For those who support the democratisation of the Middle East, these are dark times indeed. In Iraq, the intended cornerstone of this policy, bloodshed and sectarianism seems to be gathering momentum at an alarming pace. One should not forget that …
Editor’s Note: The British Moment: The Case for Democratic Geopolitics in the Twenty First Century (Social Affairs Unit, 2006) is a foreign policy manifesto written by a group of young academics associated with the Henry Jackson Society. The editors thank …
The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 may have been the war to end all alliances. It was an expression of a new assertive American interventionism that had scant regard for global norms and institutions when these stood in the …
Gilbert Achcar is not widely known in Anglo-Saxon circles. His brand of political scholarship is very French and his brand of intellectual politics is also very much a product of the French left. As a leading light of one of …
Fifty years ago, Muslims, Christians and Jews generally agreed that homosexuality was evil. While one could not say that Judaism and Christianity as a whole have come to terms with it, major bodies of opinion in these faiths have since …
‘The perfect is the enemy of the good’ – this is a proverb that applies to the seductive but bankrupt ideology of ‘anti-imperialism,’ which presents itself as opposition to the most powerful form of oppression but which in practice is …
In the Summer of 1993 Samuel Huntington published his influential essay ‘Clash of Civilizations?’ in the journal Foreign Affairs. A book followed, minus the question mark, in 1996. His central thesis: many contemporary conflicts are expressions of an underlying clash …
Fish’s book focuses on the failure of Russia to democratise. He argues that the main causes have been the superabundance of natural resources, a deficit in economic liberalisation and a constitutional system which makes for a powerful presidency and a …
Editor’s Note: Susan Green’s article was published as ‘Summing up the discussion on the Korean Statement’ in Forum, the internal bulletin of The Independent Socialist League, in 1950. [1] The ISL (called the Workers Party from 1940-49) was a small …
Editor’s Note: The Euston Manifesto – a call for the renewal of progressive politics – was launched online on 13 April 2006, and at a 250-strong meeting in London on May 25 2006. It was written by the Euston Manifesto …
Editor’s Note: We present here a revised version of a talk given by Dick Howard on 22 April 2005 to a symposium organised in New York by the journal French Culture, Politics and Society. The subject of the symposium was …
Speaking on the BBC, the political commentator David Wilby called The Euston Manifesto ‘more than a set of principles, it’s a phenomenon.’ When the Manifesto was launched in April the writer Will Hutton expressed the hope it would ‘offer a …
Don’t be fooled by the subtitle. Greg Grandin’s book is not a history of Latin America during the Cold War. In its core chapters, it is a contribution to the scholarly literature on twentieth-century Guatemala. In its preface, introduction, and …
Paul Berman’s latest book is remarkable. It is partly a collective biography, partly a work of contemporary history, and partly a political essay and argument about what has happened to the radical left over the past 30 years. It examines …
One short week at the beginning of June 2006 serves to remind the dreamers of eternal peace of the implacable permanence of chaos. Tiny East Timor with one million inhabitants, controlled by an estimable Nobel Prize winner and inundated by …
