan disagree on key issues. While Kupchan claims that the US is in decline, Nye rejects the notion of the hegemony being in freefall, though he does admit that it is not as strong as it was before. The two scholars also disagree with the future of the BRIC nations, with Nye pointing out that unresolved political and demographic issues might curtail their growth. Regardless of these differences, the two scholars agree on the emergence of a new world order in which no one country will be able to dominate hard or soft power, as others have done in the past.

The end of the Cold War in 1991 marked a momentous shift in the global arena. For several decades after the end of the Second World War, Cold War politics had dominated the global arena and dictated the actions of many actors within it. With the Cold War appearing to be an endless conflict, realism emerged as the dominant theory in the field of international relations, as it explained the ongoing events better than any other school of thought could. However, the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the dissolution of the USSR led to a paradigm shift in international relations, as the events appeared to go against the main arguments in the theory of realism. Since then, there has been a debate regarding the place of realism in explaining the international system, as scholars question whether other theories such as liberalism now offer better explanations of the events in the global arena