The current brouhaha over a U.S. plan to deploy anti-ballistic missiles (ABM) in Poland has nothing to do with a fear that Iran will attack Europe or the U.S. with nuclear tipped Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM). It has a great deal to do with the Bush Administration’s efforts to neutralize Russia’s and China’s nuclear deterrents and edge both countries out of Central Asia.
The plan calls for deploying 10 ABMs in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic, supposedly to interdict missiles from "rogue states"—read North Korean and Iran.
Commentaries
Annotate This: Commander Guy Bush
On May 2, President George W. Bush addressed the Associated General Contractors of America at the Willard Hotel in Washington. An appropriate venue: in the 19th century, favor-seekers waited in the hotel’s lobby for politicians to drop by after work. Thereafter, they were known as lobbyists.
What’s Next for the Peace Movement?
Foreign Policy In Focus invited a group of peace activists and scholars to respond to Lawrence Wittner’s proposal for a strong, national peace organization. Below you can read 11 responses to his essay How the Peace Movement Can Win.
Focusing the Struggle
The World Social Forum’s primary achievements are gathering the multiplicity of movements fighting neoliberal capitalism and imperialism, and maintaining the open space to keep alive mutual education and networking. But aside from the kinds of adverse power relations critiqued by grassroots activists in Nairobi, the WSF’s main disappointment remains our inability to converge on strategy, generate agreed-on joint actions, and forge cross-sectoral ties.
Making the Forum Truly Global
The existence of the World Social Forum is already a historic achievement. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crisis of the alternative movements and theories that opposed the current system, the fact that there was again a place stating that there is an alternative was an important step.
Toward a More Inclusive Forum
As my first experience as a participant to the WSF Nairobi, my feeling was one of elation and exuberance as we joined the opening march as a delegation of peace women representatives from throughout the world. To be freely shouting slogans for peace and democracy and to demonstrate freely for what we stood for, as we joined thousands of like-minded groups and individuals, was a liberating experience.
Another Forum is Possible
The conversations I’ve had with friends and colleagues about the WSF seem eerily similar to the kinds of things we’d say about some of the large music festivals we’ve attended in our lives. In this age of mega-concerts, we hark back to a golden age when you could still actually see the stage without the aid of a television screen the size of a small country; there weren’t any cash machines or mobile phone top-up kiosks around; and you didn’t need to know some concert promoter’s cousin’s dentist to get a ticket that sells out in three nanoseconds on the net.
Habeas That Corpus
Just a few years ago, the United States could hold its head high for the freedoms enjoyed by those residing within its borders as well as its energy, leadership, and openness and compassion. Today we are fast becoming a closed society, suspicious not only of “outsiders” but of many within our borders who are in some way “not like us.” The lists of our freedoms have turned into lists of our enemies, giving them an unmerited significance that in turn diminishes the country’s international standing. Persuasion has been replaced by coercion, honor sacrificed to a corrupted “duty,” and morality to expediency.
Adios, World Bank!
As the controversy around Iraq War architect Paul Wolfowitz’s uncertain future as president of the World Bank intensifies, the financial institution is not only losing supporters. It’s also losing victims. In Latin America, countries are paying off their World Bank loans early, cutting off ties with the Bank, and creating their own financing instruments to replace the world’s oldest multilateral lending agency.
The Best and Worst of Nairobi
The World Social Forum’s greatest achievement in Nairobi was creating this space where over 70,000 people representing social movements from all over the world could gather and reflect on successes and strategize for the future. One key thing that came out was the formation of the Africa Water Network. It was just an idea at the beginning of the week in Nairobi. But over the week, leadership evolved, ideas evolved, and a network was born. That’s the WSF at its best. Many people from many different countries can come together to create synergy and in this case a concrete network fighting the privatization of this critical resource, water. The network includes not only activists but engineers and people linked to governments as well.