The year 2008 has reached perilous new levels of conflict, tension and military spending defined not merely by nuclear proliferation, ideological warfare and pre-emptive invasions of sovereign countries, but by an intensifying competition over scarce resources that poses a stark choice for the international community - to share resources and cooperate, or to continue on the path of further wars.
The events in South Ossetia show the need to create a
sub-regional system of security and cooperation that would make any
provocation, and the very possibility of crises such as this one,
impossible, writes Mikhail Gorbachev.
As a member of NATO, a young and nationalistic state like Georgia
could have drawn the entire alliance into a direct military
confrontation with Russia, says Zoltán Dujisin.
The "war on terror" and the "long war" are
losing their potency as shorthand guides to the global conflict. But
the United States remains trapped by a military logic that guarantees
an endless and unwinnable campaign, says Paul Rogers.
Although the term military-industrial complex
is well-known, a discussion of its origins, implications, and Eisenhower's warning against its "unwarranted influence"
has largely been ignored, says Chalmers Johnson.
The United States can lead the world in combating the greatest threats
facing the planet, writes David Korten - and the only way to do it is
through renouncing war as an instrument of national policy.
The principle of nonintervention is not an ideal, but rather
commonsense, writes Robert Scheer, although cutting the U.S. military
budget faces great obstacles from powerful vested interests.
Five years on from Iraq's "endless war", plans for a permanent US presence in the Middle East have been defied - along with Washington's vision for the new American century.