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By Patti M. Marxsen of the Boston Research Center for the 21st CenturyandNur Yalman, Nur Yalman is Professor of Social Anthropology and of Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. He has published numerous books and articles, from his first entitled Under the Bo Tree: Studies of Caste, Kinship, and Marriage in the Interior of Ceylon (University of California Press, 1967) to recent essays on the role of science in international conflicts and the relationship between terror and cultural diversity. Since September 11, 2001, Professor Yalman has been a compassionate critic of the U.S. military response to global terrorism. In the Fall of 2001, his course entitled Thought and Change in the Contemporary Middle East was overwhelmingly popular among students. Patti Marxsen, BRC publications manager, spoke with Professor Yalman as the first anniversary of September 11th approached. —————— PM: I’d like to start by just asking you about your own journey. Could share with...

LONDON – There used to be a joke told in Moscow: There are two ways out of the Russian economic crisis: the natural and the miraculous. The natural way is that the Archangel Michael and his cohorts of angels descend to earth and work 24 hours a day to save the Russian economy. The miraculous way is that the Russians do it themselves. Perhaps it is too early to talk of miracles, but like Poland before it (where this joke also went the rounds in a Polish form) Russian has climbed magnificently out of the abyss. No doubt it will stumble again, but the indications are that the fundamentals of future success are now being laid and that the Russian economy can be said to have safely weathered the storms of its transition from command economy straitjacket to capitalist economy free spirit. Just last week the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and...

Machiavelli Redux When George Bush, Jr. came to power in January of 2001, he proceeded to implement foreign affairs and defense policies that were every bit as radical, extreme and excessive as the Reagan/Bush administrations had starting in January of 1981. To be sure, Bush Jr. had no popular mandate to do anything. Indeed, a majority of the American electorate had voted for his corporate-cloned opponent. Upon his installation, Bush Jr.’s “compassionate conservatism” quickly revealed itself to be nothing more than reactionary Machiavellianism–as if there had been any real doubt about this during the presidential election campaign. Fascism with a friendly face. Even the Bush Jr. cast of Machiavellian characters were pretty much the same as the original Reagan/Bush foreign affairs and defense “experts,” many of whom were called back into service and given promotions for international crimes they had committed anywhere from ten to twenty years ago. It was...

An East-West German Perspective Since NATO redefined its mission in April 1999 and the Western powers started projecting their military superiority on a global scale, most European countries must have had at least one parliamentary election. To me it was agonizing to watch that these dramatic and dangerous developments seemed barely an issue in the electoral campaigns. Even in Spain, Italy and other Southern European countries, where according to opinion polls large majorities had vigorously opposed the bombing of Yugoslavia, only small parties even raised the issue and were quickly relegated to the “lunatic fringe” by published opinion. Of course, this is exactly what the foreign policy establishment wants to achieve, namely to keep international policy out of the “populist” electoral debate, since there are supposedly no respectable alternatives to the European consensus anyhow. We are told that these complicated matters are best kept in the hands of the seasoned...

Globalisation and Business for the Common Good:Theology and Economics working together R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism President Franklin Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, 1933. From the dawn of our creation, it has been our ultimate desire to find happiness. This desire is in the nature of things, common to all of us, at all times, and in all places. Nature, the material of the universe, is modified by us to create wealth so that this desire might be satisfied. Today, at the dawn of the Third Millennium, our civilisation has scored its greatest success in the material sciences. Its glory is the willing application of these teachings to daily life. In them it has found the way of truth, but in the study of the forces governing us, it has shown little aptitude. So tragic is this failure that we have turned the masterpieces of the material sciences into engines...

A war initiated by the United States to oust Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq under the present circumstances, and without U.N. Security Council authorization, would be tantamount to a “war of aggression,” an international crime for which high-ranking leaders of the Axis countries during World War II were held to account at the International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo. The chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Robert Jackson, described such war as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Thus, the seriousness of the international law violation that such a war would entail would exceed the seriousness of the Iraqi violations that the Bush administration has cited to justify it. Such a war would also symbolize the complete reversal of official U.S. policy toward international law since World...

