Presidential Summit Research Articles

Rethinking Nuclear Cooperation in Argentina’s and Brazil’s Competition for Prestige, 1972–1980

This article advances several arguments about scientific and diplomatic collaboration on peaceful nuclear energy technologies between Argentina and Brazil. First, although 1972–1980 is generally viewed as an acrimonious period in the neighbors’ bilateral relationship, nuclear energy officials in these South American countries made significant and unexpected progress toward technical cooperation, motivated by a shared geopolitical position. Furthermore, technological differences between the two nuclear energy programs, and experts’ ideas on their potential implications for agreement between key officials, opened potential avenues for diplomatic cooperation. Finally, this article illuminates a surprising quality of diplomatic behavior of the military dictatorships in Brazil and Argentina. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, Argentina and Brazil shared nearly identical stances on the unfettered right to pursue advanced nuclear technology. In combination with increased technical cooperation, this ideological alignment supported a landmark bilateral presidential summit in 1980 on nuclear energy collaboration.

Stanowisko Czech i Słowacji wobec Inicjatywy Trójmorza

This article attempts to identify the decision-making process of the authorities in the Czech Republic and Slovakia accompanying the establishment of the Three Seas Initiative – a new project of regional cooperation in Central Europe. Describing the reactions of Prague and Bratislava to the presidential summit in Dubrovnik inaugurating the project and the subsequent evolution of the attitudes of both countries in recent years makes it possible to show the role and importance attributed to the Three Seas Initiative by the Czechs and Slovaks.

O BRICS e as iniciativas em ciência, tecnologia e inovação pós-cúpula de Joanesburgo.

O presente trabalho expõe as mais recentes iniciativas do BRICS no âmbito da ciência, da tecnologia e da inovação (CTI), a partir dos últimos instrumentos adotados para colocar em prática as propostas, além de iniciar a tarefa de investigar como vem se dando a sua implementação, principiando com a apresentação dos esforços do Brasil e da China nesse sentido. A abordagem traz os resultados e as propostas da 10ª Cúpula Presidencial do BRICS, realizada em Joanesburgo, África do Sul. O presente estudo, orientado pelos aspectos da CTI, enfoca os desenvolvimentos recentes e as parcerias estabelecidas entre o Brasil e a China. Enfatiza-se, no trabalho, que a cooperação em CTI só fará sentido nesse agrupamento com características tão peculiares — países em desenvolvimento com graves problemas de desigualdade social — se reverter em benefício para a sociedade, em minimização da desigualdade social e em melhoria geral das condições de vida nos países-membros. No contexto atual, deve-se rever os modelos existentes e estabelecer os requisitos legais para novos modelos. Além disso, verificar se a estrutura legal está alinhada com a convicção de que a diversidade cultural pode ajudar a encontrar soluções inovadoras para a condução pacífica dos novos desafios mundiais.

ERS Presidential Summit 2018: multimorbidities and the ageing population.

As the average age of the population increases, so will the prevalence of chronic respiratory diseases and associated multimorbidity. This will result in a more complex clinical environment. Part of the solution will be to allow patients to be co-creators in the design of their care. It will also require clinicians to shift in their current approaches to care, step out of the disease- or pathology-oriented approach and embrace new ideas. In an effort to prepare the respiratory community for the challenge, we reflect on concepts to empower patients via multidisciplinary systems, new technologies and transition from end-of-life care to advanced care planning.

An Overview and Assessment of Performance of the Central American Presidential Summit

This article evaluates the performance of the Central American Presidential Summit, based on a political sociology approach of regionalism, and the concepts of political authority and rules compliance. The trajectory of the Presidential Summits since 1986, is examined through a theoretical approximation inspired by international relations sociologists and by applying an inductive methodology. The results indicate that almost since its creation, the Central American Presidential Summit did not achieve full operability according to its institutional design and diplomatic practices. The evidence suggests that presidential summits do not act as the driver of Central American regionalism. The article affirms that the weak political will from the member states explains the limited institutional performance of the Central American Integration System.

