Did the West win the Cold War?

Did the West win the Cold War?

Photo: Gerard Malie/AFP/Ritzau Scanpix By Richard Falk November 7, 2019 Posing the Question Such a question seems little more than a provocation until the effects of the interval between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the present are critically examined in relation to their principal effects. On closer inspection, I am not quite prepared, […]

Will confronting Iran lead to war or peace?

Will confronting Iran lead to war or peace?

By Richard Falk October 3, 2019 Prefatory Note: The post below is a slightly modified version of an interview published in The Nation on September 25th, following the September 14th attack on Saudi oil facilities. It follows a pattern with respect to Iran of accusations, denials, and public uncertainties. This combination of elements, given the leadership in Washington […]

Revisiting the Earth Charter

Revisiting the Earth Charter

By Richard Falk October 13, 2019 Prefatory Note: The following essay will appear as a chapter in Peter Burden & Klaus Bosselmann, eds., The Future of Global Ethics (Edward Elgar, 2018),  with the title: Revisiting the Earth Charter 20 Years Later: A Response to Ron Engel Ron Engel has articulated an insider review of the Earth […]

Dark Clouds and the Human Condition: Youth to the Rescue!

Dark Clouds and the Human Condition: Youth to the Rescue!

By Richard Falk October 1, 2019 Prefatory Note: The post below of my remarks at the opening session of the Maker Majlis Conference, College of Islamic Studies, Hamed Bin Khalif University (HBKU) in Doha, Qatar on 22 Sept 2019. The theme of the three-day conference was on the role of youth in furthering the UN […]

Burning Amazonia, denying climate change, devastating Syria, starving Yemen, and ignoring Kashmir

Burning Amazonia, denying climate change, devastating Syria, starving Yemen, and ignoring Kashmir

By Richard Falk September 12, 2019 The World Order Backdrop Arguably, even before the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, there was a widespread sense that a state-centric form of world order was morally and functionally deficient in certain fundamental respects. Political actors were indifferent to the outbreaks of war, disease, and famine outside of […]

Geopolitical crimes: A Revolutionary proposal

Geopolitical crimes: A Revolutionary proposal

By Richard Falk August 15, 2019 The essay below is a modified version of the 2018 Annual Lecture of the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) of Queen Mary’s University London, given on March 22 of that year. Its original title was “Geopolitical Crimes: A Preliminary Jurisprudential Proposal.” The text of the lecture has been further […]

An American attack on Iran would be an unmitigated disaster for the US, Iran and the world

An American attack on Iran would be an unmitigated disaster for the US, Iran and the world

August 3, 2019 The following statement on US warmongering in relation to Iran was prepared by Mark LeVine, Professor of History, University of California, Irvine and myself. Some of the early signatories are among the leading scholars in the field of Middle East Studies. Their names are listed below. It seeks to make two major […]

Global Justice in the 21st Century

Global Justice in the 21st Century

By Richard Falk July 23, 2019 I make no claim to approach this book with an open mind. Making a fuller disclosure, I acknowledge with some pride that I have endorsed Justice for Some even before it was published, and my blurb appears on its back cover. Beyond this, two months ago I took part in […]

Remembering the World Court Advisory Opinion on Israel’s Separation Wall After 15 Years

Remembering the World Court Advisory Opinion on Israel’s Separation Wall After 15 Years

By Richard Falk July 20, 2019 On July 9, 2004 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague issued an Advisory Opinion by a vote of 14-1, with the American judge the lone dissenter, as if there would have been any doubt about such identity even if not disclosed. The decision rendered in response […]

Required Reading on Palestine

Required Reading on Palestine

By Richard Falk June 17, 2019 Andrew Ross’s Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel, Verso, 2019. On May 10th Andrew Ross came to University of California, Santa Barbara for a discussion of his extraordinary book, Stone Men, offering the audience a lively presentation enlivened by a Powerpoint array of informative pictures. I took part in a […]