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Limiting Violence and Intimidation
As the more powerful countries show less commitment to reducing their own arms substantially and continue to pursue their own 'national interests', they affect many others around the world, who then, too, feel a need to increase their arsenals. This article addresses the negative consequences that can result from powerful countries’ possession of large numbers of weapons.
In March 2011, the UN Security Council authorized the use of force to protect civilians in Libya. This was the first time that the Council has ever authorized the invasion of a functioning state for such purposes. International society's relatively decisive responses to recent crises in Cote d'Ivoire and Libya has provoked significant commentary, suggesting that something has changed about the way the world responds to violence against civilians. Focusing on these two cases, this article examines the changing practice of the UN Security Council. It argues that we are seeing the emergence of a new politics of protection, but that this new politics has been developing over the past decade.
If the last two decades have been marked by wars over oil, the coming decades could see conflict over a much more precious commodity: water. By mid-century more than half of humanity will be facing water shortages, particularly in the Middle East, according to a UN report, as supply and demand move dramatically in opposite directions. This article specifically discusses water issues in Israel and Palestine.
Global poverty is falling, but a minority of developing countries are stagnant and diverging from the rest, says Collier, Professor of Economics and director of the Centre of African Economies at Oxford University. This failure is not only a catastrophe for the people in those countries, but is a danger to global stability. He identifies four poverty traps, then focuses on one of them--resource riches--in the rest of the video.
This study contends that many factors other than counterinsurgency can influence whether groups resort to terrorism, including competition between groups, as well as their relationship to public opinion and other political events. Hence, understanding terrorist tactics in prolonged conflicts with multiple actors requires us to consider a more general framework of innovation, imitation, competition and dependence between actors.
This paper examines the nature of the Somali piracy problem and recommends non-violent, peacebuilding approaches to reducing or even eliminating the problem. The author advocates this approach as it deals with the root of the piracy issue, which military tactics do not. Therefore, peacebuilding can diminish the impetus for people to engage in piracy, rather than trying to catch them and prosecute them after the fact (a task that is proving very difficult to do).
This is a short article, but was not emphasized in US news. According to this UK report, major cuts will be made in both US and Russian nuclear arsenals programs due to a successful negotiation between Obama and Medvedev. Though both sides still hold 1500 warheads, this is a significant reduction from Cold-War levels, and the successful negotiation suggests an improvement in US-Russian relations which is badly needed on several fronts--Iran, North Korea, and Afghanistan among them.
Many Westerners think there are no Palestinian Gandhis. But there are many Palestinians -- young and old; male and female; Muslim and Christian; from all political points of view -- who peacefully advocate for change every day. The Palestinian Gandhi Project aims to give them a megaphone.
Part of the mission of Rebecca Davis' dance company is to use contemporary ballet to deepen the public's knowledge of contemporary social issues. After reading U.S. Marine Brian Steidle's account of his experiences in Darfur, The Devil Came on Horseback, Rebecca realized the severe impact that genocide has on ordinary civilians and decided that genocide prevention should be a central goal of her life and her art.
