scholarly journals La théorie et la pratique de l’Arms Control : Bilan et perspectives

2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 647-663
Author(s):  
Jean Klein

Arms control, as developed by American civilian strategists in the late 1950s, sought to maintain the equilibrium upon which mutual deterrence was dependent, and strove to prevent direct conflict between the two nuclear protagonists. Has it exhausted its virtuality and will there be a return to the tradition of general and total disarmament? One comes to ask within the framework of this analysis, whether the Washington treaty of december 1987 introduces a new element to arms control, or whether it closely follows the methods used in former agreements. In an effort to better comprehend this question, the past experiences in arms control will be examined before making any conjectures on its anticipated evolution, all the while taking into consideration the new approaches used in the American-Soviet relations, the problems created by technological innovation, and the intentions of both the small and medium States.

Author(s):  
John Carman ◽  
Patricia Carman

What is—or makes a place—a ‘historic battlefield’? From one perspective the answer is a simple one—it is a place where large numbers of people came together in an organized manner to fight one another at some point in the past. But from another perspective it is far more difficult to identify. Quite why any such location is a place of battle—rather than any other kind of event—and why it is especially historic is more difficult to identify. This book sets out an answer to the question of what a historic battlefield is in the modern imagination, drawing upon examples from prehistory to the twentieth century. Considering battlefields through a series of different lenses, treating battles as events in the past and battlefields as places in the present, the book exposes the complexity of the concept of historic battlefield and how it forms part of a Western understanding of the world. Taking its lead from new developments in battlefield study—especially archaeological approaches—the book establishes a link to and a means by which these new approaches can contribute to more radical thinking about war and conflict, especially to Critical Military and Critical Security Studies. The book goes beyond the study of battles as separate and unique events to consider what they mean to us and why we need them to have particular characteristics. It will be of interest to archaeologists, historians, and students of modern war in all its forms.


2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rakhahari Chatterji ◽  
Swagata Saha

Globalisation and market reforms have made foreign policymaking a more inclusive and multilayered process. Para-diplomacy and emergence of empowered federating/component units engaging in international interaction call for recalibration of theories and understating of International Relations. The debate over central control versus unit autonomy raised the concern: whether para-diplomacy will turn out to be an asset or a threat for the sovereign state. While state may reap benefits of economic development, para-diplomacy may yet lead to regional imbalance, ethnic mobilisation and separatism. With the focus being shifted to Asia with respect to expanding market and sphere of influence, this article analyses the experience of para-diplomacy between India and China as well as of both with the USA. In doing so, reference is drawn to the past experiences of the West to understand how para-diplomacy took root and how is it practised in different contexts. Considering the economic, political and social implications of para-diplomatic practices in specific contexts, the article concludes with an attempt to find out the institutional space it may tread and the policy options it may hold out especially for India.


Philosophy ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 48 (186) ◽  
pp. 363-379
Author(s):  
A. C. Ewing

Philosophers have not been sceptical only about metaphysics or religious beliefs. There are a great number of other beliefs generally held which they have had at least as much difficulty in justifying, and in the present article I ask questions as to the right philosophical attitude to these beliefs in cases where to our everyday thought they seem so obvious as to be a matter of the most ordinary common sense. A vast number of propositions go beyond what is merely empirical and cannot be seen to be logically necessary but are still believed by everybody in their daily life. Into this class fall propositions about physical things, other human minds and even propositions about one's own past experiences based on memory, for we are not now ‘observing’ our past. The phenomenalist does not escape the difficulty about physical things, for he reduces physical object propositions, in so far as true, not merely to propositions about his own actual experience but to propositions about the experiences of other human beings in general under certain conditions, and he cannot either observe or logically prove what the experiences of other people are or what even his own would be under conditions which have not yet been fulfilled. What is the philosopher to say about such propositions? Even Moore, who insisted so strongly that we knew them, admitted that we did not know how we knew them. The claim which a religious man makes to a justified belief that is neither a matter of purely empirical perception nor formally provable is indeed by no means peculiar to the religious. It is made de facto by everybody in his senses, whether or not he realizes that he is doing so. There is indeed a difference: while everyone believes in the existence of other human beings and in the possibility of making some probable predictions about the future from the past, not everybody holds religious beliefs, and although this does not necessarily invalidate the claim it obviously weakens it.


