BY SUSAN ALLEN NAN The rise of the network society has shaped both conflict and conflict resolution. Conflict between the global network of capital exchange and locally rooted meaning can be seen in many international conflicts today. Castells argues that many of today’s conflicts are protests (by Zapatistas, American militia, Aum Shinrikyo, al-Qaeda, and the [...]
BY REUBEN E. BRIGETY, II It isn’t every day that I find myself in northern Kenya visiting a camp with 150,000 Somali refugees, or hearing an American soldier talk about the strategic importance of vaccinating sheep in Djibouti as part of the Global War on Terror. But neither is it every day that, as a [...]
BY AGNIESZKA PACZYNSKA As the victorious great powers surveyed the devastation brought on by World War II and faced the crumbling of old colonial empires two issues came to dominate the international agenda: the reconstruction of countries devastated by the war and the economic and political development of the newly independent states of Africa and Asia. [...]
BY D.F. DAVIS In 2006, Mason’s Peace Operations Policy Program developed a simulation data base on conflict prevention and peace building in Nigeria. This effort was sponsored by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A) using funds from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The source of funding, in itself, made [...]
BY SHYAKA ANASTASE IN SEARCH FOR JUSTICE, SOCIAL COHESI ON AND PEACE Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda are among the African countries which have been most affected by violent conflicts in the last twenty years. Elements that characterize the bloodshed in the Great Lakes region include the politicization of ethnic identity, [...]
BY TERRENCE LYONS Protracted civil wars are nearly always embedded within regional and global systems of insecurity where conflict in one area feeds and, in turn, is fed by tensions and confrontation in another. Analysts have pointed out the regional dimensions of conflicts in the Middle East, Balkans, Central and West Africa, and in other [...]
BY TERRENCE LYONS Globalization has shaped how processes of migration, exile, and the formation of diaspora and other transnational networks operate. Globalization has decreased communication and travel costs, thereby making it easier for migrants to form diaspora networks that link geographically distant populations to social, political, and economic dynamics in the homeland. Those forced across [...]
BY REUBEN E. BRIGETY II One of the greatest convergences in American foreign policy in the last twenty years has been the recognition of the strategic utility of humanitarian and developmental assistance (HDA). While encouraging, this change is not without concern. The principal question posed by this development is this: How can HDA maintain its [...]
BY DEBRA BERGOFFEN Just war theory, developed to deal with anarchy, insists that the breakdown of international order be addressed by appealing to the principles of justice rather than those of tyranny. However, the theory questions the relationship between peace and justice, and invites discussions of the ways in which injustice threatens the possibilities of [...]
BY FRANCES V. HARBOUR One of the tragedies common in failed and violent authoritarian states is that the police force becomes a significant contributor to humanitarian disaster. An organization that should protect domestic order and human security instead is implicated in human rights violations. When violation is on a scale that provokes international humanitarian intervention, [...]