A new world order is in place where according to Kaldor, perpetual violence has become the norm. How come these so-called new wars, or “forever wars” as Kaldor refers to them, are not tied to contest over national territory? Furthermore, does NATO still adhere to Cold War patterns of thinking and is there a willingness in the organization to change the focus towards matters relating to human security? Is Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine not a throwback to the old wars fought for control over territory against neighboring states? And where can we locate the sights and actors of successful resistance, and should these be civilian rather than military? Can the military even be part of the solution, or is the inherent logic of the military industrial complex part of the problem in the first place? Given the current geopolitical tensions can democratic status quo be preserved by relying on a self-limiting and limited capacity for defensive deterrence mixed with policing functions?
Guests featured in this episode:
Mary Kaldor, Professor Emeritus of Global Governance and Director of the Conflict Research Programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has had a long and illustrious academic career but has also been an activist since the 1980s. She was a founder of the European Nuclear Disarmament Movement, was co-chair of Helsinki Citizens Assembly and Peoples Europe, and was a member of the Goldstone Commission investigating the Kosovo crisis.
She has co-edited several influential volumes, on Dealignment and The New Détente, both with Richard Falk; on Restructuring the Global Military Sector; on Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe; and most recently, on EU Global Strategy and Human Security (2018). She is author of the agenda-setting book Global Civil Society: An Answer to War, Human Security: Reflections on Globalization and Intervention, and highly acclaimed New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era.
