Although democratic peace has gained various statistical and theoretical support, it can not escape from criticism. The theory should not be used as an excuse for adopting a foreign policy of forcibly conducting democratization, as the chances of success for this kind of action are highly questionable, as demonstrated in the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan.
This book attempts to answer the question of ‘who do you bomb when you cannot reach military targets’. Michael L. Gross updates the ethics of just war, improving on traditional accounts for an age where asymmetric conflict is prevalent. Whilst a spirited attempt to resolve this dilemma, it is only partially successful.
It can be said that the expectations at COP15 were not so high that they were unattainable. However, domestic pressures in key countries, procedural difficulties, insufficient pre-cooking and the “ClimateGate” scandal certainly played a role in why a comprehensive agreement was not reached.
The history of US foreign policy is a violent and bloody one, although this is not necessarily the dominant perception of most Americans. It is in fact, the most warring nation in modern history. It is in this historical context that we have to try and understand its current military involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, the Horn of Africa and Libya.
A narrow application of Article 51 would allow keeping control on unilateral use of force, at least given the awareness by states of the political costs of unlawful actions. Widening the scope of self-defence could bring the erosion of the basic purpose of the UN Charter regime, i.e. the ban of military force in inter-state relations and the promotion of peace.
The massive expansion and technological maturation of PLA land-based aerial and ballistic forces indicates the rise of a “Fortress China” doctrine in Beijing. China sees national defense and regional security as a function of its own ability to control its local periphery.
CIA director Leon Panetta is currently engaged in talks in Islamabad, arriving the day after the head of the Pakistani Army, attempted to win back some respect from the Pakistani population by urging the US to divert some of its $3 billion a year aid to ‘help the common man’ while also forcefully re-asserting Pakistan’s sovereignty. These concerns would be heartening if they were not so transparent.
We are trapped in our experiences as colonisers and colonised, and in our resulting positions of power or powerlessness. Therefore, representation of ‘subaltern women’ by white western liberal feminists remains problematic, since tied up in the notion of representation are the complications of power, knowledge and language.
It appears there is a trade-off between the security of some and the liberty of others. This perception of a trade-off between security and liberty is particularly convincing when evidence from the on-going war on terror is used to illustrate the argument. It is possible to argue that any trade-off between liberty and security is short-term and illusory.
The Bush administration’s support for missile-defence was motivated by a desire to maintain freedom of action, and thus unipolar hegemony, vis-à-vis ostensibly un-deterrable rogue states. However, it is evident that BMD is strategically flawed, technically disputed and has the potential to destabilise existing arms dynamics.
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