Power and morality: a misleading dichotomy

This article critically addresses E H Carr's dichotomy of power and morality by demonstrating that all analytical languages used to articulate world affairs systematically refer to both power and morality, albeit in a different manner. The distinction between the two concepts is an analytical one, rather than a dichotomy of the kind that Carr constructs. Although Carr's dichotomy has recently resurfaced as a distinction between ‘communitarianism’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’, such an interpretation of his work remains problematic. This is demonstrated through a case study of President Jimmy Carter—whose policies manifest both realist and liberal approaches and combine power-centred concerns with moralistic ones. Therefore, in practical world affairs, there is no power-morality dichotomy; there are only different accounts of what both power and morality entail.     

Psychopathology and world politics

The relationship between psychopathology and world politics can be considered firstly from the world politics perspective. This means examining the dysfunctional forms of human behaviour manifest there—both individual and collective/communal. It means examining how such behaviour can be described and explained in psychiatric or psychological/psychoanalytical terms. The relationship between psychopathology and world politics can also be considered from the psychopathology perspective. This means examining some of the key psychopathological concepts that are of relevance to world affairs. It means examining paranoia or narcissism, for example, and the way understanding syndromes like these helps further our understanding of world affairs.     

Human Security as Global Security: Reconceptualising Strategic Studies

The article argues that global security should be seen as synonymous with human security, and that strategic studies should be located within that broader rubric. Mounting such an argument means meeting the charge of those who see the broader construction of strategic studies as vague and meaningless, and as detracting from the ability to make good policy. The article attempts, therefore, to map human security in as inclusive and systematic a way as possible. It attempts to show that the concept is neither vague nor meaningless, and is suitable, therefore, to be the basis for a comprehensive account of global security.     

Taoism and the concept of global security

Global security is typically discussed in the rationalist termsused to articulate contemporary modernism. To restrict analysisto such articulations, however, is to accept the limits anddistortions that this way of being and knowing creates. Thisarticle seeks to transgress these limits, and to compensatefor these distortions. It does so by discussing the conceptof global security from a Taoist perspective. Initially, itmaps what global security means to rationalists. Then it discusseswhat Taoism entails, and compares Taoist and rationalist epistemologies.Then it compares Taoist and rationalist thinking about globalsecurity, defined first in more general, ‘human’security terms, and second in more particular, politico-strategicterms. It concludes by highlighting the significance of theTaoist concept of wu-wei (‘no unnatural action’),and of Taoism as one way in which to contextualise the rationalistconstruction of global security.