While the American campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have changed the public views about how and when America goes to war, a serious and underreported debate is being waged within the halls of the Pentagon and the wider military establishment. Open Democracy contributor Mary Kaldor captures the tensions between the traditional high-tech, big war philosophy often favored by the US Air Force and Navy and the low-intensity, 'small wars' approach supported by the Army and Marine Corps. The nature of the current conflicts reveals the limits of the traditional security approach, with its focus on technology, speed and firepower. Kaldor, whose work on “new wars” is now studied at US military schools, rightly identifies that the success of the “surge” was in large part more about a “profound change in strategy and tactics” emphasizing the protection of civilians rather than the direct result of increases in troop levels. What remains to be seen is whether this dramatic shift in US military thinking will be embraced politically by a new Administration and the Congress.

John Casey’s article Rediscovering Tradition is good at highlighting how in religion, as in education, the apologetic attempt to make the old and traditional ‘relevant’ has signally failed. When the Second Vatican Council ordained that the Mass be said in the vernacular, it wasn’t that the Latin Mass was simply translated into English, Swahili, or whatever, but that a new rite was introduced, which had more Sciptural readings, more ‘active participation’ by the congregation, and encouraged a rearrangement of the church (often involving iconoclasm) so that the priest faced the congregation. The idea was to make the Mass more relevant, catering more to the subjective convictions of the individual, and making a ‘place for creativity or the expression of personality’. But as with similar moves in schooling, these reforms have failed. Trying to make the venerable in religion or culture ‘relevant’ usually results in demoting it, taking away the onus on the customers (as they have now become) to become relevant to it, and precisely denuding it of the sacredness that made it revered. And as with the endless use of handouts, and pre-digested, oversimplified information in schools, wooing the congregation has actually obviated the need for the individual’s own involvement -- the close following in prayer and reading the missal that the old rite demanded. Anyway, the main ‘expression of personality’ is that of the priest’s, who, rather than being almost an impersonal, objective vessel for the Mass, is now a sort of entertainer to be judged on his delivery and charisma. What Casey’s article suggests above all is the mistakenness of assuming that it is possible to grasp the essence of a religious belief or a religious ritual, and then to transmit it clothed in modern garb. But is there such a separable essence? Is it a special content underlying forms that are somehow optional. Is tradition the sort of entity that can be lifted out of its clothes and regarbed so as to be more palatable to consumers? Is form and ritual ever just an external husk that can be cracked and discarded, leaving an easily-separable kernel?

The ripples of war may yet provoke waves of political change across the continent

The intensifying Afghan war reverberates in Paris.

I had not read Murat Belge's remarkable October 4th 2001 essay on Fundamentalism and reactions to it. Murat is a Turkish public intellectual and long-time friend of openDemocracy - he regularly comes in to visit us when he is passing through London. In this essay, Murat disects the spectacle of 9/11 not only from the point of view of Islam's colonial, inferiorist grievances, not only from the resultant ability to form a cold, universalising ideology that legitimates violence, but also importantly from our reaction to it. Hawks obviously play into the hands of fundamentalists by "increasing the distance" to the other; but so do liberal democrats whose tolerant multiculturalism too easily slips into moral relativism. The essay, written less than a month after the World Trade Centre attack, is a masterful account of the bind that violence puts us into.

Can the study of supposedly peripheral regions provide insights that are not visible from the centre? Arthur Aughey finds a fresh perspective on Britain's past in Christopher Harvey's  A Floating Commonwealth: Politics, Culture and Technology on Britain's Atlantic Coast, 1860-1930.  Writing 'British history with London left out', has enabled Harvie to uncover the wider significance of great Atlantic cities like Glasgow, Belfast, Liverpool and Bristol. Aughey sees in the diversity highlighted by Harvie an underlying unity which illuminates a key question for the future. What is to be the fate of the political union which once dominated this Atlantic world, and does change mean disntegration or simply transformation?  

