4th Global Conference
Wednesday 2nd May - Saturday 5th May 2007
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Conference Programme, Abstracts & Papers
Session Ten: Means and Methods: Prohibition,
Interventions and Alternatives
Chair: Julia Boll
Reconstructing war as a Pathology of Underdevelopment and the Imperative
for Western Humanitarian Intervention
Julien
Barbara
Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation,
Faculty of Arts, Deakin University,
Melbourne, Australia
Since the end of the cold War, violent conflict has been increasingly presented by western policy-makers, academics, the media and states as being “new”. Contemporary wars are said to be “new wars” because they have shifted from an inter-state phenomena to a more primal and atavistic form of civil or intra-state conflict. This paper considers how western states have benefited from the reconstruction of contemporary war as something “new” and the implications of this for global order. The paper begins with an assessment of the new war literature, and asks if contemporary wars are in fact new. Having concluded they are not, it asks why the image of “new war” has proven so powerful as an explanation of contemporary conflict in the eyes of western publics. It will then consider how western states might benefit from the construction of war as new. An analysis of Australia’s “new war” construction of the South Pacific as an “Arc of Instability” is used to illustrate how the reconstruction of contemporary war has been used by Western states for the pursuit of quite traditional foreign policy objectives.
The Killers and the Dead: An exploration
of the Validity of and Alternatives to Lethal Warfare
Seth
B. Scott
New Jersey, USA
Is “lethal warfare” a tautology? It is
not. In this paper I propose a re-evaluation of lethal warfare in favor
of approaches using non-lethal weapons and practices. Further I examine
the apparent universal societal acceptance of death as the primary
tool of warfare. This paper explores the relationship between war and
death and ultimately attempts to answer the question: can war be fought
without death?
I begin with the premise that conflict is inevitable
but that death in conflict is unnatural. Of all competitive entities – governments,
corporations, team sports, unions – only governments retain the
right to lethal warfare. Why does humankind make this exception and
what can we do to change this? I propose a gradual paradigm shift away
from deadly conflict. In our time, this can be accomplished by supplying
the military with alternatives while simultaneously educating civilian
populations in human universalism. In this paper I explore both goals
and the importance of their coinciding acceptance.
For the military,
I demonstrate present and future technologies which may eliminate death
from the practice of war. These technologies include psychological
operations (PsyOps), weapons acting on the physiognomy of man, and
denial of access weapons. I will show the benefits of integrating non-lethal
weaponry into existing warfare tactics.
For the civilian, I explore
our definition of the “enemy” and
outline what is necessary to redefine him. Lethal warfare depends on
the labeling and misunderstanding of an “other”. The promulgation
of an understanding and acceptance of universal human interests such
as family, commerce, and independence will make it harder to justify
the killing of that “other”.
Finally, I will propose methods
which might help all factions accept that lethal warfare itself is
our common enemy. When we have accepted peace, war will not be acceptable.
The Weakness of International Prohibitions on Small Arms: The Case
of Growing Self-Sufficiency in Landmine Production by the LTTE in
Sri Lanka
Graeme Goldsworthy
Harvard Medical School,
Vrij Universiteit Medisch Centrum, Amsterdam,
Healthnet-TPO, Netherlands
No abstract is presently available