9/11 : the 'war on terror'

The faultlines exposed by 9/11 run within as well as between us, says Paul Gilroy. The network society has produced its ‘other’, warns Francesco Grillo. Allenna Leonard uses systems analysis to advocate a creative response, while Ann Pettitt recommends ‘militant moderation’. For Mary Midgley, Jeffrey Isaac, Steven Lukes and Nadia Urbinati, the way language is used is a crucial index of political maturity in time of crisis. Paul Frosh, Nissim Calderon and Shaun Gregory bring insights from Israel and Pakistan.
Thursday 19th January

Uncertainty looms amid progress in talks with the Taliban

Arif Rafiq, 19 January 2012
The Afghan Taliban and the United States have begun talks, advancing prospects that coalition forces can withdraw from Afghanistan. But there are many potential pitfalls on the road to peace: a real risk of a political and military stalemate in Afghanistan, forcing the United States to leave the region under uncertain and possibly dangerous terms.

Thinking about war with Iran

Michael Doliner, 19 January 2012
The real Iranian threat is not its nuclear capacity but its independence. If Iran continues to stand as a model of defiance for increasingly poverty-stricken and restless populations of family fiefdoms in the Gulf, the current US-backed setups will either fall or be forced to democratise. These potentially catastrophic losses of empire go a long way to explaining the rising beat of war drums in the region.
Monday 19th December

Pakistan: next in line?

Shazad Ali, 19 December 2011
After Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has now turned its belligerent attention towards Pakistan. But opening up a new battlefront, this time in Pakistan, in the run-up to the presidential elections, will prove another quagmire for the Obama administration.
Tuesday 3rd May

Should bin Laden have been tried?

Daniele Archibugi, 3 May 2011
Maybe there really was no choice. But we have lost something by not putting bin Laden on trial, and that is a particular view of what Justice is for
Tuesday 13th January

The paradox of Basra

Mary Kaldor, 13 January 2009
A visit to Iraq's second city reveals fraught divisions of both wealth and ideology
Thursday 25th September

'New thinking' needs new direction

Mary Kaldor, 25 September 2008
US military strategists are debating a new security paradigm. But only politics can make it happen
Thursday 10th July

Afghanistan: state of siege

Paul Rogers, 10 July 2008

A Taliban-al-Qaida regroupment in the Pakistani borderlands is bringing the war closer to Kabul

Thursday 26th June

Prisons of war, furnaces of radicalism

Paul Rogers, 26 June 2008

The United States's global detention policy is incubating the insurgents of the future

Wednesday 20th November

France and the Security Council: poker diplomacy wins

Patrice de Beer, 20 November 2002
The lengthy negotiations leading to Security Council Resolution 1441 were a success for French diplomacy. France’s ‘two-step’ approach may not avert war on Iraq; but in deflecting the United States’ unilateral drive to war she has served the world’s interest.
Wednesday 13th November

Afghanistan, one year on

David Loyn, 13 November 2002
There is progress, but is it too little, too late? Civil servants in Afghanistan are unpaid, roads impassable, and justice undone. Where there is no effective governance, and more money being spent on warfare than development aid, is it surprising that the Taliban still has support? A year after Kabul changed hands, a bleakly realistic assessment from the BBC’s Developing World Correspondent.
Thursday 24th October

Understanding the 'war on terrorism'

Mary Midgley, 24 October 2002
If the war on terrorism is literal, it cannot be won. If it is metaphorical, it offers only a continuation of the frozen, abstract hatreds made possible by the cold war. And how do you defeat a metaphor?
Thursday 26th September

After the cataclysm: a systems analysis

Allenna Leonard, 26 September 2002
Can the creative insights of systems analysis illuminate the motives of the attackers and suggest a western response that is likely to be truly effective?
Wednesday 24th April

The West against terrorism

John Downey, 24 April 2002
The imbalance between political and military science has brought us to a major turning point in world history. Do we have time to correct it?
Thursday 14th March

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan: the limits of Marc Herold's 'comprehensive accounting'

Jeffrey C. Isaac, 14 March 2002
Marc Herold’s report on the civilian victims of US bombing in Afghanistan has gained wide circulation. But are his own methods and conclusions reliable?On 10 December 2001 Marc W. Herold, a professor in the departments of economics and women’s studies at the University of New Hampshire, publicly released A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States’ Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting. Herold claims that (up to that date) over 3,500 Afghan civilians had been killed by American bombs.
Wednesday 13th February

Three cheers for the Bush doctrine

Frank Vibert, 13 February 2002
The Bush doctrine for conducting the war against terrorism was greeted with shock and dismay by many in Europe. It should not have been. The six principles set out in Bush’s “axis of evil” speech are ones that European countries should support.

Cranking the 'axis of evil'

Todd Gitlin, 13 February 2002
Bush the father in 1990 announced : “What we say, goes”. Twelve years on, Bush the son captures the US’s enemies in words equally vulgar and inaccurate. Behind the latter’s phraseology, however, is the impending tragedy of a decent patriotism hijacked by geopolitics.
Thursday 29th November

A war against politics?

S Sayyid and Barnor Hesse, 29 November 2001
The military might of western power is matched by its ideology’s closed assurance in the face of challenges to and victims of its ‘war on terrorism’. Defusing such opposition is the work of a ‘cynical reason’ that threatens to silence dissidence, cancel historical awareness, and collapse the process of politics itself.
Thursday 8th November

The terrorist threat and a new form of warfare

Vladimir Slipchenko and Alexander Khokhlov, 8 November 2001
The Russian military analyst, Vladimir Slipchenko, argues that a new era of asymmetric warfare has begun. Against international terrorism, conventional or guided missiles are futile. An effective response requires a new civil-military force, and a post-Nato counter-terrorism alliance – one that includes Russia.

Fighting the Taliban: a West Point graduate's view

Richard Kidd, 8 November 2001
US military personnel were deeply involved in the Afghan struggle against Soviet occupation in the 1980’s. What lessons do they draw for today’s war on the Taliban? Here, a graduate of an elite US military academy – and of aid campaigns in the region – distils his experience into frank advice.
Thursday 1st November

Why I am against the war

Tracy Worcester, 1 November 2001
The war is being argued over within families as well as between nations. Here, a green activist explains to her children why legality, justice, and aid should guide our actions towards Afghanistan – and that the answers to ‘terrorism’ can only be long-term.
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