Shortly after the US invasion of Afghanistan, Tariq Ali exchanged a series of letters with Mike O'Brien, the UK Minister of Trade. The correspondence is a fascinating window into the imperial fantasies of the New Labour government in the early days of that doomed adventure.
Ayça Çubukçu outlines the logic of humanitarian intervention that has dominated the US approach to international affairs for the last thirty years and asks whether the US withdrawal from Afghanistan marks the end of this paradigm.
In this excerpt from The Spoils of War, Andrew Cockburn outlines the internal politics of the US military and the lobbying that keeps the American war machine well-funded.
"In her incisive and accessible study of Islamic jihad, Suzy shows how jihad is the ur-form of contemporary politics, no departure from western capitalism but rather an acceleration and crystallization of it."
Why does the US go to war? Humanitarianism? To bring freedom and democracy to the unfortunate corners of the world? To save vulnerable populations from dictatorship?
A response to the debate on terrorism and war: the need to avoid escalating forms of repression in the face of attacks by using justice and the rule of law rather than violence.
This open letter, signed among others by Virginie Despentes, Adèle Haenel, Annie Ernaux, Jean-François Bayart and Alexis Jenni, deplores the fact that the link between Western military interventions and terrorist attacks is never questioned.
The results of the Pakistani election offer some cause for hope, but no leader will be able to fundamentally reshape the country as long as the economy is choked by structural limitations and the military is able to exploit the War on Terror.
Outbreaks of mass violence must be understood as social problems in need of political solutions rather than criminal justice problems in need of more punishment.
