Past issues

Newsletter in pdf-format
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Notable Books
by Janet Bloomfield

Selected Articles :

September 11:
A Rule-of-Law Response
by John Burroughs
War: Metaphor into Reality
by Peter Weiss
Crime(s) of Terror: Developing Law and Legal Institutions
by Saul Mendlovitz
Reactions to September 11, 2001
UN Resolution re: September 11

Disarmament:
Disarmament Also Needs Coalitions
by Jim Wurst
Congress and the Fate of the ABM Treaty
by John Burroughs and Robert Boehm
Small Arms Conference
by Jim Wurst

Notable Books:
Losing Control - Global Security in the Twenty-First Century
by Janet Bloomfield
Lethal Arrogance: Human Fallibility and Dangerous Technologies
by Jackie Cabasso

Hiroshima Reflections:
Hearing the Hibakusha in Light of September 11
by Anabel Dwyer

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Losing Control - Global Security in the Twenty-First Century

by Paul Rogers, Prof. of Peace Studies, Bradford University
Pluto Press, London and Sterling, VA, 2000
ISBN 0-7453-1679-4 (pb., 176 pp, $22.50)

In the aftermath of the terrible events of September 11th this book is absolutely essential reading for anyone concerned with developing a coherent view of where the world is heading and what can be done to create the new security paradigm we so desperately need. As Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University in the UK Paul Rogers has spent years studying and analysing military strategies and global security since the end of World War Two.

He identifies three key underlying trends that are driving the decisions of politicians, diplomats, non-state actors and the military around the world. These are:

• The growing economic disparity between countries and within them

• The increasing pressures of environmental change, particularly global  warming

• The spread of weapons of all kinds around the world following the end of the Cold War

The approach of the elites is to try to keep the "lid" on with the threat and use of military force to maintain the "violent peace" but Rogers persuasively argues that this approach will not work. It is tragic that his analysis has been proved correct at the cost of thousands of lives in the USA and potentially many more in rest of the world in times to come. Without the creation of a new security paradigm based on the reversal of the current trends in the global economy, disarmament and sustainable development the world faces a turbulent and violent future. We know now that even the elites are unable to escape this fate.

Packed with fascinating facts and written with great clarity, no activist, analyst or decision- maker should be without this book.

- Janet Bloomfield, Oxford Research Group

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