Globalism

As ISIS loses territory, it returns to mass-casualty attacks against civilians. That's why military-first approaches to terrorism are doomed to failure.

Aimé Césaire (1913 – 2008), the Martinique poet and political figure, whose birth anniversary we note on June 26, was a cultural bridge builder between the West Indies, Europe and Africa.

If we were to stop trying to make America great again and start trying to make the world a better place for everyone, we could be part of the movement for “another world.” Changing the whole world would in fact transform the United States, but only if we stop longing to go back to a golden era, which was not so golden for most of the world.

Last week a research wing of the International Monetary Fund came out with a report admitting that neoliberalism has been a failure. The report, entitled, “Neoliberalism: Oversold?” is hopefully a sign of the ideology's death. However, it leaves out a few notable items on neoliberalism’s history and impact.

Memorial Day weekend was replete with parades, American flags, and tributes to our war dead, but little reflection on war, particularly the tragic fact that the United States has fallen into the death trap that President Eisenhower warned us about: the military-industrial complex.

When we ask "Who rules the world?" we commonly adopt the standard convention that the actors in world affairs are states, primarily the great powers, and we consider their decisions and the relations among them. That is not wrong. But we would do well to keep in mind that this level of abstraction can also be highly misleading.