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.
Burma is ruled by one of the world’s most brutal military regimes, guilty of every possible human rights violation. Known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and led by Senior General Than Shwe, Burma’s junta is not only brutal, but illegitimate. Elections held in 1990 were overwhelmingly won by the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The world has an undoubted responsibility to protect the Burmese people from their leaders.
In 1992 I was 12 years old, I was just a kid… In Genoa, naturally, they were celebrating the 500 years since the so called “discovery of America”. A Genoese, Christopher Columbus, by chance landed on a small Carribean island and since that day many things have changed. From the protests against that event, one statement sticks in my head: “1492, Don’t accept caravelles from a stranger”.
The slaughter of civilians in Mumbai by terrorists in November 2008 has once again vitiated the relationship between India and Pakistan in what is the fourth major crisis between them since the two countries became nuclear powers in the late 1980s.
The assassination of the former president Anwar Sadat and the subsequent endorsement of the action by Tehran has been a source of tension between Iran and Egypt. For about twenty-seven years, conflicting interpretation of Sadat’s role in history has caused hostility between the two states. Although, the nature of animosity is multifaceted, disagreement over Sadat is an issue that symbolises the problems between the two countries.
The recent Russian-Georgian conflict brought to the forefront several important international issues, not least the thorny problems concerning Russia’s energy clout and the European Union’s energy vulnerability. It became increasingly clear that Russia has no intention of becoming a passive or marginalised power. Simultaneously, current containment policy towards Iran is failing. . It is important that Iran be part of near-future investment programmes and arrangements – both economically and politically.
Piracy remains on the fringes of academic research interests, often seen as an exotic and rare phenomenon, often studied in connection with terrorism and other forms of crime, this despite an increasing number of attacks over the last years. Indeed, over 282 attacks were recorded worldwide in 2007 – an increase of 41% from the previous year; the surge seemed to continue in 2008.
Despite Nigeria’s transition to democracy there are trends towards identity-driven political agitation by well-armed youth militia or vigilante groups engaged in acts of violence as responses to alienation from the state, economic decline, unemployment, and the militarization of society by decades of military rule. This underscores the persistence of militarism within some sections of civil society in a ‘democracy-from-above’ which has in practice largely favoured vested interests, and all but closed the prospects for political participation, dialogue and grassroots democratization.
It has been suggested that the rise of religion confronts IR theory with a theoretical challenge comparable to that of the end of the Cold War or the emergence of globalization. I agree. To understand why we need to turn to the politics of secularism. How might we think about secularisms, in the plural, as forms of political authority in contemporary international relations? What does this mean for IR theory and the resurgence of religion? What kinds of politics follow from different forms of secular commitments, traditions, habits, and beliefs?
It is the very nature of ‘otherness’ in the experience of Chinese contact with Africa – the fact that it stands outside the pattern of international relations and historical memory – which forms of one of the key features of this relationship to this day. This notion of ‘difference’ allows us to see in these relations on the periphery, something deeply significant about the broader shape of international relations in the contemporary period
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