Chronic Misperception and International Conflict: The U.S.-Iraq Experience

2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles A. Duelfer ◽  
Stephen Benedict Dyson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Conflict ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Regular Contact ◽  
The U.S

Why did the United States and Iraq find themselves in full-scale conflict with each other in 1990–91 and 2003, and in almost constant low-level hostilities during the years in-between? The situation was neither inevitable nor one that either side, in full possession of all the relevant information about the other, would have purposely engineered: in short, a classic instance of chronic misperception. A combination of the psychological literature on perception and its pathologies with the almost unique firsthand access of one of the authors to the decisionmakers on both sides—the former deputy head of the United Nations weapons of mass destruction inspection mission in the 1990s, the author of the definitive postwar account of Iraqi WMD programs for which he and his team debriefed the top regime leadership, and a Washington insider in regular contact with all major foreign policy agencies of the U.S. government—reveals the perceptions the United States and Iraq held of each other, as well as the biases, mistakes, and intelligence failures of which these images were, at different points in time, both cause and effect.

Security Council: Disarmament Commission

1955 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-159
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Security Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
International Agreement ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Military Installations ◽  
Military Equipment ◽  
Secure Information

The Sub-Committee of the Disarmament Commission (France, Soviet Union, Canada, United Kingdom, United States) met in London, May 13–June 22. Following discussion of possible approaches for the Sub-Committee, the Soviet representative presented a draft resolution11 prohibiting unconditionally weapons of mass destruction and asking the Security Council to effect an international agreement to guarantee enforcement of that prohibition. Permanent members of the Security Council would reduce by one-third conventional military equipment and personnel within a year. The draft recommended the convening by the Security Council of a conference to effect reduction of armaments by all states and to abolish military installations on foreign territories. The Soviet representative attacked parts of the United Nations Majority Plan for Control of Atomic Energy, stating that the United States desired to monopolize nuclear secrets and to secure information on Soviet armaments without prohibiting nuclear weapons.

The Stimulus of Prohibition: A Critical History of the Global Narcotics Trade

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred W. McCoy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Drug Use ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Illicit Drugs ◽  
Control Program ◽  
The United States ◽  
Drug Control ◽  
White House ◽  
National Drug ◽  
The U.S

The current war on drugs being waged by the United States and United Nations rests upon a fundamental misunderstanding of the global nar­cotics traffic. In 1998, for example, the White House issued a National Drug Con­trol Strategy, proclaiming a 10-year program “to reduce illegal drug use and avail­ability 50 percent by the year 2007,” thereby achieving “the lowest recorded drug-use rate in American history.” To this end, the U.S. program plans to reduce foreign drug cultivation, shipments from source countries like Colombia, and smuggling in key transit zones. Although this strategy promises a balanced attack on both supply and demand, its ultimate success hinges upon the complete eradi­cation of the international supply of illicit drugs. “Eliminating the cultivation of il­licit coca and opium,” the document says in a revealing passage, “is the best ap­proach to combating cocaine and heroin availability in the U.S.” (U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy 1998: 1, 23, 28). Similarly, in 1997 the new head of the United Nations Drug Control Program, Dr. Pino Arlacchi, announced a 10-year program to eradicate all illicit opium and coca cultivation, starting in Afghanistan. Three years later, in the United Nation’s World Drug Report 2000, he defended prohibition’s feasibility by citing China as a case where “comprehensive narcotics control strategies . . . succeeded in eradicat­ing opium between 1949 and 1954”— ignoring the communist coercion that al­lowed such success. Arlacchi also called for an “end to the psychology of despair” that questions drug prohibition, and insisted that this policy can indeed produce “the eradication of coca and opium poppy production.” Turning the page, however, the reader will find a chart showing a sharp rise in world opium production from 500 tons in 1981 to 6,000 tons in 2000— a juxtaposition that seems to challenge Ar-lacchi’s faith in prohibition (Bonner 1997; Wren 1998a, 1998b; United Nations 2000d, 1–2, 24). Examined closely, the United States and United Nations are pur­suing a drug control strategy whose success requires not just the reduction but also the total eradication of illicit narcotics cultivation from the face of the globe. Like the White House, the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) re­mains deeply, almost theologically committed to the untested proposition that the prohibition of cultivation is an effective response to the problem of illicit drugs.

scholarly journals Determining the Development Status of United States Counties Based on Comparative and Spatial Analyses of Multivariate Criteria Using Geographic Information Systems

