Editors' Note

Editors’NoteI 1 M y have Russia‘s relations with the West since 1991 been relatively peaceful and stable? How has Russia’s leadershipavoided engagingin the kind of belligerentbehavior that some suggest often accompanies rapid regime transformation? In our first article, Michael McFaul of Stanford University examines the painstaking process of Russia‘s democratization in the post-Cold Warera.He posits that Russia’s transitionfrom autocracy to democracy has for the most part been peaceful because of the ascendancy of its liberal economic and political forces over their illiberal counterparts. According to McFaul, “as these liberal groups have had both ideational and material motivations for avoiding war, especially with liberal democracies in the West,Russia’s regime change has not led to belligerent international behavior.” Is China on the fast track to becoming a great power? If so, what does this mean for both regional and world order in the twenty-first century? Avey Goldsteinof the Universityof Pennsylvania addresses the conventional wisdom that China‘s potential emergence as an economic and military great power may pose a threat to international security.He focuses his analysis on the military-securitydimensions of China‘s recent growth, and concludes that the increases in China‘s military capabilities most important for international security have thus far been modest. Nevertheless, “international relations the0ry provides persuasive reasons to expect China‘s growing power to increase the frequency and intensity of international conflicts.“ The same body of theoy, however, also offers ways for states to manage these conflicts, which leads Goldstein to his final conclusion that concerns about China engaging in a major war may be “unnecessarilyalarmist.” Philip Gordon of the International Institute of Strategic Studies evaluates the performance of the European Union’s common foreign and security policy (CFSP) since its creation at the Maastricht summit in December 1991. Gordon analyzes the record of CSFP to determine how much real progress the € U s member states have made in transcending national interests for the sake of greater European cooperation. Among the criteria he uses are the degree of unity of the EU’s member states, their ability to act globally, and their capacity to intervene militarily. Gordonsuggests that the prospects for a unified EU foreign and security policy continue to be poor given the disparate interests of individual member states, especially in foreign affairs. Emphasizing this historic inability to overcome differences when it truly matters, Gordon concludes that ”the United States’ current status as the world’s ’lone superpower‘ may well be challenged in the twenty-first century, but not by the European Union.” With the debate heating up on thefuture of Bosnia after the withdrawalof the United Nations stabilizationforce (SFOR),scheduled to take place in June 1998, Jane Sharp, International Security, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Winter 1997/98), pp. 3-4 0 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 3 International Security 22:3 1 4 of the Institutefor Public Policy Researchand the Centrefor Defence Studies at King's College, London, considers the West's commitment to ensuring a durable peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina. She assesses the successes and failures of the Dayton peace process against the backdropof a litany of missed opportunities the Westhad beginning in 1991 to prevent war in the former Yugoslavia and then to end the fighting quickly once it had begun. According to Sharp, the West's continued unwillingness to deal forcefully with the aggressors has greatly hampered the implementation of the Dayton accords; it has also led to a fragile peace that will likely disintegrate unless the West recommits itself to the peace process. Among Sharp's policy recommendations is the establishment of a U.S.-led NATO combined joint task force to replace the departing SFOR. Is the use of force becoming obsolete in the conduct of foreign policy? Do the costs of military engagement so outweigh the benefits as to make war irrelevant? JohnOrme of Oglethorpe University argues that states will continue to keep open their militay options. Orme contends that three trends-the revolution in military affairs, the huge increase in the world's population, and the spread of industrialization in developing countries-portend a return to a...