War and Violence

Historically, domestic violence has been dismissed as a personal matter and standardly understood as beyond public concern. What happened within the home was seen as under the authority of the head of the household rather than the state. More recently, activists and scholars have argued that the state should protect the civil liberties of private citizens, even when those civil liberties are violated within the family. As a consequence, domestic violence is increasingly recognized as a legitimate public concern and as (...) a serious wrong meriting public condemnation and intervention. Even so, what is recognized as “domestic violence,” any explanation of why domestic violence is wrong, and the appropriate means of intervention remain contested. Clarifying the nature of and appropriate responses to domestic violence therefore remains an ethically, socially, and politically important challenge. (shrink)

This Flash Forensic Alert records the existence of a restricted assessment concerning the FIFA World Cup as a high-visibility stress field for sovereign image, public order, enforcement capacity, corporate exposure, and reputational legitimacy. The alert applies the Jurisprudence of Contradiction framework to event-level exposure, identifying the World Cup as a live operational trigger in which declared civic and institutional order may be tested against enforcement reality under compressed global visibility. The full diagnostic sequence, event-risk thresholds, jurisdictional exposure assessment, and corrective (...) strategic architecture are not publicly disclosed. Access is reserved for qualified sovereign, institutional, corporate, and strategic-risk inquiry. This is a Sahar Soltani assessment issued through Dawn of Verity Strategic Intelligence Bureau. (shrink)

South Korea occupies a uniquely exposed position in the modern sovereign order. Its global influence rests not only on economic strength, technological advancement, cultural export, and alliance value, but on the credibility of the image it projects to the world. -/- Image power creates a higher test. The more visible a state becomes, the more visible its contradictions become. Public prestige cannot substitute for internal coherence. Cultural sophistication cannot conceal unresolved vulnerability. External admiration cannot, by itself, establish moral authority. -/- (...) This strategic intelligence assessment identifies the point at which reputation ceases to function as soft power and becomes sovereign exposure. The public notice does not disclose the full analytical sequence, internal findings, or strategic conclusions. The extended strategic assessment is not publicly available and may be accessed only by confidential inquiry through Dawn of Verity Press. (shrink)

The war between Imperial Japan and Russia, which erupted at the dawn of the 20th century, had a profound impact on modern society, and the crucial battle that ultimately led to Japan’s victory was the Siege of Port Arthur. Although numerous scholars argue that the Russian Army’s defeat in this siege was primarily due to commanders' mistakes, the fortress's flawed design, and a disparity in morale, few have systematically analyzed food rations and logistics as contributing factors to Japan’s victory. This (...) article explores the significance of food supply in the battle through a comparative analysis of Japanese and Russian logistical systems, an evaluation of other contributing factors, and a detailed examination of the supply crisis inside Port Arthur. (shrink)

Volume 1 of The International Law Fallacy Trilogy -/- This work presents a forensic audit of international legal systems, examining the divergence between formal legal structures and their operational enforcement across multiple domains. It introduces the Soltani Order framework and diagnoses Statutory Inactivity: the condition in which legal frameworks remain formally valid while enforcement is applied selectively based on geopolitical and economic priority rather than universal human need. -/- Using case studies including maritime corridor risk, international tribunal proceedings, domestic regulatory (...) classification, and the 2026 comparative analysis of institutional responses to water deprivation in Mexico and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, the work argues that international law operates through conditional activation rather than uniform enforcement. -/- Full paper access via Dawn of Verity Strategic Intelligence Bureau. (shrink)

