Elliott School of International Affairs

Studies have shown that fecal contamination can be determined by conducting multiple antibiotic resistance (MAR) analyses. The hypothesis is if bacteria exhibit resistance, they are likely to be derived from organisms exposed to antimicrobial agents. Therefore, this project seeks to apply MAR analysis to nonpoint source (NPS) and combined sewer overflow (CSO) areas along the Anacostia River in Washington, DC. Presumptive E. coli was isolated from NPS and CSO samples and tested with eight different antimicrobial agents to assess MAR indices. Isolates from CSO sources showed significantly greater resistance (p < .05) and higher MAR indices, with an average MAR index of 0.36 for CSO samples and 0.07 for NPS samples. It was also revealed that 96.9% of CSO isolates exhibited resistance, versus only 43.8% of NPS isolates. Our study on the Anacostia River using this approach clearly shows fecal coliforms are associated with CSO overflows, indicating that pollution-derived coliform levels are strongly linked to antimicrobial resistance. The implementation of this method as an index for water quality in the remediation of the Anacostia River has the ability to serve as a model and monitoring tool for the rehabilitation of urban watersheds.

Zika virus (ZIKV) is a re-emerged flavivirus transmitted by Aedes spp mosquitoes that has caused outbreaks of fever and rash on islands in the Pacific and in the Americas. These outbreaks have been associated with neurologic complications that include congenital abnormalities and Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBs). the pathogenesis of ZIKV-associated GBs, a potentially life-threatening peripheral nerve disease, remains unclear. Because schwann cells (sCs) play a central role in peripheral nerve function and can be the target for damage in GBs, we characterized the interactions of ZIKV isolates from Africa, Asia and Brazil with human sCs in comparison with the related mosquito-transmitted flaviviruses yellow fever virus 17D (YFV) and dengue virus type 2 (DENV2). SCs supported sustained replication of ZIKV and YFV, but not DENV. ZIKV infection induced increased SC expression of IL-6, interferon (IFN)β1, IFN-λ, IFIT-1, TNFα and IL-23A mRNAs as well as IFN-λ receptors and negative regulators of IFN signaling. SCs expressed baseline mRNAs for multiple potential flavivirus receptors and levels did not change after ZIKV infection. SCs did not express detectable levels of cell surface Fcγ receptors. this study demonstrates the susceptibility and biological responses of sCs to ZIKV infection of potential importance for the pathogenesis of ZIKV-associated GBs.

When students of American defense policy asked at the end of the Cold War, 'Where should U.S. armed forces go from here?' the response, generally, was building on 'revolutionary' capabilities attributed to U.S. forces during the 1991 Gulf War. Since then, U.S. strategic planning and military thought have been inundated with arguments that U.S. armed forces exhibit a significant, discontinuous increase in military effectiveness, "the process by which armed forces convert resources into fighting power." 1 Talk of an emergent American-led military technical revolution (MTR) first gained prominence in the late 1980s. MTRs involved the "simultaneous change in military organization and doctrine as a result of technological advances." 2 The term was short-lived, deemed too focused on technology over operational and organizational factors. Defense planners subsequently embraced the term revolution in military affairs (RMA) in the 1990s. 3 Long-range precision strike, stealth technology, air-ground operations, Global Positioning System applications, night vision capabilities to 'own the night,' the advent of a knowledge enabled professional force, and other factors were labeled revolutionary in the early 1990s partly because their operational debut coincided with unexpected changes in the global military balance. At the millennium, the U.S. defense policy lexicon shifted again. Analysts and policy makers invoked the term 'transformation' as an umbrella term for multifaceted initiatives building on the ongoing American-led © Robert Tomes 4/30 / 2004 4:08 AM 2 RMA. RMA-associated concepts like network centric warfare, battlespace dominance, shock and awe, and rapid decisive operations continue to dominate U.S. military thought. A wellspring of RMA studies and prolific media references to 'revolutionary' warfighting capabilities emerged following the 1991 Gulf War. By the end of the decade, they cohered into what this study terms an American RMA thesis. This thesis argues that a revolutionary shift in U.S. military power had occurred based on the synergy of advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, automated target identification systems, information-enabled weapons, superior education and training, and joint warfighting capabilities. A generation of security studies scholars and military theorists had lived through the turbulent post-Vietnam period under the intellectual yoke of the illogic of nuclear deterrence. Military theory, as chapter 3 argues, struggled to fill the gap between deterrence theory and insurgency. The paradox inherent in theories of nuclear strategy and deterrence grew more problematic for international relations theorists attempting to expand their own explanatory frameworks beyond power politics models. To paraphrase Jacques Barzun's observation about the sixteenth century Reformation, emancipation is an immediate appeal of all revolutionary moments. 4 This is one of the reasons, arguably, for what this study terms a lexical turn in American military though and defense discourse at the end of the Cold War. That is, a fundamental shift in the terms and images of military thought and defense planning away from Cold War, nuclear-centric discourse to one dominated by a lexicon of information theory, rapid dominance, and jointness-all oriented on advanced conventional forces.

