Recognized as the textbook on African politics, as well as an excellent resource for scholars, Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa analyzes the complexities and diversities of the African continent since independence.

The authors provide a basic knowledge of political events; political structures, processes, problems, and trends; political economy; and international relations. Clearly organized charts offer easy access to current political, economic, and social data. This new edition includes entirely new chapters on political economy and South Africa; the enormous changes of the last five years in Africa and in the post-Cold War world more generally are likewise reflected in revised discussions of civil society, democratic transitions, decentralization, structural adjustment, and Africa in the world economy.

Broadly encompassing, challenging, and timely, the book is a major contribution to our understanding of the multiple forces at work on the continent.

Why did the Soviet Union break up, whereas the Russian Federation has so far held together in the face of ostensibly similar secession crises? To what extent is regional separatism a product of economic incentives or local ethnic identity? Few areas of the world display a greater complexity of ethnic relations than the post-Soviet empire, and there are few with greater long-term strategic significance. Drawing on insights from political science, sociology, and anthropology, A Federation Imperiled asks why political elites in some regions in post-Soviet Russia have shown more of a proclivity for separatism from Moscow than others. Focusing on Chechnya, Dagestan, Sakha, Buryatia, Tyva, Pskov, and Primorye, this volume explores political programs articulated by top officials in the regions, local separtist or anti-separtist movements, and disputes between Moscow and the regions over natural resources and external trade. This is the first major comparative study on the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation.

This article sets out the constraints of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (the “Act”), which generally prohibits active enforcement of civilian laws by the military, and describes the discretion of the military commander to assist civilian law enforcement in protecting America’s information infrastructure against computer-assisted attack. A primary purpose of this article is to help legal advisors to commanders and DoD civilian officials better understand the boundaries of command discretion so that commanders and officials can feel free to exercise proper command discretion to assist law enforcement according to military interests and their professional and personal ethics and ideals. Another primary purpose of the article is to appraise Congress of the Act, its prohibitions, and its application to assist in framing the policy debate about how to constrain or expand the discretion of commanders and other officials to most productively serve the American public.

The Soviet Union placed a high priority on science and technology and built a huge assembly of research institutes, educational programs, design bureaus, and production enterprises embodying some measure of science and/or technology. This assembly concentrated overwhelmingly on military applications. Approximately three-quarters of this complex was located in Russia, but essential elements of many programs were located in other republics.

Starting in the Gorbachev regime there was a recognition that the economy was deteriorating and that it was necessary to reduce military expenditures and increase the civilian economy. A major element of this has been the attempt to direct a much greater effort toward the development of commercial products and services based upon technologies and skills developed in the military-industrial complex (MIC). This commercialization of Soviet and Russian military technology has been attempted by the Russians both independently, through conversion programs, and in cooperation with foreign partners. The conversion programs have had very limited success. The success of attempts at cooperative commercialization by U.S. companies and Russian enterprises have also been modest, but they illustrate workable models that could be utilized by other cooperative ventures. These cooperative commercialization ventures are the primary subject of this report.

This research is based primarily on the study of several cases of cooperative attempts by U.S. companies and Russian enterprises to commercialize Russian technology. Additional information has been gathered through participation in workshops and conferences including sessions or presentations on technology commercialization. There is no attempt to determine the total amount of such activity, but foreign investment of all types in Russia has been very small. These cases may not be representative of what is going on at many defense enterprises, especially those that do not have foreign partners. They do, however, show models of what can be achieved, as well as some of the problems encountered in technology commercialization.

The Cross-Industry Working Team (XIWT), with the support of Stanford University Consortium for Research on Information Security and Policy (CRISP), sponsored a symposium on cross-industry activities aimed at improving the reliability, dependability, and robustness of the information infrastructure. The purpose of this meeting was to identify the steps required to get to a reliable and dependable information infrastructure serving the needs of society. The emphasis in the meeting was on cross-industry and potentially cross-sector (government, industry, and academia) activities to accomplish that goal. The symposium dealt with the following generic topics: organizational activities to identify and pursue critical issues, issues in data transport and communications, issues in applications and services, and potential research and development activities.

The presentations and discussions of the meeting identified several potential cross-industry activities that could further the effort toward a more reliable and trustworthy information infrastructure. These activities fell into four general categories:

• Information Exchange Activities
  
• Consensus Activities
  
• Collaborative Operational Activities
  
• Collaborative R&D Activities
  

Two specific activities were discussed in some detail.

Government Sharing of Best Practices

It was observed that many of the government agencies have undertaken extensive efforts to improve the trustworthiness of their information systems, enabling them to withstand both failures and attacks. There is an opportunity for these agencies to be exemplars for the community— sharing what they have learned in the process of trying to make their systems more robust. This was felt to be an example of how the government and industry could work together to improve the trustworthiness of the overall information infrastructure.

