Contenu du sommaire : L'Amérique, puissance asiatique

Managing transition: the EU-US relationship
From the Marshall aid to the European Defense Community in the early 1950s to the single currency and the development of a European security capability, the EU-US relationship has undergone transition periods. Because the second Bush Administration has made clear its intention to work more closely with the EU, we are in such a period of transition today. The most important challenge before us is the shift is taking place as China, India and others rise. Whether it happens peacefully or creates greater conflict hinges on the United States and Europe's willingness to cooperate with each other. By working together indeed, we have a better chance of managing the transition on our terms and of ensuring that liberal values continue to inform the institutions and rules of the international community.

Naval power and globalization: the next twenty years in the Pacific
Naval affairs lay at the heart of American national security strategy in the Asia-Pacific region. There, a rising China is affecting both the regional and worldwide economic balances of power and influence. For a country like China with the global interests its economy will provide, a blue water navy is a logical option. As such perspective is taking shape, dissuading China from investing in an equivalently strong blue-water fleet and offering opportunities for it to join a set of cooperative maritime activities that benefit all countries of the region will be a major challenge to the United States. Indeed, as America fashions its naval strategy in the Pacific it will need to think well beyond simple reactions to Chinese naval modernization. While still providing traditional underpinnings for American regional interests, American naval strategy will have to develop new attributes centered on missile defense, irregular warfare and the integration of all factors of political-military influence.

Understanding the transformation of American military affairs for the U.S. - Japan alliance
In Asia-Pacific, a region of paramount importance to America's strategic interests, and particularly to the U.S. Navy, the United States can rely on the unwavering Japanese ally. The U.S.-Japan alliance has indeed reach a level of rare mutual trust and confidence. The so-called Army Transformation process that is currently under way, and the debates and tensions that surround American military presence in Japan, reflect a gobal vision of what the shape and missions of U.S. forces in the region will be in the future.

Rural America—who needs it and why? An American perspective
Is rural America a harbinger of a better or a worse America? Part reality, part myth, and part confusion, rural America is also a useful lens through which to examine all of America. America has a long history of social contracts forming the basis of rural public policy. However since the 1970s, when America had become a suburban nation, there has been no social contract between the urban majority and the rural minority. Today, a layer cake of past initiatives and programs reflecting the previous social contracts hangs over a diverse landscape of rural America. A new, Interdependence social contract stabilizing and expanding the middle class, reducing poverty, and protecting ecological and cultural resources needs to provide the basis of a new relationship with the rest of America and rebuild its belief in the common good.

Trends in rural America: looking at the data and listening to practitioners
Rural development practitioners tell us that low skill jobs in traditional sectors are disappearing and the nation's chronically poor rural regions are especially disadvantaged after decades of underinvestment. Lack of economic opportunity and youth out-migration are at the top of everyone's mind. Constant challenges in areas facing long term poverty include the lack of accountable local government and good schools, as well as the failure of civic culture to open up to non-elites and historically excluded groups. In other regions, where housing and real estate become increasingly expensive, comparative advantages such as landscape, culture, and proximity to urban areas attract newcomers.

Plus ça change: continuity in southern electoral politics
The South has transformed dramatically in the past several decades. Republicanism has become the dominant political force and has socially reinforced in the region, replacing the Democratic affiliation of the old days. The region has also transformed into a major engine of economic growth and development in the United States, changing its relationship to the rest of the country. Yet, as the examples of two Congressmen, current-day Virgil Goode and old-day Jack Flynt show, there is still a significant relationship to the past in southern politics, the psychology of electoral politics in much of the region remaining the same. Certain institutional features of the southern political system have remained in place and continue to govern the behavior of the players, and even though with migration and immigration new generations of people enter the polity, the basic political culture tenaciously persists.

Taking Africa seriously: toward a more comprehensive u.s. policy in Africa
Africa is becoming steadily more central to the United States and to the rest of the world in ways that transcend humanitarian interests. The rising level of African leadership offers an opportunity to build strong partnerships in areas of mutual interest. In turn, such a policy would force the United States and others to address Africa's humanitarian needs in a more serious and effective manner. Earlier in the decade, a relatively new approach to Africa, emphasizing trade rather than aid, came out of Congress, and from the Clinton to the Bush administration there has been continuity in focus. However, as promising as recent initiatives have been, they will likely suffer without a more comprehensive elaboration of U.S. interests in Africa.