This volume delivers the final judgment of The International Law Fallacy trilogy. Volume I carried out the audit of the international legal order on the terms it claimed for itself. Volume II entered and closed the evidentiary record. This final volume does not reopen that record but delivers judgment on what has already been proved. -/- The central finding is that international law does not exist as a materially universal law. Not as a weak law, a corrupted law, or a (...) law unevenly kept. What exists under its name is an instrument: vocabulary, institutional form, ceremony, and force calibrated to power. The volume distinguishes law from the instrument, procedure from protection, coordination from legal authority, and diplomatic management from the material protection of defenseless life. -/- Using the 22 May 2026 failure of the Eleventh Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as a contemporary confirmation rather than the foundation of the argument, the volume names the Kairos of the international disorder: the moment at which one of the coverings that kept the instrument legible as law ceased, in public view, to perform that function. The verdict is final: what exists under the name of international law is not law, but the instrument. The word remains. The substance has not appeared. (shrink)

About halfway through Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the relentless tactical espionage action is interrupted by one of the most remarkable pauses in video game history. For nearly three minutes, the protagonist Snake climbs a ladder—alone—as a haunting a cappella version of the game’s theme song plays. Though seemingly uneventful, this moment is charged with emotional weight, filled with symbolic resonance, and delivered with aesthetic mastery. It stands as a testament to the capacity of games to evoke (...) profound affective experiences in ways unique to the medium. This article gives a personal and political reading of Snake Eater’s famous ladder climb scene which interprets it as one of absurd melancholy, a darkly comic instantiation of solitude which prompts reflection on the game’s core themes of mortality, sacrifice, the human consequence of war, the injustice of forcing people to put their lives on the line to protect the interests of nations. It forms part of a special issue on the theoretical framework outlined by Tracy Fullerton and Matthew Farber’s book The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully (MIT Press), which concerns “the ephemeral and emotional experiences of being in play […] [the] private stories we tell ourselves as we play, the questions we ask, and our reactions to the game’s intent.”. (shrink)

This volume exposes the structural fiction at the center of international law: the claim that a universally binding legal order exists above power. Through sovereign debt exceptionalism, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Gaza, the procedural and humanitarian performance of the United Nations system, selective International Criminal Court enforcement, and the continued persistence of dog-and-cat trafficking and slaughter networks across Asia, including China, Vietnam, and Southeast Asia, the manuscript argues that international law does not operate as true law in the universal (...) sense. It exists as treaties, declarations, institutions, procedures, courts, resolutions, commissions, legal vocabulary, and humanitarian performance, but its force is activated selectively through geopolitical priority, strategic alignment, institutional self-preservation, and the permission of power. -/- The cases examined in this volume are not treated as isolated failures of enforcement or temporary weaknesses within an otherwise functioning legal order. Rather, they reveal a deeper architecture in which legality is performed, documented, and invoked while protection remains conditional. Across successive crises, materially grave harms do not produce materially equivalent restraint. Civilian populations, politically abandoned states, trafficked animals, stolen companion beings, puppies, and non-strategic victims remain exposed where their suffering does not disturb the interests of power. The result is not merely inconsistency within law, but the disclosure of a system that was never constituted as a universal protective order. -/- The volume’s final annex applies this finding to the visible persistence of dog-and-cat trafficking and slaughter networks, where the sanitized language of “meat trade” conceals systems of theft, trafficking, caged transport, restaurant demand, market slaughter, and extreme brutality. Across documented networks in China, Vietnam, and Southeast Asia, puppies, stolen pets, companion dogs, cats, and recognizable domestic breeds can be forced through conditions involving confinement, terror, beating, burning, boiling, and slaughter beneath public visibility. Vietnam is treated as especially severe where stolen and vulnerable sentient beings continue moving through visible commercial pipelines while municipal authorities, enforcement bodies, public-health structures, and international institutions fail to impose materially equivalent restraint. -/- This volume further examines the consequences of that disclosure: the erosion of deterrence, the normalization of selective impunity, the abandonment of beings outside strategic value, and the growing ability of criminal, hegemonic, and state actors to operate beyond meaningful restraint. Ultimately, the manuscript asks whether the continued invocation of international law can be honestly sustained when its visible structure remains intact, yet its protective force repeatedly appears only where power permits it. (shrink)

