The end of the Cold War accelerated the widespread realisation that human action, particularly that associated with conflict and industry, had broadly comprised the environmental component of security. The discourse to redefine security to include a wider variety of issues catapulted concepts of threats that target the individual rather than exclusively state-centric to the fore; human security declared that people and communities should be the referent of security. The United Nations expanded the definition of human security to include the impact of environmental degradation: That to be secure, individuals should have access to non-degraded land, clean air and fresh water.
Although the race for nuclear weapons created a very tense atmosphere during the Cold War, it was also an effective means to maintain stability because both superpowers had the incentive to avoid using their weapons knowing it would lead to their mutual destruction. Such conditions and incentives do not exist in either unipolar or multipolar systems. Bipolarity is therefore stable thanks to the balance of military power that exists between two superpowers.
In the “Changing Structure of International Law” Friedmann begins by considering the main changes that have taken place in international law: its vertical extension to new fields such as economic collaboration and welfare, its horizontal expansion to take in all the civilizations and cultures of the world as well as the influence of various ideologies.
This essay contends that states will continue to hold the upper hand over NGOs because the international system remains the preserve of nation-states, and nation-states remain the most adequate guarantor of human security. To be sure, the 1990s alliance between NGOs and international institutions ‘was never more than a minor affair with a minor mistress.’ When stakes are high, ultimate power in the international system resides with states.
Pierre Gallois, an advisor to Charles DeGaulle, argued that the mere possession of a nuclear arsenal was enough to deter other nations from waging a war, and as a result he argued that the spread of nuclear weapons would increase international stability. Colin Powell may have been naïve when he said that he wished to see zero nuclear weapons in the world, but hopefully true debate from a practical and realistic perspective will help to make the world a better place
New Zealand is a unique laboratory to observe republican dynamics and the direction of political change. In this regard, this essay provides an objective assessment of the notion of inevitability of a republic in New Zealand through analysing three variables of symbolic, economic and public in the republican deterministic argument.
The original aims of the European project have long since evolved in to a much wider reaching and blurred set of aims that affect the lives of the regular European on a day to day basis
The EU is a modern political phenomenon that has risen out of the social, historical and economic context of the 20th century. It is a political system which is unique in comparison to all others. Although it has traits that bear resemblance to the political systems of federal states as well as intergovernmental organisations, it remains one of a kind.
The fact that colonialists had “more sophisticated weaponry” fails to address the question of why not all European nations were able to compete for the same opportunity to colonize.
The state is understood to constitute the primary institutions holding sovereign authority. States, however, are no longer standing alone on the hill of sovereignty, which other actors have come to the climb, claiming their own sovereignty vis-à-vis the state.
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