LONDON – In last month’s speech to the UN General Assembly President George Bush spoke of “broken treaties” and UN resolutions being “unilaterally subverted”. Yet the United States has one of the worst records of all when it comes to bypassing or subverting important UN resolutions. The U.S. has a long history of continuing to use international law when it works in its favour and to discredit it when it is not. For example, the U.S. filed suit against Iran before the International Court of Justice (the World Court) for taking U.S. diplomats as hostages. Yet, only four years later, when Nicaragua took the U.S. to the World Court for mining the harbour of its principal port the U.S. refused to accept the court’s jurisdiction. In 1988 the World Court ordered that an execution of a Paraguayan citizen in the U.S. be suspended. It argued that under the Vienna Convention...

Published in World Editorial & International Law (www.worldeditorial.net), September 15, 2002 Not since the beginnings of modern-day international law at the Hague peace conferences of 1899 and 1907 has the United States been so contemptuous of the world rule of law as it has in the past 20 months of Bush-Cheney rule, since 9/11 especially. As befits an imperial presidency unmatched since Richard Nixon, the White House has treated the law, U.S. as well as international, like a fence made to be climbed. Enthralled by solo superpowerdom, it has substantially turned its back on a half-century’s nurturing of multilateralist diplomacy and institution-building; snubbed hard-won consensus on international environmental threats and trade agreements; subverted a decades-old quest for international criminal accountability; made fledgling democracies hostage to regressive oil politics; ignited the militarization of space at the expense of delicate nuclear safeguards; dismissed the law of armed conflict in favor of “unavoidable...

Rather than war or sanctions, there’s a better way to get rid of Saddam Hussein: strategic nonviolent action. The soft underbelly of any dictatorship is the ability of the population, including soldiers, to withdraw consent. Take away that consent and the regime will collapse. This may seem like wishful thinking but there are plenty of historical examples to show how it can actually happen. In 1989, most Eastern European regimes were toppled with little or no loss of life. There were no foreign military attacks, no guerrilla struggles, no sabotage. Instead, there were rallies in the streets, initially small but before long massive, causing entrenched communist rulers to lose their nerve and resign without a fight. A similar thing happened in the Soviet Union in August 1991. In the face of a coup, citizens rallied around the Russian parliament building, a symbol of resistance. The plotters sent in tanks. But...

One year later, September 11 has certainly lived up to the early claim of being a transformative moment, at least for Americans. One of the least noticed sea changes has been the abrupt shift in the past year from diplomacy to war talk as the foundation of national security. And what is most surprising about this shift is that it bears only the loosest connection with the genuine threat that continues to be directed at the well being of the nation by the deadly al Qaeda challenge. It is extraordinary that the US Government at such a time seems to be recklessly determined to wage a preemptive war against Iraq that is contrary to international law and morality, constitutionally dubious, and strategically imprudent, risking catastrophic side effects. A disturbing element in this gathering war momentum is the deeply disappointing quality of the debate on policy toward Iraq. President Bush most...

Evil should not be tolerated. Acquiescing to mass destruction is wrong. Those who love America must speak out. If we the people of the United States bomb thousands of innocent people then we become guilty of the horrors we are trying to prevent. If we use creative intelligence and diplomatic channels to limit violence, if we hold fast to those Constitutional rights which our ancestors won with imagination and courage, if we act as an inspiring member of the community of nations, then we may have a marvelous future. I do not understand why thousands of innocents should be slaughtered so that one tyrant may be removed. The goodness of one Kurdish grandmother is more precious than a thousand Husseins. Not one of my students should die! Should Charles or David or John die to satisfy George Bush’s or Saddam Hussein’s bellicosity? Both George Bush and Saddam Hussein seem to...

It took the public expression of doubts by Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser to presidents Gerald Ford and George Bush, to initiate finally a national debate on the merits of preemptive war against Iraq. Before Scowcroft spoke out it was nearly impossible to be heard above the drumbeats of war being orchestrated from the White House. Scowcroft was careful to couch his criticism in ultra-pragmatic terms relating to the dangers of undertaking such a war at this time and its likely diversion of energy from what he rightly depicts as America’s number one security priority, the continuing challenge posed by al-Qaida. Persuasively, also, Scowcroft downplays the regional threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and is highly skeptical about Iraq’s purported links to Sept. 11 or to terrorism generally. Scowcroft relies for political closure on an American call for a renewal of inspections, this time on an unrestricted (anytime, anywhere,...