Winter 2012

The Empty Threat of Cyberwar

THE SOURCE: “Cyber War Will Not Take Place” by Thomas Rid, in Journal of Strategic Studies, Feb. 2012.

The specter of cyberwar haunts American leaders. “The next Pearl Harbor could very well be a cyberattack,” Leon Panetta warned last year when he was still CIA director.

Rubbish, says Thomas Rid, a reader in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. There are plenty of dark doings online, but they fall far short of war. “Cyberwar does not take place in the present. And it is highly unlikely that cyberwar will occur in the future,” he asserts.


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Brazil’s Popularity Problem

THE SOURCE: “A Leader Without Followers? The Growing Divergence Between the Regional and Global Performance of Brazilian Foreign Policy” by Andrés Malamud, in Latin American Politics and Society, Fall 2011.

Checkpoints, Not Checks

THE SOURCE: “Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines” by Eli Berman, Michael Callen, Joseph H. Felter, and Jacob N. Shapiro, in Journal of Conflict Resolution, Aug. 2011.

Capitalism, Chinese Style

THE SOURCE: “China’s Changing Guanxi Capitalism: Private Entrepreneurs Between Leninist Control and Relentless Accumulation” by Christopher A. McNally, in Business and Politics, Aug. 2011.

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