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Washington's strategic rationale for a Northeast Asian Theater Missile Defense (TMD) system has been sound. Since the end of the Cold War, American bases & allies have increasingly come under the threat of Chinese & North Korean missiles. At the same time, joint TMD-development promised a reaffirmation of the US-Japan alliance that had been strained by both endemic trade conflicts & Tokyo's search for a new regional & international role. The problems with TMD are the result of politics interfering with this strategic rationale. First & foremost in this context has been Washington's incremental abandonment of its "strategic ambiguity" in the Taiwan Strait, a policy driven by mutually contradicting domestic developments on the island, in the People's Republic of China, & in the US itself. The present antiterrorist effort notwithstanding, the politicized TMD project is likely to stay & to continue straining great power relations in Northeast Asia. Adapted from the source document.

Notwithstanding all differences between the two chosen examples some astonishing parrallels come to light concerning cultural frameworks & deeper social mechanisms, which foster the emergence & success of radical religious movements in these areas. The concrete causes & trigger mechanisms are a general atmosphere of political, social, & above all moral crisis as well as a state of cultural war within these societies -- a fierce struggle for religious core values & moral standards between liberal-secular parts & traditional-religious sections of the population. Some spectacular examples of religious terrorism from both cultural areas -- the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing & Palestinian suicide assassinations in Israel -- will allow a sober view on the background of religious violence. Official authorities just as these societies as a whole have enormous difficulties in handling the problem, & these societies show a specific kind of helplessness toward religious radicals & terrorists. Adapted from the source document.

"Terrorism" is a contested concept. Social science theories of the causes of terrorism & counterstrategies are equally disputed. This article provides a survey of social science research on terrorism. It covers problems of concept formation, questions of theory building, & the development of diverging counterterrorism strategies. Finally, the most recent debate on the "new terrorism" is examined & a research approach is proposed that critically reflects the political context of social science research on terrorism. Adapted from the source document.

Some introductory geographic data of the area is followed by a discussion of certain central historical texts: the terms of the British Mandate for Palestine (1922); the 1947 UN General Assembly Resolution on the Future Government of Palestine; & the Security Council Resolution 242 (1967). After an analysis of the obligations that the parties undertook in the context of the Oslo process, which started in 1993, the article deals with the main subjects that should be discussed in the context of the negotiations on the permanent status: Jerusalem, the settlements, borders, security arrangements, & the problem of the refugees. Adapted from the source document.

By Resolution 377 A (V), adopted in 1950, the UN General Assembly claimed for itself the power to recommend measures, including the use of armed force, for the maintenance of international peace & security should the Security Council in an actual conflict fail to exercise its primary responsibility. The resolution, conceived as an instrument to combat aggression, has in practice mainly served as legal basis for the convening of emergency sessions. In the Kosovo crisis, the group of NATO states refrained from securing authority for its planned air operations against Yugoslavia from the General Assembly. During the last decades, neither the US nor the Soviet Union/Russia have been interested in fostering any uprising against the Security Council. However, in view of a certain erosion of the Council's authority a revitalization of Resolution 377 A (V) is to be expected if the legitimacy of the Council is not strengthened through increased representation of Third World countries, in particular among its permanent members. Adapted from the source document.

Since George W. Bush's speech on 1 May 2001, the missile defense debate has gained new momentum. The new administration has decided to start deploying missile defenses as soon as possible & to withdraw from the ABM treaty, even though the attacks of September 11 (2001) had left proponents & opponents fighting about the necessity of missile defense. In retrospect, it is discernible that these debates are hardly linked to changing administrations. They rather depend on societal changes to which administrations have to react. This article takes a general view of the three "Grand Debates" from the Presidents Johnson & Nixon, via Reagan & Clinton to President George W. Bush, depicting several variations the issue has undergone despite basically unchanged arguments on both sides. Adapted from the source document.

The unexpected escalation of interethnic violence in Macedonia in spring 2001 has a long history in the previous times of socialist Yugoslavia. Particularly in the 1980s, interethnic relations worsened further. The main basis of the radicalization on both sides is constituted by a nearly total segregation of the Albanian & the Macedonian society as well as the precedence of collective ethnic rights at the expense of individual rights, supported by the Yugoslav political system. While the conflict could be kept within reasonable bounds during the first years of independence under the conditions of limited political pluralization, ethnic tensions broke out again after the Kosovo war. Adapted from the source document.

The article deals with the question whether an extension of the mechanisms of international criminal jurisdiction by bringing acts of terrorism under the jurisdiction of the planned "Permanent International Criminal Court" could really deliver a sensible contribution to the containment of terrorism. Looking to existing approaches of an internationally coordinated struggle against terrorism demonstrates that recent developments in international treaty law on international cooperation & extradition have brought the international community near to a substantial consensus concerning the definition of "terrorism," but that there still exist different needs of protection for the various categories of terrorist victims. Taking the fragile position of the new international criminal jurisdiction into consideration, a great deal of skepticism with regard to the idea of extending its jurisdiction to terrorist crimes seems to be justified. Adapted from the source document.