Naval War College

About: Naval War College is a education organization based out in Newport, Rhode Island, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: International law & China. The organization has 233 authors who have published 519 publications receiving 6652 citations. The organization is also known as: United States Naval War College & U.S. Naval War College.

The Communitarian Foreign Policy of Amitai Etzioni

Abstract: Amitai Etzioni’s communitarian perspective offers a comprehensive approach to international affairs in addition to offering guidance for domestic policy. His argument that a focus on traditional “realist” concerns for a nation’s security and interests (“security first”), combined with a dialogue over competing moral imperatives, is more likely to lead to the emergence of an idealist end state--a sustainable international community. His emphasis on gradualism--of breaking apart complex policy goals into small, discrete steps--comes from his assessment that this is a better way of promoting lasting change in the international system. His perspective does not fit neatly into any of the dominant U.S. foreign policy approaches, but his ideas have formed part of the foreign policy debate for the last fifty years.

Planning for Resilient and Sustainable Coastal Shorelands and Communities in the Face of Global Climate Change

Abstract: Coastal shorelands and communities are among the most beautiful, vital, remunerative, popular, inequitable, and hazardous of places to live, work, and play. Because of the varied and intensive uses of them combined with climate-related impacts to them, they increasingly experience threats from coastal hazards, suffer ecological degradation, and engender contentious conflicts. Although some coastal shorelands are publicly owned, many are privately owned. Coastal states and communities confront many challenges as they plan for and manage the use of privately owned coastal shorelands. Coastal shorelands encompass the near-shore beaches, dunes, wetlands, and other transitional areas within dynamic coastal zones, whether developed or natural. Sustainability suggests the ability of natural and social coastal systems to persist, whereas resilience speaks to the sustainability of those systems when subject to substantial disruptions such as flooding from extreme storms. In addition to promoting sustainable and resilient coastal shorelands in general, advocates also call for redressing the heightened risks and other inequities experienced by historically marginalized communities. Most of the challenges prompting calls for enhanced coastal resilience, sustainability, and equity are not unique to coastal settings, but coastal communities especially need to attend to them given the heightened risks and development pressures they face. Broadly, they include increasingly frequent and fierce storms, floods, drought, fires, and heatwaves. Coastal communities also face unique challenges, including accelerating rates of shoreline recession and increasing near-shore flooding. Further complicating these natural dynamics are complex and poorly adapted property right, public interest, and related legal/administrative institutional arrangements shaping both private and public expectations in coastal settings. Community planning, if well executed, offers the promise of facilitating and advancing the kinds of nuanced and adaptive resiliency and sustainability goals needed everywhere, especially in coastal settings. Toward that end, researchers and advocates promote a range of planning principles, such as recognizing that coastal economies are nested within and dependent upon coastal ecosystems; promoting culturally aware, place-based, and infrastructure-efficient development policies; adopting no- to low-regrets climate adaptation policies; and encouraging ongoing learning and adaptative management. They similarly promote a variety of planning methods to support those policies, such as land suitability, infrastructure capacity, hazard vulnerability, and social vulnerability analyses, best engaged through scenario-based planning given climate-related uncertainties. Coastal communities experiencing aggressive shoreline recession face difficult choices as well—such as whether to armor receding shores or withdraw—most of which will require acknowledging and working through unavoidable trade-offs. Finally, providing knowledge about natural coastal dynamics and management systems is necessary but not by itself sufficient. Also needed are enhanced local capacity to conduct the analyses required to identify policies and programs that will effectively and equitably advance coastal sustainability and the firm commitment of local residents and officials to adopt those policies—challenges that are daunting but not insurmountable.

Schelling Goes to Sea: Managing Perceptions in China’s ‘Contested Zone’

Abstract: China has geared its diplomatic and military endeavors since the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crisis primarily to discouraging the United States (US) from getting involved in a cross‐strait war. By constr...