Today’s BRICS leaders talk, but rarely take combined action or push for substantive joint strategies, pointing to the possibility that at least in political terms the BRICs made by Goldman Sachs (who coined the phrase) may prove to be more like stumbling blocks than the foundation stones needed to reinvigorate the UN or reshape the international system.
Indigenous identity is problematic because it is grounded on the politics of difference, especially on the existence of a prior identity. This essay argues that indigenous security implies the identification and security of the vulnerable shared identity from the dominant one, which then results in the creation of indigenous peoples as a threat.
Perhaps, looking back at the EU’s performance in the Libyan crisis in five years’ time, the best lesson to (re-) learn is that the EU is not good at hard security policy, but does a very decent job when the task is about dealing with the aftermath of conflict. Stable democracies cannot be built on the battlefield. They require a whole different set of capabilities than what NATO can offer.
A trinity of difficulties will lead to a systemic economic breakdown of the Chinese economy. This will constitute a violation of the social contract. A delegitimization of the Chinese Communist Party will occur, unleashing the potential for socio-political instability. The likelihood of social and political turmoil following an economic crisis is extremely high, and the possibility of regime change is also correspondingly great.
Matthew A. Hill’s survey of America’s democratisation missions takes the reader on a journey through the horrors of post-conflict states, the cut-and-thrust of policy debate and the ever evolving idea of democracy. It will prove a valuable resource to any student or researcher seeking an understanding of the current situations in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Following 9/11 and more recently the Arab Spring, the relationship between Islam and politics has faced renewed attention. In contemporary Islamic states, religion theoretically guides the exercise of political power but in practice it is used and employed as a tool of realpolitik.
Pessoptimist, coined to describe the combination of positive and negative feelings China has about itself and others, is an apt neologism to describe China’s bipolar sense of national identity, formed from a confused superiority and inferiorly complex that has emerged from its recent economic growth and historical humiliation.
The moral imperative to intervene in a nation’s internal affairs where acts of genocide are threatened is a powerful one. That the UN is eager to push the doctrine of R2P and to re-define sovereignty to permit intervention in a state’s internal affairs is testimony to the fact that the Charter does not provide that legal authority. It should.
In this essay I will examine the areas in which NEPAD (the New Partnership for Africa’s Development) has been both praised and criticised whilst also inspecting its successes and failures, by which I mean to show that despite not being perfect NEPAD has the capacity to provoke real change on the continent.
The comparative use of both Afghanistan and South Africa allows the identification and assessment of the common themes relevant to the perennial nature of inequality and the difficulties of political transformation in alleviating it.
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