The cold war’s effects are very much with us in two major spheres.

What currently makes British politics so different from American politics?

In late December 2000 and early January 2001, a spate of stories appeared in the Western and Russian press that President Vladimir Putin was determined to overhaul Russia’s banking system.

Increasingly, U.S. foreign policy targets miscreant leaders or regimes; recent examples, such as relations with Iraq and Yugoslavia, reveal that the normalization of relations is contingent on the removal of foreign incumbents. Although demonizing foreign leaders through such leader-specific policies has been criticized, it enhances the efficacy of U.S. policy through two mechanisms. First, the contingent nature of U.S. policy encourages citizens of pariah states to depose their leadership in order to restore their nation's international standing. Second, this potential threat to their leadership discourages foreign leaders from flaunting international norms in the first place. Unfortunately, in recent events the power of leader-specific policies to achieve success has been undermined by poor implementation. Unless leader-specific policies are explicitly stated, their ability to threaten a leader's hold on office is diminished. Hence, the effective implementation of leader-specific policies requires a bold declaration of foreign policy intent early in a crisis. The essay concludes with a discussion of the relative cost and gains in giving up flexibility to improve the efficacy of U.S. foreign policy.