Has “Strategic” Airpower Failed to Live up to its Promise?
While airpower is an important and powerful arm of military force, in today’s unconventional wars, it cannot alone be employed to fulfill an actor’s grand strategy.
Critical Assessment of Cosmopolitan Democracy
It would be beneficial to free the concept of democracy of its territorial, state-bound constraints and work toward a more democratic global order, but a new global structure is not feasible.
To What Extent is the Neoliberal Paradigm Limiting in the Study of ‘offshore’?
This essay argues that neoliberalism seeks to frame highly political and morally-charged operations within a bland discourse that insists on the neutrality of the market. Thus it is necessarily flawed in its contribution to the study of offshore, because it attempts to disguise the invariably political and pragmatic functions of offshore in the contemporary global political economy.
The Future of the Asia-Pacific Region: Implications for Australia
The current re-balancing of the Asia-Pacific is being driven by the shifting nature of the power ratio between the US and China, and by definition an equilibrium will eventually arise.
Researching Torture: Positivist and Interpretist Approaches
The following paper will firstly introduce the arguments for the Positivist approach to research, which focuses on quantitative methods, and for the Interpretist approach, which focuses on qualitative methods. The second part will apply these approaches to the issue of torture and in doing so will identify and discuss the limitations of applying only one theory or approach to research.
What Challenges Face Attempts to Alleviate Social Suffering within Israel/Palestine?
This essay first briefly explains the significance of ‘structural violence’ in Israeli society, before going on to critically examine dominant conceptions of ‘suffering’ in the Israeli context, arguing that the pragmatic and rationalist bias of this notion itself constitutes one major hindrance to ‘healing’. Finally, I consider the role of silence and memory in perpetuating suffering in Israel, looking specifically at the two imbricated elements of Holocaust memorialisation and the construction of the Other, arguing for a more processual rather than essentialist conception of suffering, community, healing and memory.
Biopolitics of the Self-Immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi
Self-immolation fundamentally challenges the unimportance of life in modernity by showing that the individual body through sacrifice can be more powerful than the sovereign power itself.
Compare and Contrast Contemporary Citizenship on the Left in Venezuela and Brazil
The resurgence of ‘the left’ in Latin America has received a great deal of attention from policy makers, academics and journalists alike. The November 2006 victory of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua is merely the most recent in a string of electoral triumphs which has seen Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia come under the control of leftist governments. Following five decades in which civil, political and socio-economic rights have been damaged variously by authoritarianism, neo-liberalism and clientelism, many hope that a new era may be on the horizon.
Self Censorship and the Danish Cartoons Controversy
Self-censorship plays an integral role in the maintenance of freedom of expression since responsible use of that right prevents calls for its revocation.
Environmental Democracy? Does Anyone Really Care?
Environmental justice is not just a local issue but a global, an inter-generational, and undoubtedly a problematic one. This should be a concern of not only the few, but all countries.