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 92
Author(s):  
Lauren B. Wheeler ◽  
Eric C. Pappas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Human Development ◽  
International Development ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Statistics Education ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Development Status ◽  
The U.S

The United States ranked 8th in 2015 according to the United Nations’ Human Development Index, but empirical evidence shows that there are regions within the U.S. that would not classify as having “very high human development.”  We know about domestic poverty and hardship, but there are regions in the United States that are starting to look developmentally more like Albania or Kenya.  Using multivariate quantitative data (health statistics, education levels, and income) to replicate international development indices like that of United Nations on the national level, U.S. counties were ranked according to their development status.  In this way, widely recognized scales of development were translationally applied to the United States to fully understand the state of development, or rather regression, in the U.S.  The results were displayed cartographically to show the geographic distribution of regression across the U.S., mainly the Mississippi River Delta and the Appalachian Region.  In total, there were 66 counties that fell into fourth class, or the “low development” category, for all three development criteria.  

Unpacking the variable context of quotatives

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Kern
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Direct Quotation ◽  
The U.S

Abstract The present study analyzes the use of quotatives in Spanish among twenty-four Spanish-English bilinguals from Southern Arizona and assesses the possible influence of English contact in their use. Cameron (1998) defines the envelope of variation of quotatives in Spanish as verbs of direct report, bare-noun phrases, and null quotatives. This study identifies a fourth strategy of quotative discourse markers. A detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of the linguistic conditioning of these four strategies of direct quotation according to content of the quote and grammatical person points to the fact that quotative discourse markers appear to be conditioned differently than the other three strategies, but contact with English does not play a decisive role in their use. These results contribute to our knowledge of Spanish in the United States and variation in quotative systems by expanding on Cameron’s (1998) study to explore the quotative system of the Spanish of the U.S. Southwest and adding an analysis of quotative discourse markers.

Basic U. S. Sources For Current Research In International Law: An Elementary Vade-Mecum

1977 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adolf Sprudzs
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intergovernmental Organizations ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Many ◽  
The U.S

Among the many old and new actors on the international stage of nations the United States is one of the most active and most important. The U.S. is a member of most existing intergovernmental organizations, participates in hundreds upon hundreds of international conferences and meetings every year and, in conducting her bilateral and multilateral relations with the other members of the community of nations, contributes very substantially to the development of contemporary international law. The Government of the United States has a policy of promptly informing the public about developments in its relations with other countries through a number of documentary publication, issued by the Department of State

The Far Eastern Commission

1948 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel S. Stratton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Far Eastern

Shortly before he left the State Department in the summer of 1947, Undersecretary Dean Acheson summarized the main objectives of American foreign policy during his term in office. These, he said, had been principally two. One was to “establish the unity and mutual confidence and cooperation of the great powers.” The other, he said, was to “create international organizations necessarily based on the assumption of this unity and cooperation, in which all nations could together guarantee both freedom from aggression and the opportunity for both the devastated and undeveloped countries to gain and expand their productivity under institutions of their own free choice.''x Following out this policy, the United States has helped to create and has participated in an impressive number of international organizations. Some, like the United Nations and its affiliates, are directed mainly to the continuing task of building and maintaining a secure peacetime order among nations. Others, like the Allied control bodies in former enemy countries, have the more temporary job of filling in the gap of leadership until peace treaties have been signed.

Captain Hall and the so-called Survivors of the Franklin Expedition

Polar Record ◽  
1944 ◽  
Vol 4 (28) ◽  
pp. 170-185
Author(s):  
Richard J. Cyriax
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand

When Sir Leopold McClintock returned from King William Land in 1859, he stated that none of Sir John Franklin's officers and men could still be living, and the principal Arctic authorities entirely agreed with him. Nevertheless, a dissentient voice was raised in the United States by Captain Charles Francis Hall. Convinced that survivors might still be found, he undertook two Arctic expeditions in search of them. His first expedition, to Frobisher Bay (1860–62), yielded no relevant information, and need not be described. On the other hand, his second expedition, which lasted five years (1864–69), was not in vain. He spent the first winter near Wager River, and the other four winters at Repulse Bay, and made many journeys from his winter quarters. The stories told him by Eskimos convinced him at first that his long-cherished belief was founded on fact, and he informed his friends in the United States that survivors of the Franklin expedition might still be alive. Not until he himself had visited King William Land in 1869 did he realise that he had been too sanguine.

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