Although the contemporary Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben is not a religious thinker, there is a remarkable affinity between aspects of his thought and that of St. Augustine of Hippo. This paper attempts to show that, like Agamben, Augustine locates the origin of sovereignty in the sovereign’s decision to place some person(s) outside the protection of law. Moreover, both thinkers are alert to the fact that, given the structure of sovereignty, sovereign authority’s decision to deprive persons of legal protection is (...) not subject to oversight, even when the sovereign acts unjustly. In other words, Augustine and Agamben agree that sovereigns murder with impunity. To prove this thesis, the paper first outlines Agamben’s account of how sovereignty constitutes itself, namely, through the exclusion of “bare life.” Next, it examines several texts from The City of God to show that Augustine holds a similar theory regarding the historical origins and character of political authority. Finally, the paper considers how Augustine’s Regula ad servos Dei anticipates Agamben’s call to found political communities outside the purview of law. (shrink)

Why do some authoritarian regimes preside over catastrophic state collapse while others maintain functional institutions for decades? This paper argues that personalist dictatorship rule concentrated in a single leader who governs through loyalty rather than institutional constraints generates distinct mechanisms of state weakening that other authoritarian subtypes do not share. Drawing on Acemoglu's model of state strength, I identify four interconnected causal mechanisms: administrative politicization (loyalty-based appointments displace professional competence), security fragmentation (coup-proofing reduces coercive capacity), predatory rent-seeking (resources are diverted (...) to clientelistic networks at the expense of public goods), and legitimacy erosion (citizens withdraw support when high extraction meets low provision). These mechanisms form a self-reinforcing cycle that accelerates institutional decay over time. However, following Meng (2020), the argument is conditional: personalist rulers who invest in institutionalization building parties, regularizing succession, and creating durable bureaucratic structures may slow or reverse this decay. To test both the main and conditional hypotheses, I employ a two-phase mixed-methods design. Phase 1 uses large-N statistical analysis of all authoritarian regimes globally from 1946 to 2010, with state failure operationalized using the Political Instability Task Force dataset. Phase 2 uses process tracing on three Sub-Saharan African cases: Zaire under Mobutu (catastrophic failure), Kenya under Moi (no failure), and Rwanda under Kagame (high institutionalization, increased state capacity). Coarsened exact matching reduces selection bias, while rare-events logistic regression (King & Zeng, 2001) addresses the methodological challenges of modeling infrequent failures. Preliminary evidence suggests that personalist regimes exhibit significantly greater decline in bureaucratic professionalism, higher risk of internal conflict, and deteriorating fiscal performance compared to military or single-party regimes. Nevertheless, the Rwanda case indicates that institutionalization can offset these decay mechanisms, offering both theoretical nuance and policy-relevant insight. The paper concludes by addressing endogeneity concerns, discussing external validity for post-2010 cases (Russia, Turkey, Hungary), and outlining implications for understanding strongman politics in an era of democratic backsliding. (shrink)

Abraham Lincoln's chief concern about the attack on the freedom and principles of America was the rise of financial institutions and businesses, an extreme love of the monetary system, and economic materialism. Lincoln came forth to counter the focus on the forces of materialism, which is documented in his words. Of note is the fact that Bismarck came forth from the realm of cosmic evil. -/- The Tibetan DK indicates major Political individuals who came in on the first ray, demonstrating (...) the differing poles of the first ray with the love aspect of the first ray, as with Atatürk and Lincoln, for instance, and the opposite evil aspect as demonstrated by Bismarck, embodying as a great human avatar the realm of cosmic evil. This implies that he is one of the greatest avatars of destruction the human family has produced. Correspondingly, Abraham Lincoln is equally one of the greatest white lodge avatars that humanity has yet produced. -/- This paper follows a distinctly theosophical and Bailey/DK interpretive framework in which historical figures are viewed not merely politically but as embodiments of ray energies and as vehicles for larger planetary forces. (shrink)

