Professor of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, where she is the Director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit. Together with E. P. Thompson and others, she was a founding member of European Nuclear Disarmament group (END) in 1980, and the founder and co-chair of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly in 1990.
Warring parties that benefit from violence and extortion – targeting civilians, looting, smuggling and abducting, pushing identity politics – are averse to resolution. How can diplomatic peace negotiations move beyond discussions about territory and improve the lives of war victims? And how can objective threats be identified in times of escalating conflict?
Dialogue between western European peace movements and human rights groups in the East made a crucial contribution to overcoming the division of the continent and laid the foundations for a global language of transnational civil society and humanitarianism. The argument that ’89 was all about ‘catching up’ with the West overlooks this history.
Only a mixture of bottom-up and top-down measures can avoid a nationalist cycle of disintegration now, argues Mary Kaldor. This means opening up the public sphere, especially at local and transnational levels, at the same time as creating a framework for a civilizing globalization.
Talibanregimen föll. Och visst kan det vara en fungerande strategi att ösa in pengar i repressiva stater och döda redan kända terrorister – i några år. Men om USA fortsätter att agera som en nationalstat är framtiden sannerligen dyster. En genuin global politik är nu inte bara önskvärd i sig, utan helt avgörande för fred, skriver Mary Kaldor.
