For years or decades to come, we will not be able to talk of one destiny for all the people of the country
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9/11: politics of global justiceCan law and justice replace violence in international politics? David Held outlines a strategy. Tim Garton Ash questions whether the US can live with multilateralism. Paul Hirst regards cooperation between nation-states as the realistic vehicle of achieving world security. From the Indian sub-continent, Rajeev Bhargava and Pervez Hoodbhoy survey the chasm in global perceptions. Social inequality on a world scale is unsustainable and destabilising, argues Robert Wade. Marlees Glasius finds hope for a new global civil society in the emergence of NGOs and advocacy groups.
Even to those who were not there, the day Allied troops landed in Normandy and began the reconquest of Europe from Hitler is still a moment for remembrance, and gratitude. Read the rest of this post...
The American “war on terrorism” threatens hope: the hope for expanding democracy and freedom that was born in the post-Cold War period. It is therefore of the utmost importance that we differentiate between the US’s global military ambitions and the pursuit of a just and fair international order. Read the rest of this post...
Why do some peace processes succeed, and others fail? The answers may be found not just in the intractability of political conflict, but in the quality of communication established by key negotiators. Here, a specialist in conflict resolution draws on the experience of the Oslo process to offer peacemakers a practical and emotional toolkit. Read the rest of this post...
The would-be shoebomber Richard Reid, and several of the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay, are the products of ‘multicultural’ Britain. The foremost scholar of the phenomenon sees their journey to militant Islam as emblematic of the untruths buried in a now-failing social model and an unresolved post-colonial European history. Read the rest of this post...
The first months of post-11 September politics appear to be a vindication of US global leadership. But the twentieth century experience of historic crisis in Britain – epic in 1940, bathetic in 1982 – carries the darker possibility that victory-from-defeat moments conserve the dross of history as well as securing the future. How does this insight apply to the state of ‘globalisation’ before and after 9/11? Read the rest of this post...
Among the Central Asian states on the front line of Washington’s “War on Terrorism,” Uzbekistan occupies a special place. In return for an aid package which includes new IMF loans, it has allowed some 1,000 US troops onto its soil. Read the rest of this post...
The novel feature of the new terrorism is its religious character. The challenge this presents to democracy is a linguistic as well as a security one. For the imprecision of the language we use to address it – especially that of good and evil – carries the danger of internalising an anti-political threat to our values. To avoid this, we must both focus on the specific, and reaffirm the secular, public sphere as the common ground of democratic concern. Read the rest of this post...
The unknown enemy has turned the connective tissue of modern life into a weapon of destruction. The attacks on the “centre of the world” reveal the dark side of the network society. The lesson is to globalise further: intelligence and police work, risk assessment, and ultimately governance itself. Read the rest of this post...
The language of politics, especially during wartime, often regards emotion as suspect. Yet ignoring the emotional dynamics of life is a recipe for further conflict. Instead, nurturing a “dialogic attitude” that allows emotion to inform thought is essential to the healthy management of difference. Read the rest of this post...
The common, consoling wisdoms are already encrusting around 11 September and its aftermath. We need to return imaginatively to the surprise we felt that day, and learn its lessons. Read the rest of this post...
Reforms in the functioning of the UN are needed in order to try to create a fairer world in which the threat of international terrorism can start to disappear. Read the rest of this post...
The US-led advocates of borderless trade want to press on with their mission in the wake of the WTC assaults. From the perspective of a Bolivian conference of grassroots campaigners, such moral blindness may be the prelude to intensified revolt. Read the rest of this post...
The impulse of the attacks was not confidence but despair – the strike of a miserable old world against the unsettling but promising new. Read the rest of this post...
The response to the attacks on the United States must be the creation of a new global covenant for justice and peace, say David Held and Mary Kaldor.
An international criminal court, so far opposed by the US, could try what can be described as an international war crime. Read the rest of this post...
We don’t yet know what happened on 11 September, or what it will lead to. A respected sociologist braves a series of clear predictions. Read the rest of this post...
Our South Asia editor gives us a careful, elegant picture from the point of view of those who suffer injustice and see it erased before it is spoken of. He argues for a common humanity: even the mighty can be humbled. Read the rest of this post...
“For that man may be freed from the bonds of revenge: that is the bridge to my highest hope and a rainbow after protracted storms.” Read the rest of this post...
Muslim leaders have condemned the attacks. But from Palestine to Islamabad, many people sing a different tune. As this Pakistani physicist says, there is no known “terrorist gene”. What will it take for the US and Muslim societies to engage anew, as pluralists not combatants? Read the rest of this post...
No-one has claimed responsibility for the atrocities of 11 September. In itself, this reveals a great deal. One way forward is to insist on normality. Read the rest of this post...
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