Charlotte Higgins, the arts correspondent for the Guardian newspaper reported in 2006 that a Roman document dated from around AD400 and called the Notitia Dignitatum, described how a unit of Iraqis were said to have once patrolled the English northern area of what is now called South Shields. Higgins also explained that “While British soldiers battle it out in Iraq, spare a thought for this: troops from Iraq once occupied Britain.”
The paradox of modern warfare is that while its legal boundaries became more tightly defined, its practice became ever more murderous. The expansion of international law coincided with the industrialisation of warfare and the development of total war. In this context, what makes for legitimate warfare today?
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.
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.
In the west, China’s rise and increased attention to fundamentalist Islam have caused many to perceive a global contest in the export of values. At this particular crossroads of history there seem to be several very different maps for the future. In this context, many speak of the ‘decline of the west’, but what is it exactly?
While most studies on peaceful settlement of disputes see the substance of the proposals for a solution as the key to a successful resolution of conflict, a growing focus of attention shows that a second and equally necessary key lies in the timing of efforts for resolution (Zartman 2000). Parties resolve their conflict only when they are ready to do so–when alternative, usually unilateral, means of achieving a satisfactory result are blocked and the parties feel that they are in an uncomfortable and costly predicament. At that ripe moment, they seek or are amenable to proposals that offer a way out.
In recent years, there have been a number of challenges to international order emanating from various entities, including ‘Islamic extremists’ and, more generally, those ‘excluded’ from the benefits of globalisation; sometimes they are the same people.
At the time, that Tehran is celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, one should look back to assess the legacies of a social phenomenon that arguably put Islam into the forefront of politics.
The Roma, Gypsy and Traveller Communities are the largest ethnic minority within the EU, and one that has been comprehensively failed by various initiatives to end racism targeted at them. Northern Ireland in the bad old days had very little immigration, the tide was flowing in the other direction. Today, that it is no longer the case, but it remains a comprehensively segregated society.
It has become generally assumed that ‘Liberal Peace Transitions’ offer a way out of local, civil, regional and international conflict, as well as complex emergences and development problems. All military, humanitarian, diplomatic, political, economic, and social, interventions since the end of the Cold War have been geared to this programme – with limited success.
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