This paper proposes the Moral Border — the structural asymmetry between a formation's internal moral code and its treatment of the outgroup — as a conditioning variable in the historical persistence of expansionist ideologies and social formations. The concept is distinguished from dehumanization and in-group favoritism: the Border operates at the level of normative architecture rather than individual psychology, and characteristically coexists with an intensified internal ethical code. A typology of three Border types is developed — ethnic/religious, juridical/administrative, and systemic/ideological (...) — unified by the principle of moral cost externalization. Four failure modes are identified: intra-elite fracture, legitimacy collapse, juridical overextension, and contact erosion. The paper argues that Moral Borders are produced not only by ideological formations but by institutional density — following Arendt, Foucault, and Zimbardo — and that contemporary societies routinely construct Border-generating structures without acknowledging this as what they are doing. An appendix applies the framework to four contemporary cases: USA/Iran, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, and the emerging Moral Border between humans and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

This article problematizes two dominant approaches to the Twelve-Day War, which we delineate under the rubric of localism and campism. Drawing on state theory, these approaches can be considered as ramifications of two conceptions of the state. Localism treats the state as one or a particular state, focusing on the internal dynamics and circumstances of a particular nationstate. Campism, on the other hand, treats the state as an abstract universal, approaching it with a broad brush as a generic political form (...) rather than attending to the concrete determinations of any one state. What is overlooked in these dual conceptions, it is argued, is the parallax gap between the two, which brings to light the actual force fields among states. Dwelling within the transpositional movement, the parallax gap exposes the limitations inherent in focusing exclusively on either perspective, which masks the antagonistic relationships that exist among actual states—namely, the persistent reality of war. This is even more palpable in our contemporary conjuncture in which wars and military conflicts have increasingly turned into a fundamental facet of capital accumulation and its complexities. Failing to recognize this parallax moment has critical consequences for radical politics, which will be explored in this article in the context of the Twelve-Day War. (shrink)

This introduction gives an overview of the dossier, bringing together contributions on Israel's invasion of Iran during the Twelve-Day War from inside Iran as well as from exiled researchers and activists. It advances an internationalist position that seeks to move beyond both imperialist narratives and campist apologetics by taking struggles for liberation as its point of departure. While situating this war within the broader process of transformations of the Middle East that primed October 7, 2023, and subsequent reconfiguration of the (...) region through violence, warfare and the genocide in Gaza, this piece delves deeper into the genealogies of this war. Alongside the two nationalist tendencies of ethno-nationalism and patriotism described here, a third alternative began to emerge in the wake of the war, distinguished by its qualitatively different and emancipatory character. This alternative was articulated by both political organizations and activists inside Iran such as independent labor organizations and political prisoners, as well as diasporic leftist collectives. Constructed around a “dual negation,” this stance expressed a call for genuine democratic transformation grounded in grassroots mobilization and solidarity. It offered a critique not only of the immediate protagonists involved in this war but also of the broader structures underpinning violence and domination in the region, ultimately highlighting an internationalist path forward. (shrink)

Three converging infrastructure layers — national digital identity systems, programmable central bank digital currencies, and agentic AI surveillance — constitute a single conditional existence architecture in which participation in economic and civic life becomes contingent on behavioral compliance with parameters set at the protocol level. As of March 2026, 134 countries representing 98% of global GDP are in active central bank digital currency exploration, pilot, or launch phase. India’s Aadhaar system enrolls 1.4 billion persons; the EU Digital Identity Wallet enters (...) mandatory acceptance in 2026; ISO 20022 structured transaction data became mandatory for global interbank messaging in November 2025. This paper applies the seventeen-axis recursive palimpsest superposition methodology of the Observer framework to both the civilizational and labor-scale instantiations of this architecture simultaneously. It traces the container boundary between the stated purpose of these systems — financial inclusion, fraud prevention, monetary security — and their actual optimization function: the concentration of permission to participate in economic life in nodes outside democratic accountability. The paper documents the enrolled hostage condition at civilizational scale, names the bilateral silence preventing either mainstream political coalition from identifying what is being built, provides explicit falsification conditions, and renders the architecture’s forward trajectory visible before it arrives. (shrink)

