Warfare today is changing. The course of conflict in the 21st century, and the problems we in the West may continue to face in the coming decades are mutating, developing and adapting in ways that make their defeat – whilst not necessarily more difficult – an entirely different prospect to face.
Transnational organized criminal groups were ever since a darling of the sensation seeking media. But since the attacks of 9/11, criminal networks were moved even further into the spotlight, as the sources of income for the historically most deadly and horrific generation of global terrorism.
The Euro, by design and recent accident, has been a catalyst to integration within the EU, but with the caveat that this integration is unevenly distributed. Even if there are disparities in broader levels of integration, the determination to avoid failure has unified the euro-area members and non-members alike.
International institutions are generally the results of leading states. Therefore, it is world powers that could eventually, under conditions of extreme political will, promote global peace and security and not the international institutions they have created in order to build their spheres of influence and increase their power in the international system.
The Myth of the Blitz remains an important milestone in the critical analysis of the memory of the Second World War in Britain. Its nuanced treatment of various complex and inter-related topics, and its informative examination of the origins and uses of popular memory, set it apart from other more polemical texts and laid the foundations for future revisionism.
The need to resort to strategic symbols like Mahdi is to some degree the result of the Persian cultural trait of ta’arof which discourages direct confrontation and criticism. Westerners, bewildered by such peculiarities, often fall back on what they know best, Iran’s foreign affairs, while overlooking the domestic aspects that fuel Iranian behavior.
The question of the compatibility of Islam and democracy has persisted for generations. The recent events of the Middle East, facilitated by these technological advances, have only heightened the talk about the role of democracy in the region.
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 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.
Social control, which is essential to all social relations, is at the center of international relations. Calculation of self-interest best explains actors’ underlying incentives, and thus their willingness to comply with rules.
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