As an essay regarding political theory may seem a little out of place on e-International Relations. However, what world leaders, individuals and administrations as a whole, regard ‘freedom’, ‘equality’, ‘justice’ (and the like) to mean, has vast effects to both domestic and international affairs.
The election of Barack Obama as president in 2009 was thought to be the symbolic end of the Bush doctrine and its associated neoconservative underpinnings. This essay however seeks to challenge this notion by examining the parallels between the Bush doctrine and the policies of the Obama administration.
The systematic inclusion of children in the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission process was unprecedented in the history of truth and reconciliation initiatives. Given the country’s history of child involvement in the war as both victims and perpetrators, it was especially important to include children in the post-conflict peacebuilding processes.
It would be a mistake to deny that technological progress has been, and still is, a characteristic of our history. Men have gone from fighting with their gladios in ancient Rome to using gunpowder in cannons and rifles, and from deploying machine guns to applying the threat of nuclear war.
Private security companies and privatizing security can at first seem to offer solutions to maintaining safety and stability when a state is no longer able to do so. However, the interference of PSCs in state functions ultimately can hinder the development and legitimacy of a state and cause further insecurities within.
We may all agree that there is a moral imperative to halt mass atrocities. The problem is the reconciliation of such an obligation and our entrenched system of anarchy at the international level. Those states that are part of the United Nations should have a responsibility to respect the adoption of R2P principles, notably the moral imperative to halt mass atrocities and punish the perpetrators through the ICC.
On May 30th, 2010, former Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Mora Medina declared the drug cartel La Familia Michoacana, known simply as “La Familia,” to be the most dangerous in all of Mexico. The rise of La Familia, its bizarre ideology and indoctrination of members, and the lower-class following it has received have separated it from other DTOs in Mexico.
Although Western publics are not casualty-phobic and presently pay little attention to body counts as the ultimate barometer for success, they are wary of supporting wars with low prospects for ultimate triumph, and casualty rates and patterns can help formulate more nuanced policy opinions.
June 2010 witnessed the opening of a new chapter in the history of the European Central Bank (ECB). Without any debate or decision-making process outside the closed doors of the ECB’s conference rooms, the Bank decided to extend its activities far beyond the field of traditional monetary policy.
Despite the euphoria that accompanied the toppling of Felix Dzerzhinsky’s statue in Lubyanka Square in August 1991, the power of the KGB, now the FSB and the SVR, has not declined. True reform of Russia’s security services, despite some early intent, has not happened.
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