Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/7565

Browse

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The Participation of Japanese Military Forces in U.N. Peacekeeping Operations
    (1996-06) Leitenberg, Milton
    In September 1992, the first Japanese military forces were committed to participation in a U.N. peacekeeping mission, the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). This occurred under new Japanese legislation enacted in June 1992. It was followed by other short-term deployments with U.N. contingents in Mozambique in May 1993, in Zaire in 1994, and most recently with U.N. Peacekeeping forces on the Golan Heights in 1996. In September 1994, the Japanese Socialists reversed their policies of decades, accepting all that they had opposed before in regard to the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF), including its basic constitutionality and legitimacy. However, the constitutional question has always been a proxy for a less symbolic and more basic issue: How can the Japanese public and political leadership guard against a resurgence of "militarism," the accretion of both forces and political power that would permit the use of Japanese military forces for aggressive purposes? Has the discussion of this question been realistic? Could such a process any longer take place without the approval and direction of the government? Is any incremental step toward the involvement and integration of the Japanese military in international collaborative activities, such as U.N. peacekeeping, the initiation of unavoidable and inevitable military independence, and the loss of control over the military by Japanese civil society and government? What would be the most desirable policies to follow so that the Japanese military behaved in accordance with international norms for the indefinite future? Is the most likely inhibitor of its misbehaving in the long term its integration with the military forces of other Asian and worldwide militaries, after 50 years of isolation, or attempting to maintain that total isolation indefinitely? And what does the question of a thoroughgoing and heretofore essentially absent Japanese national understanding of the practices of its armies in Asia between 1931 and 1945 have to do with these questions?
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Deaths in Wars and Conflicts Between 1945 and 2000
    (2006-06-20) Leitenberg, Milton; CISSM
    Deaths in Wars and Conflicts in the 20th Century The monograph contains: - A data section, tabulating both civilian and combatant deaths due to all causes for 157 events between 1945 and 2000 in 72 countries, grouped in seven geographic regions; - An itemized total sum of deaths in wars and conflicts "killed or allowed to die by human decision" of approximately 231 million for the 100 years of the 20th Century. The separate components of this sum are provided. The reference to the consequence of political decisions by governments includes massive starvation resulting from government campaigns and not natural causes, major loss of life in internment or work camps systems, and instances of genocide. - The monograph then includes summaries of the events that took place in Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1990, and since 2003 in the Darfur province of Sudan. It analyzes the nature of the response or non-response to these by the international community. These sections demonstrate that by far the greater portion of loss of life in these events could have been prevented by different international policies both prior to and during the crisis phases of these events. - Finally, the monograph concludes with an analysis of the problem of international intervention.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat
    (2005-12-01) Leitenberg, Milton; CISSM
    This is an expanded version of a paper prepared for an international conference "Meeting the Challenges of Bioterrorism: Assessing the Threat and Designing Biodefense Strategies"
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Biological Weapons Arms Control
    (1996-05-01) Leitenberg, Milton; CISSM