For those concerned with democratization in the communist world, the final years of the Soviet Union were a truly exhilarating time. At the end of the Gorbachev era, the Soviet Union experienced an explosion of grassroots nongovernmental activity. For the first time in nearly a century, civic groups, trade unions, political parties, and newspapers organized and operated independent of the state. 1 In the final year preceding the collapse of the USSR, these newly formed organizations also cooperated with each other, forming horizontal links in their shared quest to challenge the Soviet system. Most impressive were the miner's strikes in 1989 and again in 1991, as well as the mass demonstrations on Manezh Square in downtown Moscow that occurred repeatedly throughout fall 1990 and spring 1991. At times, hundreds of thousands filled the expansive square. Russian society was politicized, organized, and mobilized. The Soviet state had to respond. Occurring in the shadow of decades of totalitarian rule in the Soviet Union, this kind of social activity was remarkable. The proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and exponential rise in citizen participation in these groups fueled hope that a proto-civil society was taking root--one capable of strengthening Russia's young and tenuous democracy.

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Just about a year ago, this newly created Subcommittee opened its formal hearings with a look at the U.S.-European relationship. I said at the time I felt that the transatlantic relationship was the most important relationship this nation had. Today, in the aftermath of 911, I feel this relationship is even more important and in many respects stronger than ever.

It is fitting today that we open our hearings with what I consider the second most important relationship we have, that with Russia. U.S.-Russian relationships have significantly changed since the terrorist attacks on September 11.

Russian President Putin, in what some have defined as a bold defiance of many in his own population, his bureaucracy and his military, has seized upon the tragedies of the World Trade Center and Pentagon as an opportunity to transform relations with the U.S. from distant and sometimes hostile to one of broad cooperation and new opportunities in many fields.

By identifying terrorism as the common enemy and associating Russia with the common cause of the United States and others to deal with global terrorism, President Putin seems to be attempting to forge a new alliance with the West and with the United States.

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Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, questions have arisen as to which course the United States should sail in the new international order. In this volume, some of the nation's foremost foreign policy experts present carefully crafted and bold perspectives of what America's global role should be. All contributors, leading authorities in the fields of economics, history, international relations, and political science, offer alternative viewpoints. These sharply drawn approaches permit the general reader and scholar alike to glean an understanding of the main schools of thought about American foreign policy today.

They are written in accessible prose without esoteric language or scholarly jargon. The past decade witnessed a transition from an era of bipolar confrontation with the Soviet Union to a new and still-emerging epoch. Although American economic, military, and diplomatic influence stood unrivaled in the past decade, the future looks much less predictable. The unique insights represented in this volume will help inform the reader about possible courses America can navigate in uncharted seas. Rogue states, humanitarian interventions, terrorism, major and middle powers, international organizations, global trade agreements, and other political and economic developments are analyzed in the context of the policies recommended in this volume. The perspective spans the spectrum from global activism to antiglobalization.

This article investigates the links between trade policy and economic growth in a panel of 57 countries between 1970 and 1989. It develops a new measure of trade policy openness based on the policy component of trade shares, using it in a simultaneous equations system to identify the effect of trade policy on several determinants of growth.

The emerging relationship between China and Russia is perhaps the most important force redefining international relations in post-Cold War Asia. In recent years, Russia and China have built a strategic partnership aimed at the 21st century--a development that deeply worries some Western observers and puzzles others.

In this first comprehensive study of Russian-Chinese relations, Sherman Garnett and a team of fifteen U.S., Russian, and Chinese scholars analyze the most important issues posed by the relationship, including: cross-border trade, the impact of Russia's center-periphery politics, migration, arms sales, and (mis)perceptions of one another. The book assesses what will be one of the most important relationships, economically and strategically, in the dynamic region stretching from Central Asia to the Far East. It also weighs the prospects for real cooperation between Russia, a severely weakened power, and China, a power on the rise.

Expanded scientific activity is thought to benefit national economic development through improved labor force capacities adn the creation of new knolwedge and technology. However, scientific research activity expands as a global process and reflects the penetration of societies by a general rationalistic world culture. The authors point out that scientific expansion and the accompanying cultural penetration legitimate a board progressive agenda of social amelioration (e.g., by identifying environmental and health problems, and social welfare and human rights issues) that can result in regulation and direct constrainsts on productive economic activity in teh short term. Thus, science can be seen as encouraging a trade-off between short-term economic growth and boarder (and longer-term) social development. The effects of dimensions of scientific infrastrucutre on national economic growth are examined over the 1970-1990 period. Cross-national analyses show that the size of a nation's scientific labor force and training system has a positive effect on economic development, supporting conventional theories. However, indicators of national involvement in scientific research activity show negative effects on economic growth. Corollary analyses show that this negative effect is partially explained by the expansion of scientific activity into more socially relevant domains (e.g., medicine, environmental sciences, etc.) thus supporting the main arguments.

Russia's March 2000 presidential election represents one step forward and two steps back for Russian democracy. For the first time in Russia's history, power within the Kremlin has changed hands through an electoral process. The election not only took place but was conducted as constitutionally prescribed, no small achievement for a country with Russia's authoritarian history. More than two-thirds of the eligible voters participated, and they appeared to make informed choices among a range of candidates who offered competing platforms, policies, and leadership styles. The election, however, was not contested on a level playing field. The winner, acting president Vladimir Putin, enjoyed tremendous advantages that tainted the process. Although weak in some arenas, the Russian state still enjoys too much power with respect to the electoral process, while nongovernmental forces--political parties, civic organizations, trade unions, and independent business groups--remain too weak to shape the outcomes of elections.

At the Gleneagles summit in July 2005, the heads of state from the G-8 countries - the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom - called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the African Development Bank to cancel 100 percent of their debt claims on the world's poorest countries. The world's richest countries have agreed in principle to forgive roughly $55 billion dollars owed by the world's poorest nations. This article considers the wisdom of the proposal for debt forgiveness, from the standpoint of stimulating economic growth in highly indebted countries. In the 1980s, debt relief under the "Brady Plan" helped to restore investment and growth in a number of middle-income developing countries. However, the debt relief plan for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) launched by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 1996 has had little impact on either investment or growth in the recipient countries. We will explore the key differences between the countries targeted by these two debt relief schemes and argue that the Gleneagles proposal for debt relief is, at best, likely to have little effect at all. Debt relief is unlikely to help the world's poorest countries because, unlike the middle-income Brady countries, their main economic difficulty is not debt overhang, but an absence of functional economic institutions that provide the foundation for profitable investment and growth. We will show that debt relief may be more valuable for Brady-like middle-income countries than for low-income ones because of how it leverages the private sector.

The next time Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin meet at a U.S.-Russian summit,

three kinds of issues will dominate their agenda's arms control, regional conflicts,

and human rights. In fact, these three issues may dominate the agenda of

future U.S.-Russian summits for a long time. Regarding arms control, the Russian

ratification of START II stands as one of the major stumbling points in U.S.-

Russia relations. The two presidents probably will not meet again until this agreement

has been ratified by the Russian parliament. Regarding regional conflicts,

the American and Russian governments have radically divergent positions concerning

trade with Iran. For several years, the United States has objected to the

Russian-assisted construction of nuclear reactors in Iran, yet the Russian Ministry

of Atomic Energy continues with the project. Regarding human rights,

American officials have quite rightly expressed their outrage concerning the passage

of a new draconian law on religion that restricts the freedom of worship of

most "nontraditional" Russian faiths. In reaction to this law, the U.S. Senate has

threatened to end all aid to Russia.