Twenty years ago this week the Romanian revolution was making international headlines. Yet those who tortured, killed and humiliated continue to hold the power, abuse the law, and live opulent lives, without showing the slightest trace of guilt.
Although conceptual boxes strip analysis of depth, how do we live, study and explore the world without any guidelines or pre-manufactured tools? And assuming this to be possible, isn’t tragedy only accessible to the few elites that are read enough to extract the very substance of tragedy that can be useful in our contemporariness?
The ongoing negotiations in Copenhagen, which are slated to end Friday, are apparently at a “critical juncture” according to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The United States inched closer to the views of its European allies today.
Crime in the 21st century poses a major asymmetric threat to Canadian society, demanding enforcement that is flexible, responsive, and grounded in defensible strategic goals. This will require solutions beyond standard bureaucratic shifts, necessitating a broad change in organizational mindsets, shifting the emphasis of enforcement from a “statistics-based policing” model to a more strategic, long-term approach.
If there is no consensus on an international agreement on climate change, it will not be due to some irrelevant ‘-Gate’, but rather, due to the political economy of climate change. What this particular ‘-Gate’ has done is mar the scientists, not the science supporting climate change.
It is almost ten years to the day since the collapse of the Seattle ministerial, but a new trade deal seems no more likely now that at any other point in the negotiations. This does not necessarily mean that a deal cannot be reached. In fact with sufficient compromise on the part of both developed and developing countries it is even possible, albeit perhaps unlikely, that a deal could be struck in 2010.
India and Pakistan have come no closer to resolving their disagreements than what was attempted in 1949 because they are firmly grounded in a solution that is zero-sum, state centric and plagued by internal domestic political pressure.
Efforts to combat climate change will proceed apace regardless of Copenhagen; indeed, the possible shortcomings of the summit should not detract from the task that national governments have already embarked upon and will continue to face over the decades to come. This is because globalisation means that problems are precisely that: global.
One of the critical issues facing Copenhagen negotiators is the amount of money (and technology) that will be transferred from wealthy states to developing countries so that the latter won’t burn fossil fuels and thereby create future emissions that could effectively cancel out any reductions achieved by rich states.
Roosevelt had a wide reaching and aggressive plan for planning post-war Europe. The formation of a strong Anglo-American alliance was critical for both parties during and after the war. For the United States, Britain was necessary in promoting democratic ideals and policing the states of Europe, something it was in a better geographical position to do. The signing of the Atlantic Charter in the early 1940’s cemented the partnership that has continued up to present times.
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