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2431. A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change

Author:
Paul Wapner
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Climate change is the most intractable environmental issue, and Stephen Gardiner has written extensively about it, especially from an ethical perspective. He recognizes that climate change is not merely a technical, economic, or political challenge but fundamentally a moral one. It comes about because people—especially the rich and powerful—are unwilling or unable to care about those on the receiving end of climate hardship. This insensitivity generates complacency, or at least confusion, about how to build institutions and shape widespread behavior in the service of climate protection. A Perfect Moral Storm is Gardiner's most extensive and detailed statement to date on this theme.
Topic:
International Relations, Climate Change, and Environment

2432. Recovering International Relations: The Promise of Sustainable Critique

Author:
Richard Shapcott
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
One of the virtues of International Relations (IR) as a discipline is that it periodically engages in bouts of reflection upon its methods and directions. Daniel Levine's book is a contribution to this self-reflective practice. Like P. T. Jackson's recent work, The Conduct of Enquiry, Levine's Recovering International Relations seeks to acknowledge the diversity and strengths of various approaches to the study of IR and to simultaneously build something constructive out of this pluralism— in other words, to be both critical of the status quo and yet not reject it altogether. Levine's goal is to “recover” IR's original vocation, or calling, and to reinvigorate it via the idea of “sustainable critique”—a project inspired by the work of Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School.
Topic:
International Relations

2433. On Complicity and Compromise

Author:
Hugo Slim
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Chiara Lepora, an Italian doctor with Médecins Sans Frontières, and Robert Goodin, an American philosopher based at the Australian National University in Canberra, have joined forces to produce an elegant and exceptional book. With humanitarian ethics as its starting point, On Complicity and Compromise elaborates a sophisticated and practical approach to complicity that will be profoundly useful to a much wider audience than humanitarians alone. The rigor and simplicity of this book will be of real value to anyone grappling with difficult ethical choices in politics, business, diplomacy, policing, or social services.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
America, Australia, and Italy

2434. Editorial - 90 volumes of International Affairs

Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
When International Affairs first appeared in 1922, recording contributions to the equally new British (later Royal) Institute of International Affairs, the journal set itself the modest goal of becoming 'a source of information and a guide to judgment in international affairs'. It was originally intended only for members of the BIIA, but quickly expanded its readership and impact by beginning to sell copies to non-members as well. In 1931 it took the name International Affairs.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Britain

2435. Learning from the past: the relevance of international history

Author:
David Stevenson
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
In what follows I will begin in Houghton Street and from there will broaden outwards in successive circles, from London in the 1920s to Europe in 1914, to the Caribbean Sea in 1962, and to where we find ourselves today. The reasons for so doing will, I trust, become clear. But my focus will be on the origin and applications of the discipline of international history, through an investigation of the Stevenson Chair around which the LSE International History Department grew up; the LSE becoming in turn one of the nuclei from which the subject would spread further, both elsewhere in Britain and overseas. I will underline the practical purposes of the discipline's creators, while highlighting a tension between two intellectual traditions that were present from the outset. I will emphasize the need to synthesize those traditions if the study of international history is to yield the maximum insight and value.
Political Geography:
Europe

2436. 'Time of Troubles': Arnold J Toynbee's twentieth century

Author:
Ian Hall
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) was synonymous with the Royal Institute of International Affairs for the first half of its history. He held the post of Director of Studies from 1925 to 1954, and thereafter retained an office in Chatham House until his death. Throughout that half-century he combined the roles of scholar and public intellectual, using International Affairs—along with many other outlets—to communicate the fruits and findings of his research to policy-makers and the wider community. During his 50 years at Chatham House Toynbee contributed 19 essays to the journal—which must surely be the most of any individual author—and produced his two monumental multi-volume works, the Survey of international affairs, which he penned, edited or commissioned from 1925 until 1958, and A study of history, which appeared in twelve volumes between 1934 and 1961. He also published a further 50 books and hundreds of scholarly articles during his lifetime, as well as many interviews and lesser pieces. If one includes reviews of books by others, Toynbee's complete works amount to almost 3,000 items.
Topic:
History
Political Geography:
Britain and Middle East

2437. Cosmos, chaos: finance, power and conflict

Author:
Harold James
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
A spectre is haunting the world: 1914. The approaching centenary of the outbreak of the First World War is a reminder of how the instability produced by changes in the relative balance of power in an integrated or globalized world may produce cataclysmic events. Jean-Claude Juncker, the veteran Prime Minister of Luxem-bourg and chair of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, started 2013 by warning journalists that they should take note of the parallels with 1913, the last year of European peace. He was referring explicitly to new national animosities fanned by the European economic crisis, with a growing polarization between North and South. Historically, the aftermath and the consequences of such cataclysms have been extreme. George Kennan strikingly termed the 1914–18 conflict 'the great seminal catastrophe of this century'. Without it, fascism, communism, the Great Depression and the Second World War are all almost impossible to imagine.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Communism, Economics, Politics, and War
Political Geography:
Europe

2438. 1914 and 2014: should we be worried?

Author:
Margaret MacMillan
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
A century ago this autumn the first battle of the Marne ended Germany's attempt to crush France and its ally Britain quickly. In that one battle alone the French lost 80,000 dead and the Germans approximately the same. By comparison, 47,000 Americans died in the whole of the Vietnam War and 4,800 coalition troops in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In August and September 1914 Europe, the most powerful and prosperous part of the world, had begun the process of destroying itself. A minor crisis in its troubled backyard of the Balkans had escalated with terrifying speed to create an all-out war between the powers. 1 'Again and ever I thank God for the Atlantic Ocean,' wrote Walter Page, the American ambassador in London; and in Washington his president, Woodrow Wilson, agreed.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Britain, Iraq, America, Europe, Washington, France, London, Vietnam, Germany, Balkans, and Atlantic Ocean

2439. Capitalism and the emergent world order

Author:
Barry Buzan and George Lawson
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
There is general agreement that the world is changing, but considerable disagreement about how it is changing. Commentators variously locate this change in a 'power shift' from West to East, a trade in superpower status between the United States and China, or a transition from an era of bipolarity to one of unipolarity, multipolarity or even non-polarity. These analyses are linked by attention to a smorgasbord of dynamics that are said to be disrupting the smooth functioning of international order: globalization, US militarism, dynamics of revolution and counter-revolution, finance capital, climate change, the rise of non-state actors, new security threats, the dislocating effects of information and communication technologies (ICTs), and more.
Topic:
Communications and Military Strategy
Political Geography:
United States and China

2440. A century on the edge: from Cold War to hot world, 1945-2045

Author:
Paul Rogers
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Contributions to anniversaries may take a broad view, sometimes even a centuries-long perspective. Most commonly, such perspectives are framed within traditional boundaries—nineteenth, twentieth or twenty-first century, for example—but this article argues that one period not normally viewed in this way, from 1945 to 2045, may have a particular significance, giving a perspective that is of value in analysing current trends in international security.