This article introduces two interrelated analytical concepts — the motivational actor and the motivational cluster — as tools for explaining the synchronous crises of the mid-2020s. The author proceeds from the premise that the dominant analytical frameworks — geopolitical, economic, and ideological — describe separate fragments of what is happening but are incapable of explaining their simultaneity. The proposed motivational framework makes it possible to examine social systems through four basic motivational coordinates (E, P, C, X) and to analyse how (...) stable collective actors form long-term configurations — clusters — that persist across generations. The article is situated within a broader theoretical project previously outlined in the work on “meaning machines” and proposes the next analytical level: from the production of meaning to the architecture of collective action. (shrink)

This paper revisits the Arab–Israeli conflict as a moral and ethical problem shaped not only by territory or security, but by competing historical memories, asymmetric power, and the selective application of international law. Rather than reducing the conflict to moral binaries or contemporary flashpoints, the analysis situates present-day violence within longer histories of colonial governance, displacement, and trauma, examining how the Holocaust and the Nakba have been mobilized as competing moral reference points that structure political legitimacy and ethical recognition. Drawing (...) on international humanitarian law, political philosophy, and global ethical discourse, the paper argues that historical suffering, while demanding acknowledgment, cannot function as a permanent exemption from accountability. It examines how legal frameworks, security narratives, and media representations have contributed to the normalization of civilian harm—particularly in Gaza—while fragmenting international ethical consensus. By treating memory as a form of power rather than solely as inheritance, the paper contends that moral fracture persists when history is invoked to justify asymmetry rather than constrain it. The analysis concludes that peace cannot be grounded in selective ethics or narrative dominance; without accountability, recognition, and restraint, memory itself becomes a source of continued injustice rather than reconciliation. (shrink)

This paper examines the domestic migration of war practices into United States governance, arguing that techniques developed, normalized, and justified in foreign conflict zones have been systematically redeployed within civilian life. Through analysis of policing, immigration enforcement, protest repression, and domestic military deployment, the paper demonstrates how counterinsurgency logic has reshaped internal governance, transforming civilians into managed threats rather than rights-bearing persons. Militarized policing, civil detention, surveillance-driven enforcement, and the criminalization of dissent are not presented as isolated policy failures, but (...) as structurally continuous with the ethical breakdown examined in foreign theaters of war. -/- Drawing on international human rights law, humanitarian norms, and global ethical frameworks, the paper situates domestic state violence within a broader pattern of governance by domination. It argues that when a state trains for war without ethical constraint, it inevitably governs as though its own population were hostile terrain. The normalization of military equipment, tactics, and threat-based reasoning in civilian contexts erodes proportionality, accountability, and democratic legitimacy, replacing consent-based authority with coercive control. -/- By evaluating domestic practices against international legal standards—including prohibitions on arbitrary detention, collective punishment, excessive force, and persecution—this paper challenges the assumption that human rights violations are confined to foreign battlefields. Instead, it contends that the internalization of war logic represents a profound moral failure with lasting consequences for democracy, civil society, and the ethical integrity of the state itself. (shrink)

