US Attitudes Research Articles

U.S. Bites Greenhouse Bullet and Gags

Delegates from more than 100 countries gathered in Chantilly, VA for the first meeting of the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Convention on Climate Change and reached an agreement on their organizational structure for negotiating how to reduce global warming. However, the commitment of the US to reduce the release of CO{sub 2} emission was very disappointing. The US attitude toward CO{sub 2} emission is totally unchanged, and US policy includes no provision other than those already in place to reduce the greenhouse gases. The plan of the administration to take action now to reduce climate changes really includes only the administrations already announced intentions to stabilize the greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2000. The administration is not yet fully convinced that there is substantial scientific evidence supporting greenhouse warming, and there is general concern that the economic costs of moderating the greenhouse effect might be excessive. There is a good measure of free market ideology involved in the US policy of opposition to reduction of CO{sub 2} emissions. In fact, CO{sub 2} emissions in the US are predicted to rise by 15% by the year 2000.

US Energy Policy In The Face Of Growing Oil Dependence

The purpose of this paper is to explore why the US government has displayed so little alarm about the country's growing oil dependence (at least up until the Gulf crisis), despite its traditional concern with security of supply. Abundant supplies of oil is the obvious explanation. However, quite apart from this factor (which has lent legitimacy to the laissez-faire approach), the US attitude may reflect a growing awareness that strong economic interdependence is a fact of life in several areas. It may also reflect the fact that the United States has been unable to resolve the conflicts of interest that inevitably accompany the implementation of policies designed to slow oil dependence, e.g., tax measures, the opening up offshore areas and higher gasoline taxes. It is concluded that, in the period following the Gulf crisis, the US will find it easier to solve its supply problems through diplomatic actions, rather than through domestic initiatives.

Awareness Advertising—Japanese and US Agency Perspectives

This article presents the results of a study of the attitudes of US and Japanese advertising agency executives towards ‘awareness advertising’—the practice of multinational firms advertising their products in markets where these products are neither allowed to be commercially imported nor manufactured. The results indicate that while a number of advertising agencies have developed awareness-advertising programmes for their clients in several markets, not everyone is convinced about its usefulness. The respondents are generally in agreement that awareness advertising makes sense for certain kinds of products more than for others, but there is some doubt expressed about whether the benefits from such advertising would outweigh the costs. Several questions for further research on awareness advertising are suggested.

US attitudes toward foreign science and technology

US attitudes toward foreign science and technology

Nation-wide Public Opinion Survey of US Attitudes on the Middle East

Nation-wide Public Opinion Survey of US Attitudes on the Middle East

US space commercialization — effects on space law and domestic law

This report by Harry Marshall Jr is based on a paper presented to the 27th International Colloquium on the Law of Outer Space of the International Institute of Space Law during the 35th Congress of the International Astronautical Federation, Lausanne, Switzerland, 9 October 1984. It outlines US attitudes and legislation on the commercialization of space, in particular the space programme of President Reagan, LANDSAT commercialization, ELV commercialization and conflicts of space law.

Migration and Development in the Caribbean: Relating Policies and People

Throughout the 20th century, the US has feared that political instability in the Caribbean area could be exploited by adversaries; therefore, the US and the nations of the Caribbean share a compelling interest in the region's development. The dramatic increase in legal and illegal immigration to the US from the Caribbean in the last 2 decades has offered an additional human reason for US interest in the region. This migration has also created a new source of dependence and vulnerability for the region. Curtailment of migration would undoubtedly affect the region, and if the effect were social and political instability, then the US would also share those consequences. The 1984 Conference on Migration and Development in the Caribbean held discussions to 1) enhance the benefits of migration to Caribbean development, 2) identify development strategies, policies, and projects that would reduce pressures that have accelerated the rate of international migration, making it less manageable and more costly, and 3) identify ways to reduce dependence on migration by expanding employment and assisting economies in the region to become more self-reliant. The attitudes of both US and Caribbean participants seemed to reflect a considerable degree of ambivalence on the migration issue. The US views itself as "a nation of immigrants" and yet is troubled by the recent large influx of immigrants, particularly illegal migrants and refugees. While Americans recognize that the "brain" reduces the development capacity of developing countries, the US still needs and benefits from young immigrants trained in the sciences, engineering, and computers. Caribbean participants were also ambivalent about immigration. They consider immigration "a way of life" and a "right," but they also recognize that there are significant developmental costs to some types of migration. While many want the US to keep a wide open door to Caribbean immigrants, they are aware that most Caribbean Community (CARICOM) governments are currently closing the door to immigrants even from other CARICOM countries.

Foreign Medical Graduates

To Editor.— article by Bernard M. Weinstein, MPH, The Foreign Medical Graduate Issue and US Hospitals: In Regard to Public Law 94-484 (241:917,1979), serves to highlight chauvinism and short-term expediency that permeates US attitudes and laws governing immigration. In his concluding paragraph, he states that, in deciding whether foreign medical graduates (FMGs) should be admitted to fill vacancies in US medical care system, the bottom line is whether patients have a physician to attend to their needs. He refers, of course, to patients in United States; what about patients in country of FMG's origin? Most of those countries have far fewer physicians per capita than does United States and fewer resources with which to train health care workers. Weinstein goes on to state that restricting entry of FMGs into United States would be both morally and politically weak. To

Change of US Attitude towards PLO

Change of US Attitude towards PLO

The Palestine Papers, 1943-1947

This article discusses the evolution of the policy of the United States towards Palestine in the critical years 1943-47, as reflected in the published volumes of the Foreign Relations of the United States for the years in question. 1 This period coincided with the writer's service in the Near East Division of the State Department, first as Palestine desk officer and later as Assistant Chief. Although the writer's actual period of service was from mid-November 1943 to lateJanuary 1947, it has seemed more logical to carry the story from May 1943 (first statement of a formal US attitude regarding Palestine) on to February 1947 (British decision to refer the Palestine question to the United Nations). The objective will be, taking the published papers, to identify a few main themes running through them and to offer some personal interpretation with a view to providing a rounded picture. Looking at the printed papers as a whole, a few general observations can be made. In the first place, although there are clearly some omissions, the treatment of events appears to be quite full. Indeed in retrospect it is surprising that a handful of officers, working under difficult wartime and post-war conditions, should have achieved so large an output and still have kept up with their daily tasks. Another point that strikes the reader, and serves to make the documents look somewhat dated, is the frequency of references to the new world organization in terms that imply considerable optimism as to the ability of the United Nations to solve disputes an optimism that in many ways has not been borne out. The unconventional way in which the Palestine question was sometimes handled by our government is revealed by the fact that some of the key docu-