Another year, another prime minister. Noriko Hama dissects Tokyo's politics

Rein Müllerson, a professor of International Law, strips the Russian-Goergian war of obfuscating legalities. This is not a conflict about ``aggression, occupation, genocide, racial discrimination, territorial integrity, peace enforcement, humanitarian mission, sanctity of treaties'' or any such term of art used with "such self-righteous indignation, with such self-confidence by all sides". This is a war about the interests of global powers. The next steps to be taken by the US and Russia will be important in defining a future either of a great (nasty) conflictual game between US, Russia and China or of a concord of nations recognising mutual dependence in the face of global threats. The latter, better path requires all sides now to tone down rhetric, to u-turn without saying so.

Daniel Ortega's authoritarian regime is provoking former revolutionary heroes to imaginative protest

The Chinese people deserve a medal for their Olympics performance

openDemocracy/Russia was created last year. Two new articles on Abkazia demonstrate why it is a brilliant initiative. The idea was that English readers around the world should be able to learn at first hand the vitality and intelligence of Russia’s free voices and that Russians should be able to participate directly in the growing (we hope) democratic discussion that is global in its interests and concerns. Alas, it has taken the crisis in the Caucasus to confirm how much this initiative is needed. openDemocracy has always resisted the clichés of received ideas and the imposition of worn out worldviews while seeing itself as a platform where minority voices and opinions (even if they too have their clichés and evasions) can be well published and debated when the current is against them. oD’s exceptional coverage of the Caucasus predates the present interest and will continue after it. Others have drawn attention to the analysis and the seeking for human based conceptual frameworks in new essays by Ivan Krastev and Mary Kaldor, I’m just going to draw your attention to Zygmunt Dzieciolowski's encounter with Sergei Bagapsh the President of Abkhazia and then an article by Inal Khashig, editor of the Abkhaz newspaper Chegemskaya Pravda, who states that the West's endorsement of Georgia's claims has merely ensured that Abkhazian independence is a fact. Zygmunt writes in the tradition of his late Polish compatriot the celebrated Ryszard Kapuscinski. It’s a journalism of the main facts and the telling details, threaded with an awareness of history and place so that the reporting is rooted in time without being fatalistic or sensational. He brings to life the “soft voice” of President Bagapash, his willingness to delay catching his flight to Moscow to talk with co-editor of openDemocracy Russia, his wariness of and desire for independence from the Russia that has just saved his statelet but was only recently also imposing sanctions on it. One detail I didn’t know that comes across strongly in both Zygmunt’s report and Kashig’s insistent article. The West’s participated in preventing medicines including antibiotics from being imported by Abkhazia after it broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s. This abuse of humanitarian principles turned everyone who remained into a potential martyr. When Russia let in antibiotics it made a moral gain (whatever the cynical calculations behind it) that western media coverage seems completely oblivious of. This is the kind of significant detail that openDemocracy Russia brings to our understanding of the Caucuses.

In his latest contribution to OurKingdom's debate about the future of the UK, Gerry Hassan points to the limits of nationalism as a response to neo-liberalism. Scotland's nationalist leader Alex Salmond has inadvertently whipped up a media storm by arguing that Scots 'didn't mind the economic side of' Thatcherism. The furure has exposed the contradictions of a country where mainstream politicians are as united in tacitly accepting Thatcher's legacy as in publicly abominating her policies.

Could the world have the decisive say in the identity of the next United States president?

The Taliban are raising their game while coalition tactics are stuck

What has Pervez Musharraf bequeathed Pakistan? The "president-general" steps down from power at a time of great political and violent unrest, with the civilian government falling to pieces and insurgencies wracking the country. Irfan Husain chronicled the Musharraf years last week on openDemocracy, finding morsels of good in the soup of ultimate failure. Shaun Gregory, however, is far less generous. Musharraf, he argues, was a strongman who encouraged (and relied upon) the myth that "the Pakistani army is all that stands between Pakistan and chaos." Yet the army was and continues to be the single biggest obstacle in Pakistan's path to a more peaceful secular and democratic future. If the country's civilian leaders, like Nawaz Sharif, continue to nurture ties to the more unsavoury potentates of the military, Pakistan's crises will be unrelenting. 

