The Sri Lankan government is losing the ideological battle while it is winning the military battle. This has tremendous implications for policymaking. Even if the government completely vanquishes the LTTE, the government could be pressured into an unfair and unsustainable political settlement due to the deeply entrenched ethnic analysis.
Of all the visible symbols of China’s rise to global prominence, perhaps the most compelling was the Opening of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. But what did the Games reveal about the nature and character of the “new” China, and-equally importantly-what did they seek to conceal from view?
One of the enduring features of Western strategic thinking over the past half-century has been to immediately write off one’s less powerful enemy, if the latter has been militarily overpowered. As the history of contemporary warfare suggests, very often this approach is couched on the realist thinking that a vanquished enemy is incapable of making a comeback.
This brief study aims to examine the emergence of Iranian nationalism and its implications of national independence in 1950s. Dr. Mosaddegh and his nationalist party Jebhe Milli Iran (Iranian National Front) will be the focus of this inquiry, which begins with a brief historical background to the origins of the party and the political climate of the time.
In recent years, there have been a number of challenges to international order emanating from various entities, including ‘Islamic extremists’ and, more generally, those ‘excluded’ from the benefits of globalisation; sometimes they are the same people.
Burma is ruled by one of the world’s most brutal military regimes, guilty of every possible human rights violation. Known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and led by Senior General Than Shwe, Burma’s junta is not only brutal, but illegitimate. Elections held in 1990 were overwhelmingly won by the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The world has an undoubted responsibility to protect the Burmese people from their leaders.
The slaughter of civilians in Mumbai by terrorists in November 2008 has once again vitiated the relationship between India and Pakistan in what is the fourth major crisis between them since the two countries became nuclear powers in the late 1980s.
The mantra used to be that North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – DPRK) never changed, in contrast to the dynamism of South Korea (Republic of Korea- ROK). This was always a doubtful assertion – change there was but it was slow and often barely perceived because of the DPRK’s skill at concealment. Today, the mantra no longer applies. While some still bemoan the DPRK’s relatively slowness to change, few would now deny that change has been taking place. Unfortunately, from most points of view, it was change in the wrong direction in 2008.
The recent attacks in India suggest that the specter of religiously-motivated violence is not just back on the global agenda, but will be part of international affairs for years to come. Given what appears to be a jump in religiously-motivated violence over the last several years, what can we learn from past instances of religiously-motivated warfare to help us understand the present and future?
Piracy remains on the fringes of academic research interests, often seen as an exotic and rare phenomenon, often studied in connection with terrorism and other forms of crime, this despite an increasing number of attacks over the last years. Indeed, over 282 attacks were recorded worldwide in 2007 – an increase of 41% from the previous year; the surge seemed to continue in 2008.
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