World, Political Science, National & International Security, History 

The end of the cold war, in the tearing down of the Berlin wall in 1989, and the dissolution of the warsaw pact and the breakup of the soviet Union soon after, came as good news to most of the world. But it was news since almost no one had predicted it: at the least no one had anticipated such a termination of communist rule in anything less than another several decades.
If political scientist were so much caught by surprise, even by every nice surprise, this might be seen as bad news indeed for their claim to being involved in a ‘science’. Explanation that cannot predict, which have to be reassembled after each year’s news to adjust to the actual facts, will not seems to past the test of a scientific theory.
The years since 1989 are now often compared to the years after 1918, or the years right after 1945, when everything seemed more unpredictable, and more open to manipulation, in contrast to the decades of the cold war, when things seems more set- in –stone. We feel less sure of what the outside world will be like, and of whether Americans will care about this outside world.
If predictive effort in the past have often failed, if social science analyses have often been wrong, the need to try to predict would thus nonetheless seem greater than ever. And one approach to this effort might simply entail staring at the bets we have made, the forecasts we have posted, to see how they look afterwards.
Before and after the cold war amount to such an exercise in re-examining prior effort, with a view to extracting strands of predictive logic for the future. Not the least among the cold war factors that was difficult to assess and predict, were the role of nuclear weapons, and the rate at which such weapons might spread. But others could note additional important factors that would also be difficult to assess and predict, for example the role of females in military preparedness around the globe, the role of media access and of international standards of technological practice on something so mundane as driving on the right or left.
As the cold war has ended, the willingness of American to play a role around the world may seem as difficult to predict as the interactions of Chinese ethnic feelings across the Taiwan Strait, or the ethnic tension that pit Pakistan against India. All of these features have been in play, and are basically still in play, needing to be forecast on where they are headed.
 

The end of the Cold War came as good news for most of the world. No one had predicted the collapse of Communist rule for several decades. This book looks at how political scientists failed to predict such a quick resolution and ways in which the world might develop post Cold War. - from Amzon 

Contents


1. Is the Nonproliferation Treaty Enough?......................P. 1

2. Taiwan and Nuclear Proliferation …………………………........P. 9


3. Women in Combat …………………………………………...............P. 21

4. America’s Interest in Eastern Europe: Toward a
Finlandization of the Warsaw Pact?......................................P. 35


5. Trans-Boundary Television ……………………………………..........P. 55

6. America and the Chinese: The Need for
Continuing Ambiguity…........................................................P.81


7. Some Barriers to Thinking About Conventional Defense……P. 99

8. Nuclear Pakistan And Nuclear India: Stable Deterrent
or Proliferation Challenge?………………………………………..................P. 113

9. America’s Response to the New World (Dis)Order……………...P. 133

10. The Gain and Cost of Non-Lethal Warfare……………………….....P. 157


11. Driving on the Right vs Driving on the Left: International
Standards in History Perspective……………………………………...............P. 171

12. The Continuing Debate on Minimal Deterrence …………………...P. 185

Some Conclusion…………………………………………………..........................P. 209

Index ………………………………………………………………..............................P. 211