Editors' Note

This issue begins with an article by Valerie Hudson of Brigham Young University and Andrea Den Boer of the University of Kent. Hudson and Den Boer trace the rise in offspring sex selection in China and India that has resulted in a "surplus" of young men. They argue that such surpluses of men increase the potential for internal and external violence, while diminishing the prospects for democracy. This phenomenon could destabilize the two countries, the region, and beyond.

How successful has the diffusion of international norms been in Russia? According to Sarah Mendelson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, looks can be deceiving. Mendelson holds that "even when conditions that scholars have identified as necessary and sufficient for the spread of international norms are present, significant external and internal barriers can slow or otherwise impede their diffusion." This problem seems particularly acute in Russia where, despite the proliferation of democratic institutions over the last decade, noncompliance with international norms seems to be on the rise, particularly in Chechnya.

The Cold War ended more than a decade ago, but the debate on the demise of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry continues. Robert English of the University of Southern California critiques Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth's recent article, "Power, Globalization, and the End of the Cold War." English faults the authors for privileging materialist explanations for the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the exclusion of other possible causes—in particular, the influence of "new thinkers" led by Mikhail Gorbachev. After correcting what Brooks and Wohlforth state is English's "misunderstanding of [their] research design," the authors elaborate their article's contribution on "how to assess the causal implications of widely accepted findings" and the significance of this practice for qualitative research.

Why did President George H.W. Bush decide to intervene militarily in Somalia but not in Bosnia in 1992, when both areas were being torn apart by ethnic strife? Jon Western of Mount Holyoke College contends that the conventional wisdom does not stand up to scrutiny. Western argues that it was neither the so-called CNN effect nor moral outrage that pushed the administration to action. Instead, increasing concern that the success of presidential candidate Bill Clinton and his liberal humanitarian advisers in portraying the Bush administration as uncaring and the assessment that Somalia would be a less difficult operation than Bosnia drove U.S. decisionmaking.

John Garofano of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University reviews three books on the Vietnam War: Kennedy's Wars, by Lawrence Freedman; American Tragedy, by David Kaiser; and Choosing War, by Fredrik Logevall. Garofano examines the contributions of each volume to the debate over what compelled the national leadership to increase U.S. military involvement in Vietnam in the mid-1960s.

The September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States are the subject of two commentaries. Bruce Jentleson of Duke University asks where political scientists and international relations scholars should turn to find answers to a variety of questions emerging from the attacks. He faults academia for overemphasizing theory at the expense of policy relevance, saying that if scholars hope to move beyond "conversations and knowledge building that while highly intellectual are excessively insular and disconnected from the empirical realities that are the discipline's raison d'être," they must "seek greater praxis between theory and practice."

Jusuf Wanandi of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, Indonesia, writes that success in the fight against global terrorism will require both patience and a nuanced approach. While noting that much of this burden will continue to fall on the United States (given its overwhelming military capabilities), Wanandi cautions the U.S. leadership from going it alone. The breadth and depth of the terrorist threat, he argues, require a global coalition that can tackle the problem on a variety of fronts: political, economic, intelligence, and legal.

In an exchange of letters, James Lindsay and Michael O'Hanlon claim that in arguing that the costs of a national...