David Held - openDemocracy (Page 3)

Red lines and dangerous incoherence: Syria and the international community

While the region slips further into instability, the rejection of military action over Syria by the US Congress would be a huge stepping stone to undoing the US and western way of war since 9/11.

By David Held and Kyle McNally

/ 1 Sep 2013

Gridlock: the growing breakdown of global cooperation

Economic and political shifts in large part attributable to the successes of the post-war multilateral order are now amongst the factors grinding that system into gridlock.

By David Held, Kevin Young and Thomas Hale

/ 24 May 2013

Wars of Decline: Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya

This article assesses the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya in terms of their legality, their consequences - local, regional and global - and their impact. It describes the growing impotence of western powers in reshaping global politics by force. Rather, it argues, the flawed application of org

By David Held and Kristian Coates Ulrichsen

/ 12 Dec 2011

From the American Century to a cosmopolitan order

The universal constitutional stepping stones of the twentieth century give clues as to what the form and shape of organizations and institutions should be, globally, but they offer no simple blueprints. These can only be worked out in the process of travel, with fellow travel companions, in dialog

By David Held

/ 17 Oct 2011

The Arab 1989 revisited

The establishment and deepening of a democratic culture is a long-term project and is intergenerational. As divisions open up between the elites and the street as well as within the elites, the events of 2011 across the Middle East and North Africa represent a powerful first step in a larger proce

By David Held and Kristian Coates Ulrichsen

/ 27 Sep 2011

9/11, and the end of the American century

The “war on terror” launched in response to the crime of 9/11 signalled the decline of American and western power and marked the emergence of a multipolar global landscape. The challenge now is to work out a politics of mutual recognition that meets the permanent reality of intertwined human fate,

By David Held

/ 9 Sep 2011

Dealing with Saif Gaddafi: naivety, complicity or cautious engagement?

How should the London School of Economics have handled its Libyan connections? Fred Halliday strongly opposed engagement, while David Held, Co-Director of LSE Global Governance, has been a major supporter. Is this shown to have been naïve or complicit? No - a risk worth taking, argues the author

By David Held

/ 16 Mar 2011

The Arab 1989?

The uprisings sweeping across the Middle East portend a political transformation as significant as those of 1989. The economic stagnation of the region, the failures of corrupt and repressive autocratic regimes, conjoined with a disenchanted youthful population wired together as never before, have

By David Held, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen and Alia Brahimi

/ 11 Feb 2011

Global challenges: accountability and effectiveness

The paradox of our times can be stated simply: the collective issues we must grapple with are of growing extensity and intensity, yet the means for addressing these are weak

By David Held

/ 17 Jan 2008

Gordon Brown’s foreign-policy challenges

The opening weeks of Gordon Brown's premiership have brought a marked change of tone to the conduct of British foreign policy. The misconceived and counterproductive notion of a

By David Held and David Mepham

/ 10 Aug 2007

Building bridges: a reply to Anne-Marie Slaughter & Thomas N Hale

Anne-Marie Slaughter & Thomas Hales contribution to the openDemocracy debate on global governance and to the book Debating Globalization (Polity, 2005) decisively moves the argument forward and, in part,

By David Held

/ 23 Dec 2005

What are the dangers and the answers? Clashes over globalisation

Thank you openDemocracy and all those who have taken part in the debate on my essay Globalisation: the dangers and the answers. I have learnt a lot. Given how serious

By David Held

/ 10 Oct 2004