9/11: politics of global justice

Can 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.
Wednesday 5th June

From my neighbourhood: remembering D-Day

Clancy Sigal, 5 June 2002
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.
Wednesday 24th April

Washington's "terror" discourse: a lost opportunity

Per Wirtén, 24 April 2002
The United States's “war on terror” threatens the hope for expanding democracy and freedom that was born after the cold war. This makes it all the more essential, says Per Wirtén, to distinguish between America's global military ambitions and the pursuit of a just international order.
Wednesday 27th February

Intimate enemies: the inner dynamics of peace

Gabrielle Rifkind, 27 February 2002
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.
Thursday 31st January

Diving into the tunnel: the politics of race between old and new worlds

Paul Gilroy, 31 January 2002
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.
Wednesday 16th January

Turning-point politics: from salvaging the past to protecting the future

Tom Nairn, 16 January 2002
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?
Thursday 29th November

Uzbekistan: Stalinism without state benefits

Malika Kenjaboeva, 29 November 2001
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.

Words matter

Steven Lukes and Nadia Urbinati, 29 November 2001
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.
Wednesday 24th October

From catastrophe to global governance?

Francesco Grillo, 24 October 2001
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.

The emotional state

James Park, 24 October 2001
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.
Monday 8th October

Being open to surprise

Susan Richards and Anthony Barnett, 8 October 2001
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.
Sunday 7th October

The attack on 11th September and the new world order

Gregorio Planchuelo, 7 October 2001
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.
Wednesday 3rd October

What now for the anti-globalisers?

Paul Kingsnorth, 3 October 2001
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.

Hooligans of the Absolute: Black Pluto's door after 11 September

Tom Nairn, 3 October 2001
The impulse of the attacks was not confidence but despair – the strike of a miserable old world against the unsettling but promising new.
Thursday 27th September

New war, new justice

Mary Kaldor and David Held, 27 September 2001
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.
Tuesday 25th September

An appeal to International Law

Tony Borden, 25 September 2001
An international criminal court, so far opposed by the US, could try what can be described as an international war crime.
Thursday 20th September

What happened, and what may follow

Charles Tilly, 20 September 2001
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.
Tuesday 18th September

Understand the whispers

Rajeev Bhargava, 18 September 2001
The experience of those who suffer injustice and see it erased before it is spoken of must be heard for a larger process of reconciliation to begin. Rajeev Bhargava, in New Delhi, reflects.
Monday 17th September

Militant liberalism

Achilles Skordas, 17 September 2001
Islamic fundamentalism isn't the real problem. The trouble arises from the existential clash of liberal and authoritarian political cultures. So now is the time for a militant liberal culture.

How are we?

Candida Clark, 17 September 2001
Imagination is a precious weapon against the tyranny of terrorism. It reveals our connectedness to reality, and to one another. It’s a way of being free.

The American Jihad

Paul Gilroy, 17 September 2001
The disturbing reaction to the attacks of 11 September by would-be warmongers betrays an urge to seize and politicise them in ways that resonate with untruth, says Paul Gilroy.
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