2022 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Clifford Bohm ◽  
Douglas Kirkpatrick ◽  
Arend Hintze

Abstract Deep learning (primarily using backpropagation) and neuroevolution are the preeminent methods of optimizing artificial neural networks. However, they often create black boxes that are as hard to understand as the natural brains they seek to mimic. Previous work has identified an information-theoretic tool, referred to as R, which allows us to quantify and identify mental representations in artificial cognitive systems. The use of such measures has allowed us to make previous black boxes more transparent. Here we extend R to not only identify where complex computational systems store memory about their environment but also to differentiate between different time points in the past. We show how this extended measure can identify the location of memory related to past experiences in neural networks optimized by deep learning as well as a genetic algorithm.


Author(s):  
T.L. Thurston

Archaeologists once viewed super-individual identity as primordial and tied to territorial boundaries, useful for describing an orderly past and creating national or ethnic genealogies. Current research ties identities not to regions, but to groups: complex cultural constructions, expressed in varied yet simultaneous manifestations of bonds with family, lineage, clan, or polity, each with multiple shifting markers. These can involve kinship, status, gender, age, occupation, shared experience, and social memory, in turn impacted by wider sociopolitical, religious, and economic concerns. Between Iron Age groups, cooperation, détente, and conflict were equally likely; trade, travel, and familiarity resulted in material and ideological co-mingling, while still preserving difference, and involved symbolic and practical novelty, as well as continuity with the past. Once, such complexities caused archaeologists to label identity research impossible or unnecessary, but its exclusion often leads to misinterpretation. Fortunately, thoughtful considerations of method, materiality, and scale have resulted in productive new approaches.


Author(s):  
Jorn Rusen

This aerticle provides an overview of current issues in metahistoty. Basic categories of historical thinking, such as memory and historical culture, or historical consciousness, are outlined and contextualised in the field of historical studies. The leading question adresses the process of historical sense generation and its fundamental principles and criteria. In respnse to the traumatic historical experiences of crimes against humanitiy in the 20th century two culturally established procedures of sense generation are applied to historical thinking: mourning and forgiving. The author tries to widen the horizon of historical thinking into the dimension of intercultural communication. In the process he responds to the challenge of globilization. There is an accent on the need to pursue new approaches in history.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Acatia Finbow

This chapter shows how over the past two decades the relationship between the museum and performance has undergone a radical shift with the acquisition of performance-based artworks into the collection, shifting the role of the museum from that of a repository to that of a vital participant in the activation of the work. This chapter reflects on the new value this turn affords to documentation, and on how it is being used to support the effective activation of performance-based artworks in the museum. It reflects particularly on Tate’s development of documentation practices that address these new institutional needs and on how these navigate both immediate and potential future value.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazanin Sepehry-Rad

Built environments inevitably serve as grand mnemonic elements that contain and transmit layers of culture and history. Failing to acknowledge the significance of difficult memories in the identity and culture of cities induces the gradual erosion of history as well as preventing movement toward a better future. In order to preserve the latent value in the identity of the city, architectural strategies should be implemented by which forgotten memories and hidden traces could be recalled to conscious narration. Recalling a story from the past, intentionally or unconsciously forgotten as a form of amnesia, can help re-contextualize memory images that awaken within us a new avenue to the future. This thesis intends to refine the dynamics of remembrance, illuminating the power of architecture as a medium for providing frames of perception and horizons of understanding of past experiences.


Author(s):  
Ricardo Manuel Godinho ◽  
Célia Gonçalves

Bioanthropology examines skeletal morphology to infer diverse aspects of the funerary behaviour and palaeobiology of past populations. Conventional morphological metric (morphometrics) analysis has typically used linear measurements, ratios and angles. Yet, such quantifications do not allow visualization of the morphological differences nor prediction of the mechanical performance of bones (which may induce morphological differences between populations with diverse behaviours). Virtual Anthropology, which musters several techniques deriving from the exponential technological development of the past decades, provides new approaches to the analysis and understanding of the examined populations. Here, we summarize the techniques used in Virtual Anthropology and how this discipline may augment our understanding of the populations under study.


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