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Theories of international relations seek to explain what states try to achieve in the external realm and when they try to achieve it.

Realism 

key assumptions: states are the primary actors, anarchy is the international condition, states behave rationally, states seek to keep the system in balance (against capability, threat)

The specter of an uprising of reanimated corpses also poses a significant challenge to interpreters of international relations and the theories they use to understand the world. If the dead begin to rise from the grave and attack the living, what thinking would -- or should -- guide the human response?

For our purposes, a zombie is defined as a reanimated being occupying a human corpse, with a strong desire to eat human flesh

Because they can spread across borders and threaten states and civilizations, these zombies should command the attention of scholars and policymakers.

“These crises hammer home the full cost of the international community’s failure to prevent conflict,” Pillay said. “None of these crises erupted without warning.”

Pillay said Syria’s conflict “is metastasing outwards in an uncontrollable process whose eventual limits we cannot predict”. She also cited conflicts in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Congo, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza.

The resolution acknowledged that the United Nations has not always used the tools in its charter for preventing conflict. It prescribed several steps for improvement, focusing on addressing human rights violations earlier and recognizing that such abuses are often warning signs of looming conflicts.

System level analysis examines state behavior by looking at the international system. 

State level analysis examines the foreign policy behavior of states in terms of state characteristics.

Organizational level analysis examines the way in which organizations within a state function to influence foreign policy behavior. 

The ball was set rolling by Ryan Crocker, the whiz diplomat who made his reputation as the US ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan. In an article for the New York Times, he argued that it was “time to consider a future for Syria without Assad’s ouster." His reason? “It is overwhelmingly likely that is what the future will be.” His circular logic found few takers, though notable among them was former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden.

Crudely defined, the US has no interests at stake in Syria, and the Obama administration was never enthusiastic about overthrowing Assad.

According to the Daily Beast, the administration is already debating whether to embrace Assad as an ally in a war against terror.

Kennedy was the first of five American airports to introduce Ebola screening protocols, and the new measures were the latest indication of the risk that the disease presented.

Beginning next week, Washington Dulles, Newark Liberty, Chicago O’Hare and Atlanta international airports will employ the same screenings as those put in place at J.F.K.

Since at least the 14th century, when the bubonic plague devastated Europe, posting medical officers at a port of entry has been one of the main tools used to try to halt the spread of disease.An outbreak of yellow fever in 1878 led the United States Congress to grant the federal government the authority to order a quarantine to prevent its spread.

The Syrian government has ramped up airstrikes in Raqqa since August after insurgents seized an airbase and other military posts, capturing and executing dozens of soldiers and forcing remaining Syrian troops out of the area.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has previously called for support to fight the militants, but western governments have been hesitant to back a leader that has been accused of routinely carrying out dangerous tactics against militants, including the indiscriminate dropping of barrels packed with explosives that have killed scores of civilians across the country over the past three and a half years.

“In Russia, no one thinks that Russia is guilty,” said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist who specializes in studying Russia’s political elite.

That is the theme of much of coverage on state-run television, which has also aired all manner of theories lifted from the dark corners of the web.

Anastasia Lukina, 30, a sales manager in Moscow, said either side might have shot down the plane. “So the West says it wants a full investigation, but they’ve already accused us of killing those people?” she said. “We all know what the conclusion to that investigation will be. So why even bother pretending? Russia is the world’s scapegoat.”

For example, if a sewage system has spare capacity its use is non-rival, but as the capacity constraint is approached use becomes rivalrous.

Rather, it is more appropriate to discuss the degree to which goods may be subject to excludability and/or the degree to which their consumption is rival.

However, for the purposes of this presentation, the broad categorisation of goods as largely private or public, and within public as largely common-pool or club goods, is made to facilitate ease of comparison and analysis

This follows a memorandum of understanding between the Government of Sierra Leone and the UN Agencies to implement the US$ 28 million World Bank-funded Ebola Response Project, of which US$ 9.5 million was allocated to WFP to deliver food and non-food items.

The World Bank partnership with government and the UN Agencies is part of concerted efforts to stop the rapid spread of Ebola Virus Disease in Sierra Leone. It seeks to scale up the country's logistical and operational capacity and mitigate the economic impact on affected communities.

The Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) created a ‘solidarity fund’ to contain and manage the outbreak, [17] and the World Health Organisation convened an emergency meeting of regional health ministers in Accra to strengthen surveillance operations and facilitate cross-border consultations. [18] The World Health Organisation also opened a Sub-Regional Outbreak Coordinating Center in Conakry. [19] Doctors Without Borders has deployed 300 personnel to assist in health care facilities, and both the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the European Union have provided scientific personnel and resources to assist with laboratory testing and government coordination. [20]

The World Health Organisation fulfilled its coordinating mission by organising a meeting of regional health officials in Accra in early July—but that was three-and-a-half months after the first report of the disease. WHO’s Sub-Regional Outbreak Coordination Center has the potential to be a useful resource, but it took nearly four months from the outbreak’s beginning until WHO began such operations. Given how quickly Ebola spreads and its virulence, such a delay helped the disease gain a foothold in the region. Arresting the spread of infectious diseases requires quicker action.

First, the current response needs to be ratcheted up. Opening sub-regional command centers, deploying personnel from governmental and nongovernmental sources, and providing financial resources are all important—but they need to be done in greater number and with greater urgency. The initial efforts are not necessarily failures; they are just too small and slow in response to the overwhelming nature of this unprecedented outbreak.