Racism and Genocide: Lies of Our Times
One of the hallmarks of totalitarian ideologues is the use of the big lie: a virulent attack on a defenseless group and then a categorical denial turning victims into executioners and executioners into victims. Professor Benny Morris practices the Big Lie.
No More Unlawful War: The Case Against a US Attack on Iran
If America learns nothing else from the misadventure in Iraq, it should learn the high price of unlawful war. Yet, in an eerie atmosphere of déjà vue, we are hearing the drumbeat for war once again—this time against Iran. Only now we hear virtually nothing about the legal right to go to war. This is particularly odd since the law against attacking Iran is even clearer than the law against invading Iraq.
Is there ‘a responsibility to protect?’ Discuss with Reference to Darfur
In December 2001 the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty released a report titled “The Responsibility to Protect”. This essay examines whether, in light of this document, states and organisations now have a responsibility to protect the people of Darfur.
The US Election and the New Security Challenges
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.
Israel and Iran: A Response to James Petras
Prof. James Petras’s response to my article in the New York Times of 18 July 2008 (which, incidentally, was also published in the International Herald Tribune, Die Welt am Sonntag, and Corriere della Sera) is truly contemptible, and makes one wonder about the guidelines of admission to professorships. Practically every sentence in his piece contains an error or dishonesty.
Is Task-sharing the Answer to UN Peacekeeping Problems?
This essay argues that task-sharing is not the answer to UN peacekeeping problems. However, task-sharing as joint operations may enhance successful peacekeeping and could be a step towards making actions of the international community more consensual.
The New York Times: Making Nuclear Extermination Respectable
On July 18, 2008 The New York Times published an article by Israeli-Jewish historian, Professor Benny Morris, advocating an Israeli nuclear-genocidal attack on Iran with the likelihood of killing 70 million Iranians. What does this tell us about US politics and culture?
Constructivism is Concerned with Norms, but is it Normative Theory?
Constructivism as an approach to International Political Theory is not a homogeneous or unified entity. More so than many other approaches it has great rifts between its individual theorists. This paper will focus mostly on the constructivism outlined by Wendt and, towards the end of of the paper, will briefly contrast it with that of Kratochwil.
How does Negri and Hardt’s Theory of the Limitations of Capitalist Subsumption of Production Differ from that of Žižek’s Theory?
This essay is a critical reading of Negri and Hardt’s ‘Empire’, focusing on how the ontological shifts in the production and socio-political disciplinarity function not as an immanent contradiction of globalised capital, but instead form a reified, zero-weight mode of infinite subsumption.
Freedom against Technology? The Prospects for US Missile Defence
July 8th 2008 marked a new chapter in the expansion of US plans for Ballistic Missile Defence with the signing of a framework agreement that allows for the placement of missile defence ‘X-Band’ radar in the Czech Republic. But what are the prospects for its success?