This paper examines torture, detention, and occupation as institutional instruments of power within the United States’ military and counterterrorism campaigns in the Middle East, rejecting narratives that frame abuse as aberrational, reactive, or the result of individual misconduct. Drawing on international political ethics, human rights law, critical security studies, and social psychology, the analysis demonstrates how systems of coercion were deliberately designed, legally narrated, and culturally justified in ways that enabled widespread physical, psychological, and moral harm. Torture is treated not (...) as an episodic violation, but as a predictable outcome of institutional structures built around secrecy, exceptionalism, and dehumanization. -/- The paper situates U.S. practices within broader patterns of Islamophobia, racialized threat construction, and moral exceptionalism, tracing continuities from pre-9/11 surveillance and profiling through post-9/11 detention regimes, occupation governance, and contemporary policies such as the Muslim ban. It argues that the persistence of abuse despite its absolute prohibition reveals a profound ethical failure rooted in power preservation rather than security necessity. -/- Written with an explicit moral purpose, the paper is offered as a formal ethical apology, by a U.S.-born citizen, to the individuals and communities harmed by American military, political, and institutional actions across the Middle East. By centering consequence over justification, it calls for a reorientation of political ethics away from domination and toward responsibility for sustained harm. (shrink)

Gaza has become one of the most visible sites of contemporary armed conflict, yet its ethical significance is often obscured by the intensity of political debate surrounding it. This paper treats Gaza not as an exceptional moral spectacle, but as a structural test case for contemporary war ethics. It examines how siege warfare, civilian exposure, and prolonged insecurity persist alongside extensive legal, humanitarian, and moral discourse, raising questions about the capacity of existing ethical frameworks to interrupt foreseeable harm. -/- Drawing (...) on the concept of moral drift developed in earlier work, the paper analyzes how international humanitarian law, proportionality reasoning, securitization, and moral exceptionalism interact to normalize civilian suffering without requiring overt norm violation. Ethical language remains active, but its function shifts from constraint to management. Civilian harm is acknowledged, assessed, and narrated, yet rarely allowed to function as a decisive moral limit. -/- By examining siege conditions, cumulative harm, and the temporal endurance of violence, the paper argues that Gaza illustrates a broader pattern in contemporary warfare: ethical frameworks persist rhetorically while losing their interruptive force. The paper concludes by reaffirming a consequence-centered ethical orientation, in which foreseeable and sustained civilian harm must become morally decisive rather than administratively tolerable. Gaza, in this sense, is not an anomaly, but a lens through which the ethical limits of modern war are made visible. (shrink)

The United States invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was presented as a morally necessary act of self-defense in response to the attacks of September 11. Over the two decades that followed, however, the conflict evolved from a targeted military intervention into a prolonged occupation characterized by shifting objectives, widespread civilian harm, and the institutionalization of coercive practices including indefinite detention and torture. This paper examines how the original moral premises used to justify the invasion were progressively displaced by political inertia, (...) strategic expansion, and administrative normalization. -/- It argues that what began as a limited retaliatory operation transformed into a sustained system of control that far exceeded any defensible ethical mandate. Drawing on war ethics, international law, and conflict scholarship, the paper analyzes the evolution of U.S. objectives, the treatment of Middle Eastern and Afghan civilians, and the legal and rhetorical mechanisms that enabled prolonged violence to persist without meaningful accountability. Particular attention is given to the racialized and dehumanizing assumptions that structured both policy and public discourse, rendering extraordinary harm morally intelligible. -/- The paper concludes that the U.S. invasion and occupation reveal a profound failure of moral justification in contemporary warfare, demonstrating how ethical frameworks can be absorbed into institutional practice in ways that legitimate prolonged harm rather than restrain it. (shrink)

