The global balance of power is undergoing a gradual but dramatic shift. While the United States will likely remain a preeminent economic and geopolitical power, the long era of American hegemony is coming to an end. In particular, managing the rise of Asia will likely prove to be the central challenge of international politics in the 21st century. In the face of such striking change, rigidity threatens to make international organizations relics of a bygone era. A substantial update of the international organizational architecture is needed. As two of the world’s leading democracies and economic powers, there is much that the United States and Japan can contribute toward such an effort. This paper will examine how U.S.-Japan cooperation can reinvigorate and update international organizations to meet contemporary challenges.

The first section discusses distributional imbalance as a serious shortcoming of several major international organizations, most prominently the United Nations Security Council and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Uneven representation can lead to needless tension and undermine the ability of international organizations to facilitate interstate cooperation. The major international organizations must be updated to reflect 21st century realities. The next section examines the economic and geopolitical rise of Asia and potential implications for institutionalized cooperation. Asia is a region with comparatively weak international organizations and inferior representation in universalistic institutions. Without deeper regional institutionalization and commensurate representation in global institutions, Asia’s rise may prove destabilizing for international cooperation. Accordingly, the paper then presents several policy prescriptions for how the United States and Japan can cooperate to update and reform the international organizational architecture.

Climate change will lead to massive conflicts, according to claims of such prominent sources as Sir Nicholas Stern and the US National Security Agency - claims repeated by the media. Efforts to tease a specific climate change signal from historical records of civil conflict have proved inconclusive, however: they postulate that farmers will become fighters when resources become critically scarce; but they have been unable to illuminate what specific mechanisms may be involved. Yet the potential for climate change to cause significant civil conflict seems intuitively obvious, and the need for better understanding remains urgent. My research focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, the most conflict-prone region in the world; and it asks what factors make some countries erupt in civil conflict, while others do not. I find that drops in agricultural exports diminish government capacity as tax revenues shrink, leading to an increase in the risk of civil conflict. Thus, government capacity to provide security and services is likely to become weak just at the time when climate change is increasing the need for both. How governments respond will determine the risk of civil conflict, but this research shows that their capacity to respond will, in fact, also be affected. The implications of these conclusions apply beyond sub-Saharan Africa, and begin to move the debate from questions around if climate change will cause conflict to more productive discussions of how climate change may affect conflict risk.

The Sourcebook is the result of ongoing Veterans Health Administration (VHA) efforts aimed at understanding the effects of military service on women’s lives.  The first in a series, Sourcebook Vol. 1 describes women Veterans receiving VHA care in Fiscal Year 2009 overall and within key subgroups (by age and by service-connected disability status). It also presents gender comparisons between women and men in FY09. Finally, it presents longitudinal trends in utilization over the decade (FY00–FY09). Future volumes will include information on the use of fee basis care, rural status, race and ethnicity, and diagnoses.

Key findings of Sourcebook Vol. 1 include:

• The number of women Veterans using VHA has increased from 159,360 in FY00 to 292,921 in FY09, representing a near doubling over the decade.
• The age distribution turned from bi-modal to tri-modal over the decade.  In 2000, the age distribution of women showed two peaks, at ages 44 and 76. In FY09, there were three peaks, at ages 27, 47 and 85. 
• Women Veteran VHA users have high levels of service-connected disability status.
• Among women Veteran VHA users, 37% use mental health services. 

From Oxford University Press:

There is a broad consensus among scholars that the idea of human rights was a product of the Enlightenment but that a self-conscious and broad-based human rights movement focused on international law only began after World War II. In this narrative, the nineteenth century's absence is conspicuous--few have considered that era seriously, much less written books on it. But as Jenny Martinez shows in this novel interpretation of the roots of human rights law, the foundation of the movement that we know today was a product of one of the nineteenth century's central moral causes: the movement to ban the international slave trade. Originating in England in the late eighteenth century, abolitionism achieved remarkable success over the course of the nineteenth century. Martinez focuses in particular on the international admiralty courts, which tried the crews of captured slave ships. The courts, which were based in the Caribbean, West Africa, Cape Town, and Brazil, helped free at least 80,000 Africans from captured slavers between 1807 and 1871. Here then, buried in the dusty archives of admiralty courts, ships' logs, and the British foreign office, are the foundations of contemporary human rights law: international courts targeting states and non-state transnational actors while working on behalf the world's most persecuted peoples--captured West Africans bound for the slave plantations of the Americas. Fueled by a powerful thesis and novel evidence, Martinez's work will reshape the fields of human rights history and international human rights law.

Features

• Forces us to fundamentally rethink the origins of human rights activism
• Filled with fascinating stories of captured slave ship crews brought to trial across the Atlantic world in the nineteenth century
• Shows how the prosecution of the international slave trade was crucial to the development of modern international law

Abstract:

US-Russia ballistic missile defense (BMD) cooperation can improve strategic stability between both countries, but this cooperation would pose a potential threat to China’s strategic security, especially if it is a closed and deep cooperation. The United States and Russia should make their bilateral cooperation an open regime, and let China and other countries join, so that improvement of US-Russia strategic stability is not based on the sacrifice of strategic stability with China and other countries. China and the United States may also cooperate on BMD in areas of early warning and mutual launch notification. The security costs of these cooperative measures are very low, and the benefits would improve stability, confidence, and mutual trust. Finally, BMD cooperation between the United States
and its East Asian allies (Japan and Taiwan) is threatening Sino-US strategic stability. The United States could improve Chinese confidence by increasing transparency about and limiting the performance of BMD systems.

Textbook Synopsis From Cambridge University Press online:

How will we meet rising energy demands? What are our options? Are there viable long-term solutions for the future? Learn the fundamental physical, chemical and materials science at the heart of: 

• Renewable/non-renewable energy sources 
• Future transportation systems 
• Energy efficiency 
• Energy storage 

Whether you are a student taking an energy course or a newcomer to the field, this book will help you understand critical relationships between the environment, energy and sustainability. Leading experts provide comprehensive coverage of each topic, bringing together diverse subject matter by integrating theory with engaging insights. Each chapter includes helpful features to aid understanding, including a historical overview to provide context, suggested further reading and questions for discussion. Every subject is beautifully illustrated and brought to life with full color images and color-coded sections for easy browsing, making this a complete educational package. Fundamentals of Materials for Energy and Environmental Sustainability will help enable today's scientists and educate future generations.