Just Security Archives - Foreign Policy In Focus

Starting Where North Korea Is

by John Feffer | May 3, 2010

Social workers are fond of saying that they must start where their clients are. This basic principle of social work is not theoretical. It comes from decades of practice. Simply telling people what they should do rarely translates into their actually doing “the right thing.” So instead, social workers have turned the tables by beginning not with the desired endpoint, as determined by the social work profession, but with the client’s articulated fears and concerns.

The Case for a Union

by fpifadmin | Mar 22, 2010

Victor Hugo famously quipped: “[I]l existe une chose plus puissante que toutes les armées du monde, c’est une idée dont l’Heure est venue.” Here’s one such powerful idea: a multi-state union that stretches from the Fertile Crescent to the Silk Road, connecting the Indian Ocean to the Caucasus, and the Mediterranean to Central Asia – a grand political-economic-security union (precise name to be determined) that finally brings the peoples of this ‘region’ under the same banner.

The Way to a Just Foreign Policy

by John Feffer | Jun 1, 2008

What had once been the opinion of a vocal minority—that the invasion of Iraq was wrong—has become the position of a no-longer-silent majority. There are now many points of light, many matches in the desert. The U.S. public rejects the centerpiece of the Bush foreign policy, namely its doctrine of attacking any country that poses even a hypothetical threat. Americans support across-the-board change in our relationships with other countries on issues from climate and trade to arms control to cooperation on ending wars in the Middle East and Africa. After years of standing out in the cold, U.S. citizens want to rejoin the family of nations.

Listen To The World A Minute, Please

by Miriam Pemberton | Jul 12, 2007

Back in 2000, Hillary Clinton spent months on a “listening tour” of New York State, convincing voters she wanted to be, not their boss, but their responsive public servant. Letting the world know who’s boss has been the persistent theme of President George W. Bush’s failed foreign policy. To begin to repair the resulting damage, a global listening tour is in order for him.

Just Security: Conclusion

by John Feffer | Jul 9, 2007

Albert Beveridge was a promising politician in his thirties when he stood up to speak in favor of war and the promotion of democracy to his peers in the U.S. Senate. A historian, Beveridge unabashedly called for the United States to remake the globe. “We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world,” Beveridge proclaimed. “And we will move forward to our work, not howling out regrets like slaves whipped to their burdens but with gratitude for a task worthy of our strength and thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as His chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world.”

Just Counter-Terrorism

by John Feffer | Jul 5, 2007

Back in September 2002, Maher Arar was passing through JFK airport in New York. He was expecting a simple transit. A Syrian-born Canadian citizen and wireless technology consultant, Arar was traveling home to Ottawa after a vacation with his family in Tunis. The stopover in New York was the best deal he could get with his frequent flyer miles. He had no inkling of what would happen next. He didn’t know that he would spend the next ten months being tortured in a secret jail.

Just Peace

by fpifadmin | Jul 5, 2007

Asha Hagi Elmi was horrified at what was happening in her country. A member of the Somali parliament and leading women’s rights activist, Elmi watched the Ethiopian invasion in December 2006 push her country from precarious stability over the edge into catastrophe.” There is no food, no shelter, no water, no medicine and people are dying every day, children are dying every day,” she told a British reporter in April 2007.1 In the ensuing war among Somali insurgents, Somali clans, and Ethiopian troops, thousands have died. The fighting has also created a large-scale humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Just Nuclear Disarmament

by John Feffer | Jun 29, 2007

Some said Kim Jong Il was crazy. Others declared that he was canny. When the North Korean leader pushed his country through the door of the nuclear club in October 2006 with the explosion of a nuclear device of unknown size and technical capability, he certainly shook up the international community. Observers feared that the explosion would trigger a new arms race in East Asia. Japan could turn its plutonium stockpile and nuclear know-how into an arsenal in as little as six months. South Korea and Taiwan would follow suit, and China would enlarge its rather small supply of strategic weaponry. The regime established by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the late 1960s, which discouraged but didn’t entirely prevent new entrants to the nuclear club, would be dead—and Kim Jong Il’s fingerprints would be all over the murder weapon.

Just Climate Policy

by John Feffer | Jun 29, 2007

Topon Mondal doesn’t drive a big car. The temperature inside his home often rises above 100 degrees, but he never runs an air conditioner. In fact, living in a hut and laboring by hand, the Bangladeshi farmer doesn’t contribute very much at all to global warming. Still, climate change has already transformed his life. He used to grow rice and vegetables, as his father did, in the village of Munshiganj, about 55 miles from the Bay of Bengal in thesouthwestern corner of the South Asian country. Then the sea levels began to rise and salt leached into the groundwater beneath Topon Mondal’s village. The rice and vegetable harvests—which had helped to feed his family, his village, and his country—began to decline. Mondal switched to shrimp farming. Virtually all the shrimp harvest, however, now goes overseas. “The shrimp are far too valuable for us to eat,” he says.