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This paper examines how international education (IE), as an important tool of public diplomacy (PD) and soft power (SP), faces unique challenges as issues of national security (NS) become more prominent in this era of new geopolitics. It presents a model to understand the relationship between PD, SP and NS and then applies this model to a comparative study. The contrasting histories, approaches and perspectives of IE as it operates as a component of foreign policy and at the nexus of PD, SP and NS in both the U.S. and Canada are analysed. The paper concludes with three challenges faced by IE in the contemporary context: first, the diminishing role of the university as a distinct and valued non-state actor; second, the weakening of foreign policy as an outward looking, distinctly international investment; and third, the problem with choosing isolation over engagement as a strategy.

Growing polarization among the US electorate has in recent years attracted considerable attention from academic and non-academic observers. This paper examines some of the ways in which polarization affects US foreign and security policy in the post-Trump era. In particular, the paper offers an account of why bipartisan agreement over the so-called "rise of China" has prevailed in the face of powerful trends towards increased polarization, while domestic opinions over US aid to Ukraine have become much more contested. Drawing on a constructivist understanding of foreign policy as performative of a certain vision of the domestic self, this paper shows how US aid to Ukraine has become entangled with competing visions of the US, while domestic opinions of China have remained stable. While such a constructivist understanding does not necessarily challenge rationalist accounts, it is helpful in unravelling the link between national identity, domestic polarization, and foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines China's national security review regime of foreign investment and compares it with that of the United States. Over the years, China has gradually established a comprehensive legal framework for national security review of foreign investment. Recent efforts were made to refine the public enforcement mechanism of the review in tandem with a new "pre-establishment national treatment plus negative list" system under the 2020 Foreign Investment Law. The United States also enacted the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 to enhance its national security review regime. By analyzing the law and practices of China and the United States, this paper finds that the national security review regimes of the two jurisdictions have functional convergences despite some formal divergences caused by diverse political-economy landscapes. Their functional convergences are highlighted by China's local practices, such as the de-facto national security screening in the name of anti-monopoly review. There are many factors affecting China's national security review regime for foreign investment, including the ongoing (and escalating) US-China competition (or conflict) at the international level and the evolution of state or party capitalism at the domestic level. These research findings will not only contribute to the existing comparative law scholarship but also benefit multinational enterprises that seek to enter Chinese and the US markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Comment argues that the U.S. restrictions on the export of semiconductors and other AI technology to China do not violate the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 (GATT 1994). Instead, such measures are legitimate expressions under GATT 1994's Article XXI national security exception, which allows a country to break other articles within the agreement if necessary to protect the country's essential national security interests. Given the national security risks associated with the rise of AI technology and the likelihood that such technology will be supplied to a military enterprise, the current trade restrictions qualify for the exception. However, this Comment ultimately argues that while valid under GATT 1994, these trade restrictions are not a permanent solution. Such trade restrictions hurt international trade agreements and multilateral trading systems and do not remedy national security concerns. Ultimately a multilateral agreement regarding the safe trade and use of AI technology is needed to relieve the national security risks and prevent future disruption to trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is widespread agreement among U.S. experts that the United States must protect its technological advantage, there is disagreement about how best to do so. The related debate reveals tension between maintaining an unrestricted federally-funded research and development enterprise, on one hand, and countering foreign governments seeking to exploit it, on the other. Although lawyers have engaged with this debate in academic scholarship and in strategic ways like influencing national- level law and policy, legal practitioners have often been absent at the operational level. By way of facilitating such engagement, this Article provides a primer on National Security Decision Directive 189, an executive order issued in 1985 that established national policy favoring openness with respect to federally-funded fundamental research. The Article also considers the legal force the order continues to hold given recent legislative and executive action designed to strengthen the federally-funded research and development enterprise against foreign threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed some of the problems in the current pattern of global trade, particularly with respect to