Traditional US Research Articles

Collapsed Countries, Casualty Dread, and the New American Way of War

The combination of failed states, elite casualty phobia, and unfolding aerial precision strike and associated technologies is profoundly altering the locus and style of future US military interventions overseas. The United States is beginning to practice a new way of warfare in parts of the world peripheral to traditional American security interests. The Gulf War was a turning point. It was both an end and a beginning. It was perhaps the last large American full-spectrum conventional war waged against another well-armed state and the first in which airpower did the bulk of the heavy lifting against not only strategic targets but also enemy fielded forces. The Gulf War was also the first war in which casualty minimization became from the start an independent operational objective; both the formulation of war aims and the conduct of military operations were governed by dread among the political and especially military leadership that too many American lives lost would implode public and congressional support for the war. Since the Gulf War, the United States has launched military interventions in Somalia (1992-94), Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1995), Kosovo (1999), and, most recently, in Afghanistan (2001). Unlike the Gulf War, which was waged in a place of undisputed strategic vitality to the West, these post-Gulf War interventions have been undertaken in locales beyond the traditional US strategic foci of Western Europe, East Asia, and the Persian Gulf. Also unlike the Gulf War, these interventions were all launched in or against failed states incapable of offering effective resistance to US conventional military power. In all cases, US airpower had virtually free run of the enemy's air space. Even more important, in two of the last three--Bosnia and Kosovo--US ground forces were deliberately withheld from participation; and in the last--Afghanistan--US ground forces that were committed initially were small and functioned primarily as scouts for American airpower and searchers for the enemy's leadership. In Bosnia and Afghanistan, large indigenous friendly ground forces served as surrogates, thus holding down US casualties and their perceived potential domestic political consequences. The war in Afghanistan exemplifies a growing American propensity for intervention in failed states (there are no qualified conventional military adversaries left, and China's future emergence as a competitive strategic rival is far from a done deal) and for risk-averse reliance on ever-more-effective airpower. These propensities are a function of three factors: (1) profound structural change in the international political system--specifically, the emergence of weak and failed states as the primary threat to US security; (2) a casualty-phobic political and military leadership; and (3) the availability of new military technologies that seem to permit effective military intervention, primarily from the air, at little cost in friendly military and even enemy civilian casualties. The war in Afghanistan also shows that modem airpower, under the right conditions, can achieve decisive strategic effects even against the kind of irregular, pre-industrial enemy once thought unbreakable by air attack. (1) How did we get to this point? Failed States as the Primary Threat The most devastating foreign attack in American history was planned and carried out at the direction of an international terrorist network headquartered in a failed state. Indeed, the relationship between the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda was symbiotic; the Taliban provided safe-haven for bin Laden and his high command, and bin Laden, in return, provided financial and professional assistance to the Taliban. Indeed, there has been a mutually supporting relationship between international terrorists and failed states worldwide, and the number of failing and failed states is growing, especially in the Islamic world and sub-Saharan Africa. …

Asset management: remedy for addressing the fiscal challenges facing highway infrastructure

Abstract In recent years, increasing claims have been advanced for asset management as a promising new approach to infrastructure management. If these claims are seen in the light of past management fads, such as zero-based-budgeting (ZBB), management-by-objectives (MBO), total quality management (TQM), and business process reengineering (BPR), asset management may be considered the latest in a long line of management fads being marketed by consultants to transportation agency managers. However, asset management can be an effective response to the fiscal challenges confronting the United States' highway infrastructure. This paper explores asset management in light of recent developments in the funding, condition, documentation, and management of the US highway infrastructure. The paper begins with a discussion of capital biases associated with traditional US federal highway funding programs. It then describes the advent of innovative financing approaches that have evolved in response to the inability of the Federal Highway Trust Fund to meet burgeoning highway renewal and replacement needs, caused in part by widespread deferred maintenance of the highway system. The paper suggests that public sources of funding for the highway system will not be adequate to renovate or replace current highways and build new capacity. Closing the expected shortfall in public highway funding will require sustained infusions of private sector funding. However, the financing of highways through public–private partnerships will require state and local transportation agencies to radically change the ways in which the highway infrastructure is managed. Within the context of gradual changes in highway management and financing, the paper suggests a critical role for asset management – in demonstrating prudent stewardship of highway infrastructure and facilitating private sector confidence in highway investments. The paper examines the implications for innovative highway financing resulting from recent developments in asset management: • further devolution of highway program and funding responsibilities to state and local levels of government; • developments in asset management processes and practices; and • the infrastructure reporting requirements recently developed by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). The infrastructure reporting requirements of GASB's Statement No. 34 are intended to increase accountability for publicly owned infrastructure and promote improved management of long-lasting capital assets. GASB 34 also provides a basis for enabling public agencies to finance implementation of asset management techniques and renewal of infrastructure assets through securitization. Covenants associated with securitized highway bonds would provide the fiscal discipline needed to ensure that responsible agencies abide by the terms of the bond agreements – thereby assuring preventive asset maintenance and freeing up resources for debt service payments. Shadow tolling provides a useful mechanism for generating a positive revenue stream to support securitized highway bonds. The paper concludes that asset management is a proven and essential process for helping the US rebuild and expand its highway infrastructure.

