France has attempted to maintain a hegemonic foothold in Francophone Africa to serve its interests and maintain a last bastion of prestige associated with past mastery. Do these relations retain an essentially colonialist character?
Rather than acting as a collective security system, the UN Security Council mostly remained divided throughout the Cold War and efficient UN action was often hindered by superpower conflict. Yet, undoubtedly the Cold War world was better off with the UN than without it.
Security and identity are two concepts that are deeply intertwined on many different levels, and cannot be separated, demonstrating the flaws in the Neorealist position. While identities are intersubjectively constructed and can emerge or disappear over time, they remain relatively fixed entities, and are thus an essential referent object for security.
In the Leviathan, men in the state of nature are rational beings and know exactly what they want, seeking the best way to stay alive and prolong their survival. This essay argues that it is impossible for men to leave Hobbes’s state of war because of their nature. At the same time, their nature is exactly what enables them to leave this environment.
Violence in the international system can manifest itself in several ways. Principal among these are interstate war, civil war and military interventions. Yet in terms of human behaviour, conflict is relatively infrequent. This essay will examine this paradox.
Pre-emptive war is universally recognized as an anticipatory use of force. Despite the definition for the terms of a pre-emptive war, whether or not it is justified has become a complex and contradicting subject for states. There is the issue of morality, abiding by international law and comprehending the definition of “imminent threat”.
The intervention in Libya is being portrayed in the media as an attempt to save the Libyan people from destruction at the hands of a brutal and oppressive regime. When one looks at the evidence, various interests and geopolitical concerns confronting intervening nations, another motive emerges: realism.
No peace is perfect. But a flawed peace is probably better than no peace at all. Contingency peace plans are not guarantees of success in such war-torn countries as Libya, but neither are they idle dreams. The international community needs such a unified plan to secure a better peace in Libya. If they fail to plan a post-war peace in Libya, the intervening powers are planning to fail.
The Arab Spring will most probably exacerbate areas of conflicting interests between Iran and the US, as the regional designs and aspirations of both nations are deeply antithetical. One may argue that the prospect of a violent conflict is looming large on the horizon.
To seize the opportunity of this historic moment of political change and support democratization in the Arab world, Obama needs to fill in the details of how the USA and the international community will offer concrete, sizeable and sustained help towards securing political reforms throughout the region in the coming months and years.
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