Xi Jinping's Foreign Policy Dilemma: One Belt, One Road or the South China Sea?

Since Xi Jinping became President, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and head of the Central Military Commission in 2012-13, a significant amount of attention has been devoted to his leadership style and foreign policy initiatives. (1) Under his leadership, several significant foreign policy initiatives have been undertaken, including a more stringent policy towards North Korea and the establishment of an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East Sea. Moreover, during the US-China presidential summit in June 2013, Xi called for a new type of major-power relationship, in which and the United States would strive to avoid conflict, increase cooperation and develop a mutually advantageous relationship. (2) Arguably, since Xi's ascent to power, China's foreign policy has moved decisively away from the two-decade old taoguang yanghui (keeping a low profile) to fenfa youwei (striving for achievement). (3) With regard to Southeast Asia, and in particular the South Sea dispute, Xi has made some bold policy decisions. For example, in May 2014 deployed the HYSY-981 drilling platform into Vietnam's claimed exclusive economic zone (EEZ) triggering a major crisis in Sino-Vietnamese relations. More significantly, from late 2013, began transforming seven atolls under its control in the Spratly Islands into massive artificial islands, leading to accusations that Beijing was militarizing the dispute. (4) And in January 2013, refused to participate in a legal case brought against it by the Philippines under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which challenged Beijing's maritime jurisdictional claims in the South Sea, and subsequently rejected the final verdict when it was announced in July 2016. (5) At the same time as has been pursuing a more assertive policy in the South Sea, Xi has also telegraphed clear signals of goodwill and cooperation towards the countries of Southeast Asia. Perhaps the most important of these is Xi's proposed Economic Belt and the Twenty-first Century Maritime Silk Road announced in October 2013--together known as the Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative--which aims to promote joint development, common prosperity and cooperation between and many countries across Asia. OBOR aims to reorient China's domestic economic structure by enhancing connectivity and cooperation between and the rest of Eurasia. OBOR is also a useful tool for to shape international rules and norms, as well as influence the global economic order, all of which are crucial to achieving President Xi's domestic China dream and international national rejuvenation. (6) But are Xi's assertive policies in the South Sea and OBOR contradictory? It is extremely difficult for Xi to promote cooperation via the OBOR while simultaneously pursuing an assertive posture in the South Sea. China's territorial and jurisdictional claims in the South Sea are highly contentious, and over the past decade have led to rising tensions between Beijing and the Southeast Asian claimants (Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and even Indonesia), as well as between and other stakeholders such as the United States and Japan. Some scholars have even warned of the dangers of war in the South Sea. (7) Such a war, especially between and the United States, would be devastating for the entire region. It would also spell the end of China's grand cooperative initiative, the OBOR. Within China, opinions vary as to what the country's priorities should be. Some scholars tend to place less value on the OBOR and believe that upholding China's claims in the South Sea should take priority. (8) Other experts in believe that OBOR is more important than the South Sea, and that pursuing a hardline policy towards the dispute will undermine the initiative. …

Barriers to new drug development in respiratory disease

Despite enormous unmet medical needs in respiratory medicine, very few new classes of safe and effective therapy have been introduced over the past 40 years. In spite of its enormous burden, respiratory medicine appears to have fewer new approved therapies than other common disease areas, such as cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological diseases, with fewer drug candidates and a higher failure rate. Furthermore, as in other areas of drug discovery, the time for drug development is getting longer and the risk of failure ever higher, leading to enormous and growing development costs. In order to identify some of the barriers to drug discovery in respiratory medicine, a European Respiratory Society Presidential Summit was held on July 2–3, 2014, in Rome, Italy. This meeting brought together respiratory scientists, clinicians, regulators, clinical pharmacologists and the pharmaceutical industry from across Europe to explore how these barriers might be overcome to facilitate the future development of new and effective therapies for respiratory diseases. This editorial highlights some of the opportunities for improving respiratory drug development that were discussed at the 2014 European Respiratory Society Presidential Summit. These include the development of more predictive preclinical disease models, the regulatory framework needed for better respiratory drug development, and how Germany is hoping to address the issues discussed above through a recently established national centre for lung research. The 2014 ERS Presidential Summit discusses how development of new respiratory drugs can be accelerated

