Sanja Hurem
President Sarkozy, what were you thinking?
Not only did he get drunk with former Russian President Putin and subsequently gave a G8 speech presumably drunk; he became known for his divorce from long-term wife Cecilia Ciganer-Albeniz and subsequent marriage to Carla Bruni. Given her impressive dating record, some  have referred to Miss Bruni as the famous man’s concubine, but I like to think of her as a beautiful woman who just happens to be compatible with rich and powerful men. More recently, Sarkozy also managed to insult one of the …

Derek Thompson
Former NJIA editor and current staff editor at The Atlantic reflects on what to do in Afghanistan.
I wade into the Afghanistan debate with trepidation. I’m going to begin with something that’s customarily antithetical to American foreign policy: A dash of humility.
I have never published an Afghanistan paper in Foreign Affairs. I have never sat with an Afghanistan military general. I have never stepped on Afghanistan soil, much less spilled my blood on it. Being a part of one of those groups might grant me greater authority on the subject, …

BOB ROEMER
[Fall 2006, Volume VIII, Issue 1]

Students in the Crisis Response Practicum in Northwestern University’s Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) graduate program are required to analyze a crisis and present their findings to their colleagues. Over the past seven years they have researched more than 100 crises and, as you might imagine, have identified some similarities that shed light on why organizations succeed or fail in crisis response. Here are some of their findings.

EVENT VS. BEHAVIOR
In many cases, an organization’s response to an event can shape public opinion even more than …

JENNIFER MANN
[Fall 2006, Volume VIII, Issue 1]
Why is the United States particularly reluctant to ratify major international treaties that bind countries to uphold human rights while claiming to be the world’s champion for these rights? Unlike many of its closest allies in Western Europe and much of the non-Western world, the United States since the mid-1950s has been exceedingly slow to ratify many of the most important international human rights conventions and covenants. The United States for example first signed the Genocide Convention in 1948 but did not officially …

PHILLIPE R. GIRARD

[Fall 2006, Volume VIII, Issue I]

Hopes that the end of the Cold War would usher in a “New World Order” (George H. W. Bush) marking the “end of history” (Francis Fukuyama) had been dashed by the early 1990s. The threat of nuclear Armageddon receded; but political, ethnic, and religious conflicts multiplied from the Caribbean to the Balkans to Central and East Africa. The violent breakup of Yugoslavia led to a Bosnian War that killed 100,000 people and displaced two million between 1992 and 1995. Civil strife and famine killed 200,000 Somalis as their country imploded …