Lord Castlereagh's return: the significance of Kofi Annan's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change

This article suggests that the Annan High Level Panel that reported in December 2004 has produced the most important strategic document to be published by the UN since 1945, eclipsing the now distinctly dated Millennium Development Goals. It documents how it is unusually cogent and candid for a Blue Ribbon exercise. This article starts by describing both the long wave and the immediate events within which the Panel's work exists. The world is now plainly moving through the biggest change of course since the late eighteenth century, which the Panel also discusses, and which was punctuated in 2002–3 by a specific crisis over Iraq. The aftermath of that crisis was the occasion for the secretary-general of the United Nations to establish a High Level Panel with a wide mandate, to describe the new environment of international peace and security and to recommend changes to refurbish the United Nations in order to face new threats, challenges and change. The article analyses the Panel's strategy to obtain action on its key recommendations. These are to make routine the exercise of the responsibility to protect individuals at risk in failed or collapsed states by 'full spectrum' UN interventions embracing peace-enforcement, -keeping, -making and -building. The mechanisms recommended are described and the judgement made that the shrewd presentation of the brokerage of different interests gives a modest but real chance of success. The Panel also addresses the matter of membership of the Security Council but in a way which will enable the likely deadlock over that question later this year to be contained so as not to impede action on other matters. In sum, the High Level Panel promises to be Kofi Annan's best legacy.     

HUMAN SPACE, TERRITORIALITY, AND CONFLICT: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ISRAEL AND THE WEST BANK

This brief and speculative paper focuses direct attention on Totem, in particular certain totemic concerns with space as place. Through adopting an overall structuralist perspective, Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, is considered as a totemic space. This is developed against the broader backcloth of Jewish societal development and advanced through a brief study of the continuing Jewish settlement of Samaria. It is suggested that no deeper comprehension of the proceeding settlement initiatives is attainable unless the importance of such a perspective is realized. The brief review, short case study, and pointers to proceeding work provide crucial subjects for further attention. The contentious, indeed emotive, nature of the paper is to be emphasized     

HIV/AIDS and security: fact, fiction and evidence—a report to UNAIDS

The link between HIV/AIDS and 'security' is said by many to be well understood, particularly that between the movement and activities of uniformed services and the epidemic. There are strong opinions widely asserted. But recent research undertaken for UNAIDS by LSEAIDS (which brings together leading social scientists at the LSE to confront the social and economic implications of HIV/AIDS), reveals that this is not at all the case. The evidence base is patchy—strikingly so. It has been over-interpreted and even misinterpreted in the rush to respond to a perceived threat by asserting generalizations that do not stand up. In this article the arguments and some of the evidence are reviewed, as are the forces advocating a precipitate response based on poor evidence. The article describes the principles that should underlie an empirically more robust approach.