It is not an exaggeration to claim that since the presidential election in June 2009, the ship of the Islamic Republic has been cruising in uncharted waters. The repercussions of the election have not only proved to be politically costly but have fundamentally jeopardised the very survival of the Islamic State.
The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was a costly and, ultimately, pointless war. However, exactly why the Red Army wound up in direct military conflict, embroiled in a bitter and complicated civil war—some 3,000 kilometres away from Moscow—is a point of historiographical uncertainty. Little known and appreciated for its significance, the Soviet-Afghan War was one of the turning points of the late Cold War.
Thucydides’ and Mearsheimer’s views on political Realism resemble a mirror’s reflection; Displaying the same, yet a closer look reveals their inverse nature. In the course of the following essay, the modern, theoretical image of John Mearsheimer’s Aggressive Realism and its ancient reflection as found in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War will be extracted, compared and contrasted
The European Union, in the wake of Lisbon, has become an international actor. It now faces two major external challenges. The first is to develop strategic vision for a potentially tumultuous emerging multi-polar world. The second challenge is to help nudge the other major actors towards a multilateral global grand bargain. The price of failure will be a return to the jungle – a jungle in which European assets will count for very little.
Although conceptual boxes strip analysis of depth, how do we live, study and explore the world without any guidelines or pre-manufactured tools? And assuming this to be possible, isn’t tragedy only accessible to the few elites that are read enough to extract the very substance of tragedy that can be useful in our contemporariness?
Crime in the 21st century poses a major asymmetric threat to Canadian society, demanding enforcement that is flexible, responsive, and grounded in defensible strategic goals. This will require solutions beyond standard bureaucratic shifts, necessitating a broad change in organizational mindsets, shifting the emphasis of enforcement from a “statistics-based policing” model to a more strategic, long-term approach.
If there is no consensus on an international agreement on climate change, it will not be due to some irrelevant ‘-Gate’, but rather, due to the political economy of climate change. What this particular ‘-Gate’ has done is mar the scientists, not the science supporting climate change.
It is almost ten years to the day since the collapse of the Seattle ministerial, but a new trade deal seems no more likely now that at any other point in the negotiations. This does not necessarily mean that a deal cannot be reached. In fact with sufficient compromise on the part of both developed and developing countries it is even possible, albeit perhaps unlikely, that a deal could be struck in 2010.
India and Pakistan have come no closer to resolving their disagreements than what was attempted in 1949 because they are firmly grounded in a solution that is zero-sum, state centric and plagued by internal domestic political pressure.
A recent report indicated that President Obama had finally made a security policy related decision—not on his Afghanistan strategy which is yet to be announced– but rather on whether or not his administration would seek to have the US sign the treaty banning the production and use of anti-personnel land mines, a treaty that 156 other nations have already signed.
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