Watching for signs of war with Iran, many of us probably took our eyes off other hot spots where President Bush’s imminent departure is a strategic consideration. Georgia’s Saakashvili launched his military action to regain control of South Ossetia, no doubt with the departure in mind and probably thinking America’s pro-war administration would back him. Yet his decision was unlawful and foolhardy.
The dilemmas surrounding international intervention into the domestic affairs of brutal regimes such as Burma or Zimbabwe are often discussed. Nevertheless, there is also room for the less-examined question of the legitimacy of international pressure in cases where the violating state is a liberal democracy. Should this influence the set of considerations that other democratic states take into account when they decide whether or not to interfere in their domestic affairs?
Despite repeated warnings from international NGOs and regional experts, most of the international community chose to ignore signs of the brooding conflict. It is only now, when both sides are counting the dead, that attention has turned to this war torn part of the world. However, the origins of the fighting are deeply embedded in the security situation in the post Soviet space.
Processes of conflict management and resolution are not unlimited. They proceed in a distinct setting, a recognizable format. This article is about the interconnectedness between process and structure, flow and bedding, river and shore. Through an analysis of various boundaries in negotiation, this article considers the importance of the context for the process and its impact.
There has been a lot written about the role of private security in international relations since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Much of it is emotional outpouring that either demonises the industry or represents it as a silver bullet that can transform humanitarian interventions. What such work lacks is a critical assessment of the potential utility offered by private security companies in expeditionary warfare
The United States, as the most powerful state in the international system, has adopted two radically differing approaches in answer the post-Cold War security dilemma. It is a choice between these alternative approaches that the presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, now pose in quite stark form.
This comment considers some implications of territoriality (and deterritoralisation) as they affect global politics and as they impact states’ policies towards global politics. A special emphasis will be put upon a security perspective, namely on transnational terrorism and subsequently on imperatives for counter-terrorism policies.
In 1998, Jonathan Fox and David Brown found that a loose, interactive group of civil society actors and small numbers of Bank and donor officials, had provided the evidence, ideas and encouragement for donors such as the United States to pressure the World Bank to move away from environmentally and socially hazardous projects.
Despite the common claim that China can’t be moved by international pressure from human rights or advocacy groups, the campaign to link genocide in Darfur to Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games has thoroughly belied this notion. It is a campaign which must not give way to political expediency.
The study of political terrorism is one of the fastest growing areas of academic research in the English-speaking world, producing thousands of publications annually, as well as new study programmes, research projects, PhD theses, research institutes, think-tanks, conferences, seminars, and other academic activities. It was the events of 11 September 2001 that really galvanised the contemporary study of political terrorism and animated a whole new generation of scholars. However, as with any new field of research, it faces a number of problems and challenges.
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