Collaborative Experimental Environments

A potentially very productive collaborative R&D activity was discussed, involving industry, academia, and government. Universities and university consortia are investigating new techniques for building reliable systems of unreliable components, and for dealing with large complex systems. There is a need to evaluate, validate, and assimilate such research results into the industry environment. To that end, a collaborative, multi-industry experimental environment was discussed. This environment, distributed across multiple organizations, could provide such an evaluation, validation, and assimilation opportunity.

A number of other potential cross-industry activities were also mentioned throughout the meeting, and are discussed briefly in the proceedings.

Attendees agreed (based on a follow-up survey and informal comments) that the symposium was well worthwhile, and that continued dialogue is important to achieving the shared goal of a trustworthy information infrastructure. XIWT plans on helping foster such dialogue as well as collaborative activities toward that goal.

India's nuclear tests in May 1998 shocked the world. On May 11 and 13, India conducted a total of five tests. According to official Indian statements, the tests comprised three low-yield explosions, a 12 kiloton (kt) fission bomb, and a 43 kt thermonuclear device. The Indian tests triggered a quick response from Pakistan. On May 28 Pakistan conducted five nuclear tests, followed by a further test on May 30. Although some Western analysts have cast doubt on whether the two countries actually carried out the number and size of tests they claimed, India and Pakistan did conduct nuclear testing. These tests run counter to the global trend of nuclear arms reduction and have undermined not only the peace and stability of South Asia but of the world as well.

India and Pakistan have long been regarded by the international arms-control community as "nuclear threshold" or "de facto" nuclear-weapon states. They have now become declared nuclear-weapon states. The nuclear testing in South Asia will inevitably have a serious impact on regional and world politics, security, and diplomacy. This paper, which draws upon Chinese sources, analyzes the motivations of India and Pakistan and the consequences of the nuclear tests.

History has demonstrated that national leadership, time, and diplomatic genius will be needed to solve the thorny issue of the nuclear arms race in South Asia, so closely connected is it to the underlying and enduring Indian-Pakistani hostility. A Chinese source has quoted a senior Indian official as saying: "[t]he Cold War does not end in South Asia." The Chinese estimate that this confrontation will last well into the twenty-first century. How the international community responds to the tests will be crucial in determining whether the nonproliferation norm survives with credibility or is further eroded.

The nuclear crisis in South Asia is serious. However, "crisis" in the Chinese language is composed of two characters: wei--danger--and ji--opportunity. The new international situation, characterized by the coexistence of "opportunity" and "challenge," does hold out some hope that the nuclear arms race in South Asia can be capped. The challenge that confronts the international community is to turn this threat into an opportunity. The international community must move urgently in the matter. China recognizes this challenge and will play its role in this regard.

Background: In the 1980s, many medical organizations identified the prevention of nuclear war as one of the medical profession's most important goals. An assessment of the current danger is warranted given the radically changed context of the post–Cold War era.

Methods: We reviewed the recent literature on the status of nuclear arsenals and the risk of nuclear war. We then estimated the likely medical effects of a scenario identified by leading experts as posing a serious danger: an accidental launch of nuclear weapons. We assessed possible measures to reduce the risk of such an event.

Results: U.S. and Russian nuclear-weapons systems remain on high alert. This fact, combined with the aging of Russian technical systems, has recently increased the risk of an accidental nuclear attack. As a conservative estimate, an accidental intermediate-sized launch of weapons from a single Russian submarine would result in the deaths of 6,838,000 persons from firestorms in eight U.S. cities. Millions of other people would probably be exposed to potentially lethal radiation from fallout. An agreement to remove all nuclear missiles from high-level alert status and eliminate the capability of a rapid launch would put an end to this threat.

Conclusions: The risk of an accidental nuclear attack has increased in recent years, threatening a public health disaster of unprecedented scale. Physicians and medical organizations should work actively to help build support for the policy changes that would prevent such a disaster.

The age of Senator Robert Dole, the oldest man ever to run for the presidency, was a substantive issue in the election of 1996. But was it influential in the minds of the electorate as they cast their ballots? We consider in this article the association of aging with the likelihood of illness and of significant cognitive change. We also examine the risk factors revealed by Senator Dole's personal and family medical history. To determine how much of this information was available to the public, we analyze media content on these subjects across the election year. We then trace the sources of the public's assessment of whether Dole's age and health would affect his performance as president and whether this judgment, in turn, affected the likelihood of voting for him.

Gail Lapidus of Stanford University assesses the factors leading to Moscow's decision in December 1994 to use military force to crush Chechnya's resistance to the authority of the Russian leadership. Exhaustively researched and documented, Lapidus's study traces the evolution of the secessionist struggle through six stages. At the heart of the conflict, she says, was the Chechens' growing desire for sovereignty and territorial integrity sparked by Mikhail Gorbachev's political liberalization initiatives and further fueled by the establishment of a number of new states after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Lapidus also considers the role of Western governments and international institutions first in preventing the outbreak of hostilities and then in mitigating and, finally, terminating the conflict. She concludes that when the behavior of a major power is at issue, the potential for outside intervention is limited, which in turn raises a host of troubling questions about the prospects for future internal conflict resolution.