Rivalry and alliance politics in Cold War Latin America. By Christopher Darnton: Beyond the eagle's shadow: new histories of Latin America's Cold War. Edited by Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Mark Atwood Lawrence and Julio E. Moreno

Rivalry and alliance politics in Cold War Latin America. By Christopher Darnton. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2014. 304pp. Index. Pb.: £29.00. ISBN 978 1 42141 361 7. Available as e-book. Beyond the eagle's shadow: new histories of Latin America's Cold War. Edited by Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Mark Atwood Lawrence and Julio E. Moreno. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2013. 352pp. Index. £34.00. ISBN 978 0 82635 368 9. The two books under review reflect the extent to which the study of Latin America's role in the Cold War has moved away from an earlier paradigm that viewed regional developments and outcomes as predominantly a function of US policy preferences and initiatives in a clearly defined East–West struggle which supposedly enmeshed the region at almost every level. Political scientist Christopher Darnton's self-assured, vigorously argued, thought-provoking, intellectually demanding, hypothesis-driven work is easily the more ambitious of the two volumes: it attempts to make a novel theoretical, empirically supported contribution to the study of the persistence, and occasional termination, of historical interstate rivalries that ultimately seeks to expand its thesis beyond the chronological and geographical confines of Cold War Latin America. He finds the explanatory power of the theories currently propounded in the International Relations literature under the realist, liberal and constructivist umbrella to be inadequate in accounting for the achievement of bilateral rapprochement between erstwhile foes at specific junctures. He develops a ‘parochial interest’ theory to explain why state agencies—mainly the armed forces, but also foreign ministries—in certain circumstances block rapprochement initiatives pursued by national executives in an environment of common external threat—international communism or, later, Islamist terrorism—that is usually considered to be the anvil on which alliances are forged; as well as how these vested interests are overcome in situations of resource constraint and when the said state agencies are simultaneously presented with an alternative mission to ‘rivalry maintenance’. This parochial interest theory, he argues, best explains the success of the 1980 presidential summit between Argentina and Brazil after three conspicuous failures in 1947, 1961 and 1972; the purported end to Honduran–Nicaraguan ‘rivalry’ in 1961 following acceptance by one side of an arbitral award; and Argentine–Chilean rapprochement in 1984 just a few years after being on the brink of war. The failure to achieve rapprochement in the cited instances—between Bolivia and Chile, El Salvador and Honduras, Algeria and Morocco—is attributed to the absence of the requisite constellation of factors that are present at the right moment in the primary case-studies. In this dynamic, the role of the United States is found to be much more peripheral than is commonly presumed.

Reaching the golden milestone. The 2013 ERS Dublin summit: preparing the road to Rome

The Milliarium Aureum (or golden milestone) was a monument erected by the Emperor Caesar Augustus near the Temple of Saturn in the central forum of ancient Rome, Italy. All roads were considered to begin from this monument and all distances in the Roman Empire were measured relative to that point. To travel a road and to reach a milestone, one often needs a roadmap. At the first Annual Presidential Summit in Leuven, Belgium, in 2011, the European Respiratory Society (ERS) reflected on what must be done to prevent the rise of respiratory diseases in the future and produced the European Respiratory Roadmap [1, 2]. This roadmap has served as a guide to subsequent summits as they address the varying and complex issues of policy as it relates to respiratory medicine. The summits have developed into key advocacy events where the leadership of the ERS interacts with a wide range of decision makers in Europe relevant to respiratory medicine. Last year’s summit in Tallinn, Estonia, focused on the austerity of the times we live in and the rise of health inequalities in Europe [3]. Next year with the opening of the Italian Presidency of the European Union, the summit will travel the road from basic science to translational research and will arrive in Rome [4]. The objective of this year’s 2013 Presidential Summit in Dublin, Ireland, was to identify priority research topics that should be addressed at European level. All stakeholders were involved: medical professionals, patients, pharmaceutical industry representatives, research funders and research policymakers. The …