Introduction

The emergence of an increasingly competitive health-care marketplace has placed an unprecedented premium on increasing the quality and efficiency of medical services. Thus, the traditional US model for hospital care, in which primary care providers (PCPs) manage their own patients in the hospital, is quickly being replaced by a new model in which inpatients are cared for by hospital-based physicians, whom we call “hospitalists.”

A Note on Interests, Values, and the Use of Force

The recent presidential election campaign intensified a public debate that began in earnest in November 1984 when Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger delivered his famous National Press Club speech on use of force. That debate has evolved over years. It began as a discussion of whether force should be withheld only for real war or also used for coercive diplomacy. Though this issue persists, debate has come to focus primarily on whether force should be reserved for defense of interests as opposed to promotion of values. At one end of spectrum are strict constructionist Weinberger doctrinaires, many of them military professionals, who believe that force should not be used either for diplomacy or value promotion--that it should be employed only to protect United States and its allies from direct military threats. At other end are those who believe that force is an indispensable tool of diplomacy and a legitimate if highly circumstantial means of promoting democracy, halting ge nocide, and restoring order in conditions of anarchy. The Bush campaign argued strongly for interests, whereas Gore campaign spoke up for values as well as Indeed, Bush spokesmen condemned Clinton Administration for dissipating US military strength across a series of military interventions and peace-enforcement obligations on behalf of value promotion. The Gore camp defended US intervention in Balkans and Haiti on grounds that stopping ethnic cleansing and restoring democracy served America's strategic interests precisely by promoting American values overseas. The argument over interests versus values as bases for military action is hardly new. President Theodore Roosevelt and his foreign policy epitomized approach to world based on concrete national interest. Roosevelt accepted world for what it was in early 1900s: a Hobbesian struggle for power and influence in which it was foolish to believe in any morality other than that of raison d'etat. The best way to operate in such a world was through maintenance of a balance of power among major states, and war was sometimes necessary to maintain that balance. In contrast was President Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy based on active promotion of American values overseas. For Wilson, peace was natural state of affairs, broken only by tyrannical states bent on conquest. The key to making world safe for democracy was to democratize world itself, because democracies were morally superior to other states and would not make war upon one another. Entry into World War I afforded United States opportunity to join Europe's democracies in ridding continent of German authoritarianism and aggression. Both realist and idealist approaches have influenced US foreign policy since presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Richard Nixon was a self-declared practitioner of realpolitik who acted mainly on basis on interest, not values. His embrace of communist China in a de facto strategic partnership was purely and simply a move to bolster containment of expanding Soviet power and influence in wake of US defeat in Vietnam. Jimmy Carter was Wilson-oriented in his approach to foreign policy, as was Bill Clinton. Carter placed human rights ahead of balancing Soviet power, at least until Russians invaded Afghanistan, and Clinton used force repeatedly to push values in places--Somalia, Haiti, and former Yugoslavia--peripheral to traditional US security Or so it seemed. Most presidents, however, cannot be easily pigeonholed as either or because in their use-of-force decisions they were motivated by considerations of both power and values. Certainly, it is historically preposterous to argue that the liberal fights for values in contrast to conservative who fights for interests. [1] No American better understood threat Nazi aggression in Europe posed to American strategic interests than liberal Franklin Roosevelt, and it was conservative George Bush who went to war in Persian Gulf to vindicate his ideal of a new world order. …