A part of Fred Halliday's call to understand local agency before jumping the geo-political gun is to know the domestic politics (see his recent article here). War often has deep domestic political repercussions - some anticipated and many not - and Robert Parsons shines a light right into the here and now of Georgian politics. The first surprise -- to Russia, at least -- is that the Geogian institutions have held up and continued to function. There is no immediate call for regime change despite Russia's best attempts to re-open old divisions. The war has, for now, united Georgia. But the end of the war is likely to produce a demand for accounts from within and provides an opportunity for an organsied and compelling Georgian opposition to emerge. This fascinating piece of insider observation points to who we should expect to do what to who else and under what circumstances.

Fred Halliday takes a broad historical sweep at the nationalist delusions of grandeur of small states. Nationalism, more than any other force, has led local leaders to mis-read their strength, their opponents, the supportiveness of their allies and the future. Be it Ireland in 1916, North Vietnam in 1950, Egypt in 1973, Cyprus in 1974, Iraq in 1980 then 1990, local powers, suffering a fetish of "territorial integrity" have refused "to look at reasonable, humane compromises," have misread "international political realities" and have resorted "to destructive and often useless violence." Georgia today is an unhappy addition to that list. Over and above a denunciation of nationalism, Fred Halliday's piece goes two steps further. First, you need to understand these local elites to understand global conflicts; the short-cut of talking in terms of "clients", "proxies", "agents", "pawns" won't work, because local nationalist delusions are a necessary pre-condition of geo-political clientelism. Second, Fred asks whether these nationalist delusions are not just as prevalent and damaging amongst the large powers as amongst the small. Yes but ... he answers --- the delusions are further from the reality in the case of small nations, and distance from reality in this domain, creates violence and inhumanity. "Smaller peoples pay a higher price. "

The Georgia-Russia war confirms that world events are shaped by the small platoons as well as the big battalions

What is the war between Georgia and Russia about? Tbilisi's education minister sets out a strong case

"The leaders fail to understand that the fakery casts genuine achievements into doubt, and their clumsy cover-ups bring only greater dishonour," says Li Datong of the control-obsession that Chinese leadership has demonstrated during the Olympics. But when will they regain the maturity to understand that it is a strength, not a weakness, to allow genuine criticism and opposition? As we see also in Paul Rogers' comments about Russia, and Anthony Barnett's follow-up comments on Iran: a show of strength is a proof of vulnerability. Li Datong reminds us that this wisdom was part of the pre-Tiananmen awareness of the leadership: "The late politicians Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang once openly said "we must get used to governing while the public oppose and demonstrate", and "we must learn to govern despite small or medium-scale disorder." Unfortunately this vision and psychological readiness was brought to an end by the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 and has not yet returned. "

In the wake of the Russian invasion of Georgia, the spectre of the Kremlin looming maliciously over world affairs once again stalks the magazines and broadsheets of Europe and North America. Is the corpse of the Cold War rising from its shallow grave? No, says Paul Rogers. oD's long-time global security columnist joins the likes of Parag Khanna and Kishore Mahbubani in not confusing Russia's bark for its actual bite. With his typical insider's erudition, Rogers shows how Russian military tactics in the recent conflict reveal Moscow's shrunken power. But while the Kremlin may not be as strong as it seems, the west (particularly Washington) remains incapable of coming to terms with the nature of international politics in the 21st century. The west misunderstands the resurgent nationalist ambitions of countries like Russia and Iran at its own peril.

Tina Beattie reads Christopher Nolan's film The Dark Knight under the influence of Slavoj Zizek

