The Role of Religion in the Arab Spring
There needs to be a greater understanding of the role that religion plays in different societies and countries, and specifically how this shapes the politics of these countries. Unless the different theories of international relations can accommodate religion in their frameworks, we will be unable to fully comprehend important geopolitical events.
Ethnic Conflict and R2P
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.
Identity and Security: PSCs as a Solution and a Dilemma
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.
The Key To Constitution Making In Turkey
The constitutional process is slowly but surely becoming a catch all answer to many of Turkey’s ills. The coming months will witness a crucially important debate about a renewed social contract. Turkey’s challenge will be to engineer the required popular consensus in an increasingly polarized political atmosphere.
Kim Jong-un: Too Young for Coronation?
Any serious blunder of inexperience by the new leader in connection with redirecting the country’s economic and diplomatic affairs could lead to irreversible challenges by the competing elite groups in North Korea, divided largely into the military brass and the technocrats.
Review – No Higher Honour
While Rice frequently exercises her right to settle scores and set the record straight, there are no revisions to the controversial foreign policy record of the Bush years.
Tea with Madam Secretary, Part II
The following is one of the questions I asked Secretary Albright: Do you see the decision by the Security Council to vote in favour of a US-led military engagement as the beginning of a significant development in a movement towards protecting human security at the expense of national sovereignty?
Review – International Interventions in Local Conflicts
The bloody and protracted small wars of the last 20 years seem to be the current norm in IR, and may well be so for the foreseeable future. It is into this context that we can place Uzi Rabi’s edited collection.
MORE THAN TEN MONTHS TO GO
The US presidential election is more than ten months off and it is going to be, to borrow a phrase from the unloved Donald Rumsfeld, a long, hard slog to get there. The Republican nominee is yet to emerge from the messy competition that began months ago and seems likely to stretch on for months more.
Child Reconciliation in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone
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.
