The long-awaited publication of the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation in February 2010 was the result of years of debate within the Russian military and political establishment. It outlines a post facto legitimization of Russia’s role in the August War against Georgia in 2008 and of other initiatives adopted by Moscow in the field of international security in the new century
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.
Political and economic power must be recognized as being inextricably linked. As hegemony grew in its sophistication over the centuries, economic power has complimentarily entrenched itself in ever more embedded and socialized ways into political life, while political power continues to provide the essential structure for the evolving regime of accumulation.
NGOs have often been lauded for their efforts in international development. It was long assumed that aid money given to an NGO would be more efficient, more accountable democratically to local civil organizations, and more likely to reach the intended people and not a foreign bank account. As many states democratized, the NGOs assisting them became increasingly dependent on funding from neoliberal donors. Critics, such as Zaidi, Petras, and Kamat, have begun to argue that the NGOs themselves have become unaccountable and undemocratic. They propose bringing the state back into the development process. Yet would this solution be truly effective in light of the massive debts, dependence, and global structural imbalances faced by many developing states?
Even though globalization has many advantages and one of them is the opportunity for economic growth both at an individual and a national level. This means that governments now try and compete for foreign capital and design their policies to please global investors and firms, which results in them not necessarily acting in the best interest of its citizens and this disregards its primary purpose.
Through analysing the Japanese memory of WWII it is clear that ethics are susceptible to unconscious limitations, often leading to denial and forgetfulness of the past.
The advent of contemporary global governance promoted a shift in the way civil society organized its activities. Not long ago civil society developed within a specific form of governance based on the nation state and its activities had a fixed space, reflected in national boundaries and the nation state. Nowadays it has become more common to speak of a global civil society which transcends the territorial boundaries of states.
On September 16, 2007, the issue of private military firms exploded out of the dry confines of academic debate and into the public consciousness as bright, bloody pictures blanketed the newspapers and television networks that had long ignored the subject. Seventeen Iraqis had been violently killed and more than twenty others wounded while they went about their business in Nisour Square, in the heart of Baghdad’s once fashionable Mansour District.
Whilst the German experience in South West Africa is significant, the wider phenomenon of imperial domination is the greater contributory factor to the genocidal Nazi mentality. An ethos of thought and norms developed in the colonies which created the potential for totalitarian domination and mass extermination in Europe, culminating in the catastrophic events of the Holocaust.
While the United Nations human rights treaty monitoring bodies have contributed to the upholding of human rights in the face of a ‘new brand’ of terrorism and counter-terrorism, the challenges they face make their task daunting, now more than ever.
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