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I examine how well predictions about the effects of NATO expansion have fared since the first round in 1999. I argue that critics were mostly wrong, but that backers made many wrong predictions too. I examine the logic behind these positions and what lessons this has for future security policy debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the competing political justifications presented in the United States for policies designed to support and to restrain American hegemony from 1980-2000. During this period, the political questions about US hegemony shifted significantly: from whether US hegemony would survive the Cold War to what the US role as the lone superpower should be. Domestic political groups differed over the aims and effectiveness of proposed grand strategies to sustain hegemony, adapt to its loss, or benefit from it, and they disagreed over how those strategies would affect the US economy and society. What explains the differences in their views and how they adapted those views when international conditions changed between the 1980s and the 1990s? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several realist scholars have proposed partition as a solution to ethnic conflicts (Downes, 2004, 2006; Kaufman 1996, 1998; Mearsheimer, 1997, 2000, 2001; Mearsheimer and Van Evera, 1995). Calls for partition as a solution to the Iraqi civil war show the continued salience of the issue (Washington Post 2006; Biden and Gelb 2006). Scholars outside the realist school have criticized realist partition arguments on various grounds (Fearon 2004; Kumar, 1997; Sambanis 2000). Sambanis finds no clear advantage for partition as a solution to civil wars in a large-n study, but neither does he find that partition is harmful to civil war settlements. Fearon rejects ad hoc partitions in favor of a norm-based approach to reduce perverse incentive effects. However, there has been no intra-realist, theoretical critique of partition as a solution. In this paper, I argue that ?partitioning realists? ? those realist scholars who support partition ? have rejected core realist theorems in their effort to extend the empirical scope of realism from inter-state conflicts to intra-state wars. First, I argue that both defensive and offensive variants of realism suggest that partition will aggravate security concerns, not ameliorate them, except under unusual conditions. Defensive realists should predict that post-partition states will faced enhanced security dilemmas from each other and from third states. Offensive realists should predict that post-partition states will seek to enhance their relative power by pursuing risky security policies. Second, I review the statistical and case-study evidence in support of partitioning realism and my position, focusing on the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Ethiopia-Eritrea, and Indonesia-Ache conflicts. Third, I explain how partitioning realism emerged as a distinct theoretical sub-category of realism Realists sought to address humanitarian issues that came to fore at the end of the Cold War and which alternative theories offered ? in their view ? limited insights. Realist theory also has faced a tension over whether it is fundamentally a theory of modern international politics (Waltz 1979) or theory of politics across units of analysis (Gilpin 1984/1986). Efforts to apply realism to contemporary policy issues led to theoretical distortions, I argue. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the Cold War, activists and academics have decried the alleged decline in multilateralism in US foreign policy. Although generic US ratifiaction of and membership in mulitlateral bodies has not changed significantly in this period, the United States has rejected several prominent multilateral treaties and waged war outside United Nations Security Council auspices (Patrick 2002; Ikenberry 2003). Multilateralism's advocotes argue that unilateral policies are likely to harm US interest and reduce US power. However, much of the academic criticism of US foreign policy neglects crucial aspects of the scholarship on multilateralism. IR reseach on multilateralism has identified conceptual and empirical problems with multilateralism as an institution for fostering cooperation. Moreover, advocates of multilateralism ignore important ethical dilemmas raised by multilateralism at the same time that they argue that multilateralism should be considered a value to be promoted in US foreign policy in and of itself. In this paper, I dicuss three problems with contemporary academic advocacy of multilateralism. First, multilateralists often elide the distinction between generic multilateralism and qualitative multilateralism (Ruggie 1992). Generic multilateralism may reflect bilateral procedures, not aggreement on generalized principles of conduct, the crucial components to qualitative multilateralism. Critics of US unilateralism have failed to apply the qualitative multilaterald standards, which exclude particular interest or strategic exigencies, as legitimatie criteria in decisionmaking of multilateral bodies. I argue that in Rwanda, Kosovo, and Iraq fundamentally non-multilateral principles played crucial roles in decisions by the UN Security Council. Second, empirical studies of cooperation have found problems in achieving cooperation in n-party fora and pointed to the value of bilateral side-payments or coercion in acheiving ostensbily multilateral agreements (Axelrod and Keohane, 1986; Oye, 1992). Commitment to qualitative multilateral cooperation may reduce the effectiveness and scope of cooperation in certain issue-areas. I examine the success of multilateral v. bilateral efforts in nuclear non-proliferation, human rights regimes, and world trade. Third, multilateralism is seen as procedural norm and as a legitimating institution for international action (e.g., Ruggie, 1992; Finnemore 1996, 2003). Advocates of multilateralism rely on weak analogies between multilateral decision-making in international institutions and deliberative democracy. The nature of international politics differs significantly from the premises of deliberative democratic theory. Multilateralism is better viewed as a normative commitment to rule-based cooperation rather than description of actual practice. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shiga toxin producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157:H7 has gained international notoriety as the primary etiologic agent of hemorrhagic diarrhea and hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) following consumption of contaminated water or food products. Although O157:H7 STEC is the most abundant serovar, its importance is exaggerated due to overreliance on culture based methods for diagnosis. There are more than 100 other STEC serovar that have been associated with diarrheal illness when both culture and non-culture toxin based detection methods are used. Since 2002, the Idaho Bureau of Laboratories has collaborated with three regional medical centers in Eastern, South Central, and Southwestern Idaho to implement combined culture and toxin detection methods in routine stool culture protocols. In all three regions, this testing algorithm has shown that about 50% of the recovered clinical isolates were non-O157 STEC serovars. This data clearly illustrates the need for the combined use of culture and toxin based testing to assess the burden of STEC disease in Idaho. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]