It will be interesting to see exactly which customs the Vatican is going to allow from the past rich five centuries of Anglican worship, life and thought.
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 ColumnsPaul Rogers Li Datong Fred Halliday Mary Kaldor Daniele Archibugi The World
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
The impulse of the attacks was not confidence but despair – the strike of a miserable old world against the unsettling but promising new.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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?
A foremost theorist of globalisation takes his measure of the new century’s first defining moment. He calls for the criminalisation of terrorism, instead of recourse to further arbitrary violence.
Instant reactions to the attacks on the US are misjudged, and policies based on them will be misguided. At this moment the US and its allies need patience and a clear eye.
The only possible approaches are political; to counter the sowing of fear and hatred with a strategy of winning hearts and minds.
This attack on the heart of the American homeland can be seen as an attack on civilisation. Questions concerning human rights and international law must now be addressed. But will America cooperate or act alone?
We’re all interconnected now, and this tragedy will harm even those the terrorists profess to represent. But democracy is resilient: nations, peoples and networks must speak out and insist on their basic rights and freedoms.
On day two of the post-disaster era, the lines of opinion are being drawn up across America. It’s impossible to say which way the mood will swing. But that the American way of life is now forever changed, is indisputable.
As grand visions of
national and social freedom have collapsed, the losers of history
compete to seek recompense for past injustice. This tidal wave of
“memory” and “reparation” is also a turning away from the hope of
progress. Can our engagement with the past be connected to the
imagining of a better future?
Security policy differences between Europe and the US are real and growing. A researcher of international security and conflict mediation sketches those differences – from missile defence and weaponisation of space to nuclear policy and arms control. Is US “unilateralism” a danger, and how should its allies respond?
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