Global Health Funding at the Crossroads: 2012 and Beyond

AbstractSlow global economic recovery is affecting health and access to care by an ever‐increasing number of individuals globally. International health organizations are advocating increased attention to fighting and preventing non‐communicable disorders and equitable access to health. World Bank estimates that an additional annual contribution of 10 billion USD will be required to improve populations' health and minimize disparities. Global health policy was one of the major issues addressed at the November 2011 Group of 20 Presidential Summit. It is hoped that the Summit will also include recommendations for improving the training of additional health care workers necessary to achieve the Millennium Developmental Goals. Rapidly evolving and low cost information technology should provide a temporary solution to the severe global health care workforce shortages.

Professional psychology training in the era of a thousand flowers: Dilemmas and challenges for the future.

As revealed in discussion at the 2009 Presidential Summit on the Future of Psychology Practice, professional psychology training today is involved in a series of choices for its future. This paper outlines some of those major dilemmas and while acknowledging the difficulties inherent in resolving some of these issues, proposes areas of common ground and a series of next steps, which emphasize the importance of research and assessment as identifying marks of the professional psychologist, the requirements for accountability and standards in training, the need to develop behavioral medicine and neuropsychology as the field increases its partnership with health care, the importance of collaboration with school psychologists and international psychologists, the need to emphasize public sector service, and the imperative to develop these goals in a thoughtful way with new technology.

Forget Foreign Relations. Consider China Strictly from the Viewpoint of Finance

This abstract was created post-production by the JFI Editorial Board. This study is an attempt to focus strictly upon matters of finance in considering relations between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America. The study examines the huge U.S. trade deficit with China, the remaining low value of the Chinese Yuan in relation to the U.S. dollar, the very high level of purchasing of U.S. Treasury securities by the Government of China, and a continuing piracy in China of American intellectual properties. Perhaps at some point, a Chinese-American Presidential Summit Meeting could deal with these four finance challenges. So far as the Western media can determine, such a summit in April, 2006 did not touch on any of the foregoing topics. Maybe next time!

The Politics of Partnerships for Teacher Education Redesign and School Renewal

Twenty years after the initial warning signal sounded by A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), many reform proposals have challenged the manner in which teachers are prepared, retained, and assessed relative to their impact on student academic success. These initiatives include the compilation of standards for what students and teachers should know and be able to do and the effort to recognize veteran teachers who achieve certification through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF; 1996) posited that recruiting, preparing, and retaining good teachers should be the central strategy for improving schools. The NCTAF challenged the nation to provide every youngster with what should be his or her educational birthright--competent, caring and qualified teachers in schools organized for success (p. 10)--setting a timeline of a decade, until the year 2006, to achieve this ambitious goal. NCTAF (1996) reminded us that school reform will not and cannot succeed unless it focuses on ensuring conditions in which teachers can teach--and teach well. Three years later, the American Council on Education (ACE) published an action for college and university presidents that also speaks to this central strategy for improving schools. Seeking increased university engagement in the education of teachers, ACE's (1999) report, To Touch the Future: Transforming the Way Teachers Are Taught, exhorts presidents to the education of teachers front and center on the institutional agenda of their universities and take the lead in doing so (p. 17). This came following calls for university engagement in teacher reform by former U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley, at his 1999 Presidential Summit on Teacher Quality, and by Carnegie Corporation's President Vartan Gregorian (1996). And of course, 2 years subsequent to the ACE report, bipartisan passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 further called for highly qualified teachers in every classroom, again by the 2005-2006 school year. Let us be clear. This goal of competent, caring, and qualified teachers in every classroom will not be achieved by the year 2005-2006, and there is no guarantee that it will be for some time after that. Although resources and strategies put in place to achieve this rightful goal are sadly lacking, and major budget deficits, particularly in urban schools, call for reductions in the teaching force rather than amplification, the problem of achieving teacher quality is much more systemic in nature. In spite of inhibiting conditions that exist in K-12 education, there exist nationally very few, if any, systemic efforts that truly align the redesign of teacher education with school reform. This is because there are few partnerships or interinstitutional arrangements between the K-12 school sector and universities located in those communities bold enough to ensure that teacher preparation addresses directly the needs of schools and schools address classroom and school organization. Thus, few partnerships exist to create the environment where teachers can learn to teach and teach well. Even in the most ideal scenario--whereby universities work closely with their school districts to ensure that enough highly qualified teachers are prepared annually to meet their personnel needs--the problem of teacher quality would still not be adequately addressed. NCTAF (2003) produced another major report, titled No Dream Denied: A Pledge to America's Children, in which the commission addressed the teacher retention crisis. The report presents data that portray a teaching force with more than 1 million teachers entering or departing schools annually--roughly one third of all teachers. NCTAF concluded that teaching is increasingly a revolving door occupation (p. 13). There are many reasons why teachers leave their positions, but a common one is that far too many schools are not, as NCTAF (1996) has called for, organized for success. …

