Journal of International Studies

“No legal issue arises when the United States responds to a challenge to its power,  position, and prestige.”  — Dean Acheson , 1962, speaking to the American Society of International Law. Dean Acheson declared 51 years ago that power, position, and prestige are the ingredients of national security and that national security trumps law.  In the United States, democracy takes a back seat to “national security,”  a prerogative of the executive branch of government. National security is where the executive branch hides its crimes against law, both domestic and international, its crimes against the Constitution, its crimes against innocent citizens both at home and abroad, and its secret agendas that it knows that the American public would never support. “National security” is the cloak that the executive branch uses to make certain that the US government is unaccountable. Without accountable government, there is no civil liberty and no democracy except for th...

Analysis: After a rough season, Brazil hopes bidding for its massive offshore oil reserves will right the ship. Now Brazilian oil workers are striking and energy majors like Exxon-Mobil, Chevron and BP aren't placing their bids. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff poses with workers of state-run oil giant Petrobras. (Vanderlei Almeida/AFP/Getty Images) HOUSTON, Texas — Brazil, a festive land of vast resources and seemingly great prospects, has had a lousy year. Many hope Monday's sale of its vast Libra offshore oil reserves will turn the tide. So what's got the South American giant down? For one, corruption scandals have tarnished the country's high-flying elite. Even Eike Batista, only recently feted by the media as a cross between to John D. Rockefeller and Sean "Puffy" Combs, is bleeding billions, his empire near bankruptcy. The economy, big enough to place Brazil at the head of the club of would-be superpowers known as BRICS (also including Russ...

Is the American military losing its vaunted technological edge? During the next decade, the rise of new powers and the accelerating diffusion of advanced technology throughout the international system will pose significant challenges to U.S. technological dominance in military affairs. Several developments are now poised to change the essential contours of the military-technology game, including the exponential growth of unmanned and increasingly autonomous robotic systems, the potential of additive manufacturing to usher in a new industrial revolution and the possibility that directed-energy weapons could dramatically alter the offense-defense balance in key military competitions. As a result, the next decade is likely to be the most disruptive since the early 1980s, when military planners in the Soviet Union began to worry openly about a “military-technical revolution” emerging in the United States. Technological Dominance is a Choice Technological dominance has been inte...

A smaller atomic arsenal isn't just wishful thinking -- it's bad strategy. "Nuclear Weapons Are Cold War Relics." Not so.  When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the era of nuclear competition seemed to be at an end, and the United States and Russia began to get rid of many weapons they had used to threaten each other for more than 40 years. In 1967, the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal peaked at  31,255 warheads, but by 2010, under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty ( New START ) signed with Russia, the United States had promised to deploy no more than 1,550. In June of this year, U.S. President Barack Obama announced his intention to go even lower, to  around 1,000 warheads  -- a move that would leave the United States with fewer nuclear weapons than at any time since 1953. What's more, influential figures around the world, including erstwhile American hawks, have increasingly supported steps toward total disarmament. In his major  20...