supply chain disruptions. To understand the current status of global trade, it is helpful to understand the confluence of four seemingly disparate developments: (1) Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage in the early 1800s; (2) the rebuilding in the late 40s and 50s of our former adversaries--Japan and Germany--into export based economies; (3) the modification of capitalism in the 1980s to focus upon maximizing shareholder value; and (4) the rise of China as an economic and military powerhouse, facilitated initially by a low-wage manufacturing base. Ricardo's concept of comparative advantage discusses: (1) how each country would be in a more advantageous position if it manufactured products that it is most efficient at producing, and (2) that allowing each country to specialize in the products it efficiently manufactures would be mutually beneficial to all countries involved when it comes to trade. However, disciples of Ricardo paid little attention to the two conditions that he articulated in order for his theory to work, both of which are no longer true today. Namely, that capital is loyal to the country of origin, and that currencies move to balance out trade deficits. With respect to maximizing shareholder value, this focus, coupled with cheap labor in China and other nations, led to American companies to outsource our manufacturing sector. The interests of other stakeholders, such as employees, customers, suppliers, and communities, were minimized. During the Bush 43 administration, the U.S. economy lost about 5 million manufacturing jobs, or about one third of the previous total. However, the major impetus for this blow to American workers came from President Clinton and his "free trade" philosophy, which led to the "most favored nation" status for China and, ultimately, the admission of China to the World Trade Organization. Unfortunately, China has never observed WTO principles regarding state-sponsored enterprises or policies against direct or indirect piracy of other countries' technology. Today, the United States has lost its dominance in manufacturing, private sector labor unions have been greatly diminished, the economic situation of the middle class has stagnated for 40 years, and America's free-market economic and political philosophy has led to governmenta impasse and rising inequality. China is now expected to supersede the United States as the world's number one economic power. This article asserts that, in order to provide high quality jobs for American workers, to protect American businesses against supply chain disruptions, and to ensure national security, the United States needs to adopt an industrial policy. Creating an industrial policy is something that many other advanced economies have already accomplished, as opposed to relying on the blind hand of the market to determine public policy. The mantra of free trade in the United States has hinged on giving away low-tech jobs and diverting our resources and workers into hightech jobs. Conversely, China does have an industrial policy, and it is determined to be a leader, not just in low-tech manufacturing, but also in high-tech industrial and military activities. Unless we focus our attention on maintaining a manufacturing base, we are going to be second to China in many high-tech industries, and from a military standpoint, will lose much of our leverage to ensure peace in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discourse around the bridging the gap debate is seen to a unique sub-set of the social sciences in the United States as applied to a unique American approach to security. This article looks beyond US National Security and the practices of the discipline of political science at US universities to address, and expand on, some specific ideas in Michael Desch's volume The Cult of the Irrelevant. We offer that an integrative assessment of how scholarly work can best inform security policies and practices requires more critical examination in four domains: consideration of how different disciplines frame key issues and speak to each other; understanding the dynamics of the policy marketplace; assessments to alternate ways to frame security and national security; and requirements to critical challenge the privilege academics have awarded themselves as the purveyors (and gatekeepers) of 'knowledge' and the 'truth'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the United States has progressively become more involved globally since World War II, the U.S. military is being stretched beyond the professional military competency straining civilian control of the military. To remedy this, it is again time to revisit our national security structure, and adopt a General Staff in place of the Joint Staff. Following World War II and the destruction of the German General Staff by the Nazi Party, the General Staff as an institution has been emotionally rejected in the United States without a careful historical and legal examination of how that institution operates under varying forms of government and without an understanding of how it would operate under the United States' peculiar constitutional form of government. Exploring the historical and legal roots of the General Staff demonstrates that replacing the Joint Staff with a General Staff subordinated into the chain of command will act as a check on the ever-expanding influence of the military, while at the same time strengthening the military's ability to decisively defend U.S. national interests. Further, a General Staff will clarify the constitutional separation of military powers in a way that mitigates the politicizing effects of the separation of powers doctrine restoring balance to the constitutional division of military powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]