Conflicting time and space perceptions, seated in the cultural centers of societies and rooted in social rituals and patterns of life, are important aspects of strategic interaction. In some societies, these spatiotemporal perceptions play a major role in defining social order; in others, they provide undercurrents of dissention and social cleavages. This article explores how shifting aspects of spatial determinants influence policy behavior, particularly the influence of temporal intensification—the acceleration of social and political life. We argue that cultural aspects of space and time are dangerously underrepresented in military science and in studies of the cultural determinants of security policy. Especially in modern strategic planning, the expectation that military organizations can simultaneously compress time and control space influences the cultural as well as practical sides of the policy decision of when and how to use military force. After reviewing the rise of Weste...

T hirty years after the signing of the January 1973 Paris peace agreement ending the Vietnam War, the United States finds itself leading a broad coalition of military forces engaged in peacemaking, nation-building, and now counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq. A turning point appeared in mid-October 2003 when US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's memo on the future of Iraqi operations surfaced. His musings about whether US forces were ready for protracted guerrilla warfare sparked widespread debate about US planning for counterinsurgency operations. Little attention has been paid to the theory and practice of counterinsurgency warfare in mainstream strategic studies journals. Discussions of the so-called revolution in military affairs (RMA) and RMA-associated technologies for battlefield surveillance and precision targeting dominated defense planning discourse in the 1990s. Nation-building and peacekeeping discussions rarely addressed counterinsurgency warfare, perhaps because nation-building operations during the 1990s did not confront a determined, violent insurgency. Meanwhile, with knowledge about counterinsurgency warfare waning among policymakers, resurgent terrorism scholarship and counterterrorism policy initiatives avoided the issue of a strategic terrorist campaign to destabilize nation-building. More recently, vague historical references and misplaced analogies to Vietnam have muddled discussions of the Iraqi counterinsurgency effort. Lessons and insights from past low-intensity wars deserve revisiting. They provide perspective as well as context for what may be a defining period for the American war on terrorism. What lessons from past counterin-16 Parameters

On 24 March 1999, NATO initiated Operation Allied Force with the following objectives: stop the Serb offensive in Kosovo, force a withdrawal of Serb troops from Kosovo, allow democratic self-government in Kosovo, allow a NATO-led international peacekeeping force into Kosovo, and allow the safe and peaceful return of Kosovar Albanian refugees.[1] From an international law perspective, Operation Allied Force garners mixed reviews. It was at once a violation of the principles of nonintervention and nonaggression, a new customary law precedent supporting the use of military force for humanitarian reasons, and a case study on the use of force by regional organizations without UN Security Council authorization. Allied Force will undoubtedly receive a great deal of attention from international relations scholars, foreign policy analysts, and others interested in the ramifications for global politics of NATO's bombing campaign. On the one hand, liberal internationalists are likely to applaud intervention to enforce human rights norms. On the other hand, ethicists, just war scholars, and noninterventionists will undoubtedly devote considerable time and effort to criticizing its legitimacy. Regardless of these academic arguments for or against intervention, the fact remains that few recourses are available to policymakers seeking to halt destabilizing ethnopolitical violence.

efore Sept. 11, 2001, most Americans paid little attention to terrorism, particularly in the Third World. Since then, though the Middle East and Central Asia have figured most prominently in the war on terrorism, Africa is increasingly coming into focus as an important battleground. This is especially true of East Africa (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania) and the Horn of Africa (Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia), where the practice of targeting Americans for political violence has deep roots. The Black September organization assassinated the American ambassador to Sudan, Cleo A. Noel Jr., and his deputy B Phil Foster chief of mission, George Curtis Moore, in 1973. And following the U.S. air attack against Libya in 1986, Libyan terrorists retaliated by severely wounding an American embassy communications technician, William Caldwell, also in Khartoum. There have been a number of other terrorist attacks dating back more than two decades against Western and Israeli interests in this dangerous region. But it took the coordinated bombings by al-Qaida in 1998 of the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam to make clear the full scope of the organization's menace. While the attacks killed far more Kenyans and Tanzanians than Americans, 12 Americans perished in Nairobi and many were injured in both capitals. (American and Ugandan authorities foiled another attack planned against the U.S. embassy in Kampala.)

This article focuses on the threat to Somalia by al Shabaab (The Youth), an extremist organization that controls most of southern and central Somalia. It learned its strategy and tactics from al Qaeda and the Taliban and relies heavily on a relatively small number of foreign fighters, most of whom are Somalis with foreign passports from the large Somali diaspora. The non-Somali contingent probably numbers only about 200 to 300, although it brings battlefield experience from Afghanistan and Iraq and provides al Shabaab with expertise in bomb making, remote-controlled explosions, suicide bombing and assassinations. Some of the foreigners occupy key positions in al Shabaab. The connection between al Shabaab and al Qaeda is growing stronger but has not yet reached the level of operational control by al Qaeda. Al Shabaab's draconian tactics, which are imported from outside and are anathema to most Somalis, and its foreign component may be its undoing.

Remarks at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia on 23 October 2015 that deal with China's foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa, the priority given to the environment by China and Africa, China's environmental law, Africa's environmental law, and the impact of China's FDI in Africa on the environment.