Viability of Traditional Banking Activities: Evidence from Shifts in Conduct and Excess Capacity

This paper applies modem statistical techniques to estimate levels and shifts of market conduct and aggregate excess capacity in the provision of traditional US banking products such as loans and demand deposits. A variety of models indicate that loans are competitively supplied, with no obvious excess capacity as defined. Some models indicate an anticompetitive shift in demand deposits after 1984, but other evidence suggests that this result may be an artifact attributable to the growth of NOW accounts, MMDAs, and the like. All results suggest that the current levels of these services can be profitably sustained under current market conditions.

Determinants of European bank profitability: A note

This note examines the determinants of bank performances across eighteen European countries between 1986 and 1989. The study replicates Bourke's methodology and finds that the results do conform to the traditional US concentration and bank profitability studies. Support is found for the expense preference expenditure theories, yet no support is found for the Edwards-Heggestad-Mingo risk avoidance hypothesis.

Australia’s Needs and Management Education

Questions whether the traditional US model of management education which currently underpins many management courses in Australia and around the world is appropriate for Australian conditions. The analysis suggests that there is a need for a management education model which is tailored to the needs of Australia and which is vastly different from the characteristic of the traditional US mode.

Comparative Analysis of Japanese Just‐In‐Time Purchasing and Traditional US Purchasing Systems

The contrast between Japanese purchasing practices and US traditional purchasing practices provides a good insight into the relative importance of JIT for US firms. Since the initial implementation of JIT purchasing in late 1980 by Kawasaki Motors (Lincoln plant), at least 50 companies in the US such as GM, Ford, Nissan, Hewlett‐Packard, Xerox, Goodyear, GE and other large US corporations, have adopted and implemented the concept. This has significantly altered not only the way these companies plan and control their production facilities and purchasing systems but has also led to improvements in their product quality and productivity.

The Principles of Medical and Psychiatric Liability in French Law

IN traditional US practice, the courts assess medical malpractice actions according to the concepts and rules of tort analysis. In general terms, the injured patient must establish that the defendant physician committed a negligent act or omission in administering medical care to him. More specifically, he must demonstrate, first, that the defendant owed him a duty of care; secondly, that the defendant's conduct fell below the appropriate standard of care (usually expressed as the standard of care of the reasonable physician, with some variation allowed for specialty and geographical area), and, thirdly, that the defendant's alleged negligent act or omission was the proximate cause of the injury sustained by him.x Some prominent US legal scholars,2 however, have criticised the resort to the tort framework in medical malpractice cases, deeming it to be analytically inappropriate for the resolution of dispute arising under the patient-physician relationship. Its application, it is suggested, leads to a misunderstanding of the consensual nature of that relationship.3 For example, recent developments in tort doctrine have encouraged US courts to deploy public policy analysis in personal injury cases, engendering the expansion of the institutional defendant's liability and the full compensation of the injured party.4 According to Professor Epstein, these cost allocation formulae run counter to the contractual nature of the patient-physician relationship:

Child health problems and programmes in two underdeveloped areas of the USA.

There are areas in the USA where the health problems of children a similar to those of children in some developing countries. Traditional US health programmes have contributed to an improvement in the health status of many of these children but there remains much more to be done.

Classical conditioning of heart rate in rats using direct vagal stimulation as a US

Classically conditioned heart-rate deceleration was established in rats using a 2-sec stimulation of the intact cervical vagus nerve as the US. Although small in magnitude, changes in the form of the CR over training indicated that there may have been inhibition of delay similar to that obtained using a traditional painful shock US. Independent assessments of motivational potency revealed that the vagal US did not lead to conditioned lever-press suppression in a CER procedure, but did produce reliable escape responding in a shuttle-box preference situation. It was suggested that the mildly aversive motivational effects of vagal stimulation may have stemmed from the activation of a vagally mediated system involved in the regulation of hunger.