STWR - Share The World's Resources

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.

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.