Leaders around the world have greeted the resignation of Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf as a positive step forward for a country still in the throes of instability. Irfan Husain assesses the mixed legacy of a leader who once enjoyed the support of most Pakistanis. Musharraf's nine years at the helm of the country were not without their successes. The military coup through which he came to power nipped at the bud Nawaz Sharif's attempt to bring sharia law to the country. Musharraf presided over an upturn of Pakistan's economic fortunes. His deregulation of powers to provincial governments came as a long overdue measure in building "democracy" from the bottom up. Given that the disastrous Kargil invasion of 1999 was his brainchild, Musharraf's overtures to hulking neighbour India (the ultimate bête noire of Pakistani diplomacy and strategy) in recent years came as a welcome sign of progressive and wise leadership in Islamabad. Ironically, his rule was undone by the very factors that sustained it. Pakistan's entanglements in the American-led "war on terrorism" at once bankrolled the military (so enmeshed in the workings of the state) and compromised Musharraf's position abroad and within Pakistan. Yet what suited Washington irked many Pakistanis, particularly those along the eternally restless and lawless Pashtun borderlands. Domestically, Islamabad was damned if it did. Internationally, it was damned if it didn't. In the end, Musharraf's spluttering administration could neither stem the terrorist tide in Afghanistan and India nor could it cool the heated sentiments of its own people, as a new branch of the Taliban insurgency takes shape in Pakistan. Yes, he was between a rock and a hard place. But his inability to control Pakistan's shadowy intelligence agencies - coupled with Islamabad's unwillingness to shed its anarchic doctrine of "strategic depth" - made the job impossible. Musharraf was further weakened by the loss of the support of urban and secular liberal elites after his authoritarian handling of the judiciary and the period of emergency rule. A fairly-elected government - thin on democratic credentials, thick with track records of corruption - now takes centre stage. One can only hope that its inevitable failures of imagination are not as bad as Musharraf's.

Behind every ritual show of control, look for the unconfidence that it masks. Kerry Brown notices it in the the Olympic pageant. The perfectionism, the mime, point not so much to manipulative control of appearances as to a desire to come out and shine on the stage of nations. Kerry Brown sees a very positive dynamic here. A year of challenges and crises has shown "that the Chinese people, complex and segmented and dispersed as they are, have and want a voice," and the leadership must now see that the next task after a splendid Olympics is to build "a transparent, modern democracy." Look to the October 2008 meeting of the leadership for signs that the leadership has understood the next step on the steep, post-Olympian road.

For the past week at openDemocracy we have focused our war coverage on history, on the particular, on reminding our readers that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are not abstractions, but places with history, populated by people with claims and memories. Now, in moving to the bigger canvas, we do not jump into NATO, the USA and geo-politics. Instead, we stay firmly focused on the actors and the reality. In this brlliant piece, Ivan Krastev helps us to understand what Russia is doing, and why it is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Russia must, for its and our good, rediscover soft power.

Amongst the big countries of the Asian continent, the nation is back. It was the foreign ministers of Russia, China, and India, after all, who met last year to affirm their vision of "multipolar world system", founded on the hallowed ground of respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Russia-Georgia crisis reminds Ivan Krastev that the 19th century lives on, while the ominous grandeur of the Beijing Olympics has lifted burgeoning nationalism in China from anachronism to global force. India - the continent's other "waking giant" - also rides the nationalist tide. Its recent economic successes and growing international influence have been matched by a swelling belief in national purpose. Yet where grassroots jingoism throttled dissent in China during this year's Tibet crisis (see Ivy Wang, "China's netizens and Tibet: a Guangzhou report") and in Russia overwhelmingly supported state-propaganda during this month's clash with Georgia (see Evgeny Morozov, "Russia/Georgia: war of the web"), no such consensus can be easily found in India with its buzzing civil society and vast and varied media landscape. Antara Dev Sen, editor of the indispensable Little Magazine, offers a timely corrective to the Indian nationalist narrative. In the wake of India's 61st birthday, the country's problems remain immense and its dreams of superpower-dom all the more ungainly.

George Hewitt doesn't like the way: "the torrent of media commentary on the Georgia-Russia war has been characterised by near-obsessive geopolitical calculation, which [...] tends by default to view Georgia's "lost" territories (if they are viewed at all) as nothing more than inconsiderate and irritating pawns on a global chessboard." Georgia has its own "near abroad", that happen to be within its UN-defined borders; Russia has Georgia in its "near abroad" ... Remember Mandelbrot's ginerbread man: whatever the scale you examined it at, you'd get those repeating patterns. Fractals of nationalism. And what about the non-Ossetian minorities in South Ossetia? Where will they go, as one of our commenters asked. Surely there is a pattern here that we can see should be avoided: to treat the other, be it ethny, nation, or however you care to define the outsider, as a means to your political end? Shouldn't alarm bells from the Balkans be ringing in NATO's ears? George Hewitt provides the historical background and the detail that we need to read to understand---to really sympathetically understand--- that when we take the short-cut of geopolitics, we allow ourselves to think of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as mere pawns in a new cold war, then we have already ruled out the possibility of a humane solution.