Democracy and the Summit of the Americas: Political Commitments for Colombia

After the Quebec Presidential Summit of The Americas Meeting, countries like Colombia will have to reshape its political structure to meet Hemispheric requirements. We will have to encourage universal education, preserve democracy, deepen economic integration and eradicate poverty. This is a very serious commitment for a country encroached in guerrilla warfare, drug trafficking, money laundering an other afflictions. However this short paper brings deeper reflections upon, to show that the Inter-American dialogue may be also jeopardized if these short term circumstances are not fully overcome by the empire of more profound postulations. That is preserving the very fundamentals of trade as the engine of growth and wide spreading the presence of civil society considered as the root of democracy.

A Free Trade Area of the Americas in 2005?

In the second presidential summit of the Americas, which took place in April 1998 in Santiago de Chile, 34 heads of states of the Americas announced that they were ready to start negotiating a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), to be concluded by 2005. This article briefly discusses the current trend in favour of regional preferential trade agreements, describes how the proposal for an FTAA came about, explores more than three years of negotiations that made it possible and assesses the probability of its success.

Implementing Performance Monitoring: A Research and Development Approach

How can a useful performance monitoring system be designed? Gary T. Henry and Kent C. Dickey describe the use of a research and development model to develop an effective performance monitoring system as part of the State of Virginia's efforts in educational reform. They provide details on how the approach was implemented and discuss both the limits and risks involved. A combination of public interest, political pressure, and increased technical capacity has thrust public accountability, and with it the concept of performance monitoring, once again into the fore. When the U.S. Department of Education sounded an alarm with A Nation at Risk in 1983, the nation renewed its concern for public education. The presidential Educational Summit in Charlottesville, Virginia, the advent of significant community and parental control of Chicago's public schools, and the court-ordered complete overhaul of the public school system in Kentucky amplified the alarm. Dissatisfaction with public education services in many quarters has led to a variety of proposals ranging from dismantling educational bureaucracies by allowing school choice to increasing the accountability of the schools to the public.

After San Antonio

In an Effort to extend and accelerate regional cooperation and coordination in the “War on Drugs” in the Western Hemisphere, President George Bush hosted a widelypublicized, regional, anti-drug presidential summit in San Antonio (Texas) on 26-27 February 1992. This cumbre was conceived as an expanded sequel to the first “Andean” drug summit held in Cartagena (Colombia) on 15 February 1990. In addition to the original four-country participants in Cartagena I — the United States, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia — Ecuador, Venezuela, and Mexico attended Cartagena II as well.