The very idea behind Pakistan's security state is that civilians are expendable, that there is no need to build civilian institutions because we are permanently invaded and the whole world is our enemy
R2P, introduced without the slightest idea of how it has to be implemented, is nothing more than an alibi for half-hearted (Libya) or fully fledged (Ivory Coast) military operations and interventions. With regard to non-combatants (civilians), the UN should and could have done a better, more hones
If America wants Pakistan on side; if it wants to see a stable Pakistan that is not a haven for terrorists and that doesn’t export terrorism, then it needs to recognise that it (America) is the elephant in the room.
To tackle Cote d’Ivoire’s intractable problems after the demise of Gbagbo’s regime, security sector reform, reconciliation, resettlement and development must work in tandem
Dostoevsky was in favor of military intervention in the Balkans, Tolstoy opposed to it. The arguments they put forward are surprisingly relevant to our own current wars.
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
Despite the best efforts of the US and its European and regional allies to ignore them, international and regional factors that enabled the domestic power structures to remain in place for so long have also been the focus of protesters’ grievances and demands.
We need the international community to favour the worldwide groundswell of civil resistance over armed violence. This could be facilitated by a more dynamic and comprehensive interpretation of existing international law in the light of a broader understanding of those rights of which civil resista
There are multiple reasons for looking beyond Islam for our comprehension of this tumultuous region, to culture, to politics, and also to the history of capitalism, foreign interference and domination – its winners and losers. Our reviewer of Beyond Islam: A New Understanding of the Middle East, b
The Salafi-jihadist movement is losing its recruitment pool in the Arab world. Its latest strategies look elsewhere, and the death of Osama Bin Laden will not affect these plans.
Writing last week on openDemocracy, John Keane suggested we need new words to describe the Arab Spring. Stephen Wheatcroft came across similar calls twenty years ago when analysing the fall of the Soviet regime. Then and now, there was a simple description for the events: democratic revolutions in
We present the sixth of ten weekly episodes from a brutal novel by an acclaimed British author