Contemporary political crises are often described as evidence of moral breakdown, ethical extremism, or institutional failure. This paper argues instead that the defining condition of global politics in 2025 is not the absence of ethical frameworks, but their transformation. Political systems continue to employ the language of morality, legality, and restraint, even as violence, coercion, and civilian harm persist in increasingly normalized and administratively managed forms. The paper examines four dominant systems of political thought shaping governance in 2025—realism, liberal institutionalism, (...) securitization, and moral exceptionalism—and analyzes how each contributes to an environment in which ethical language remains active while its restraining force erodes. -/- Rather than competing, these systems operate in conjunction. Realism narrows political imagination to survival and threat management; liberalism emphasizes procedural legitimacy over substantive consequence; securitization expands the domain of exceptional measures; and moral exceptionalism insulates state violence from sustained ethical challenge. Together, they produce what this paper terms moral drift: a condition in which ethical frameworks persist rhetorically while losing their capacity to interrupt foreseeable harm. -/- The paper concludes by proposing a consequence-centered ethical orientation as a necessary reorientation for political ethics in contemporary conflict. By grounding moral evaluation in lived human impact rather than procedural compliance, this approach provides the analytic foundation for the empirical case studies that follow in this research series. (shrink)

In the Anthropocene era, the actions of the A22 network – including Just Stop Oil and Ultima Generazione – emerge as liminal practices where aesthetics, political dissent, and media spectacularity intertwine, challenging conventional categories of art and activism. This study analyzes these interventions through a material-discursive perspective inspired by Karen Barad's agential realism, highlighting how symbolic elements and economic infrastructures co-constitute the political meaning of practices. Drawing on Gregory Sholette, Boris Groys, and Jacques Rancière, the article problematizes the structural tension (...) between transformative function and the risk of spectacular neutralization of activist art, exploring the concept of "bare art" and defunctionalizing aestheticization. Through emblematic case studies, it demonstrates how these actions perform a re-semanticization of places, rendering them palimpsests of the climate crisis. The article further discusses the political ambivalences related to transnational funding, interrogating the ideological and geopolitical implications of protest. What emerges are the contradictions and potentialities of an aesthetic-political activation that, while risking cooptation, opens new imaginaries for radical dissent. (shrink)

This paper examines a contemporary moral configuration in which lethal and life-altering decisions are increasingly executed through administrative and computational interfaces rather than embodied confrontation. I argue that at-desk killing (a practice), moral firewalls (an institutional architecture), and moral deskilling (a loss of moral capacity) form a mutually reinforcing structure that reshapes how harm is enacted, justified, and resisted. Desk killing refers to executing life-altering or lethal acts via bureaucratic or computational interfaces, eliminating bodily involvement and perceptual immediacy. Moral firewalls (...) — procedural, role-diffused, and ostensibly neutral structures — insulate agents from moral engagement while preserving procedural legitimacy. Over time, this architecture produces moral deskilling: the erosion of the capacity to hesitate, resist, or make ethical judgments. Case studies include AI-assisted euthanasia, automated targeting systems, and algorithmic denial of life-sustaining resources. The central ethical concern is not AI rebellion, but human moral atrophy: when machines hesitate and humans no longer do, society risks losing its ability to recognise, contest, and ethically navigate killing. A society that kills by procedure may ultimately lose its ability to perceive killing at all. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the strategic and cognitive foundations of the United States’ 21st-century Global War on Terror (GWOT) were not a novel departure but were developed domestically during the state’s internal counterinsurgency against Black liberation movements in the 1960s and 1970s. It posits that the GWOT’s signature tactics—the preemptive targeting of “military-age males” and the use of computerized mass surveillance—represent the intense externalization of a long-standing American practice of racialized social control, rather than a foreign invention. The analysis begins (...) by identifying the core characteristics of post-9/11 U.S. counterterrorism: a deeply gendered ideology framing intervention as a civilizing mission to protect women, the concomitant categorization of the “military-age male” as a preemptive threat, and a massive investment in computational systems for mass surveillance and predictive modeling. It then traces the genealogy of these strategies back to the nation’s foundational structure as a counter-insurgent state, established through the extermination of Indigenous populations and the brutal governance of enslaved Africans. This internal war, characterized by gendercidal violence and social engineering, reached a climax during the Black Power era. The FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign against the Black Panther Party and allied groups served as the crucial laboratory for modern counterterrorism. Here, the state perfected a dual-track strategy of neutralizing prominent Black male leaders while subjecting the broader Black civilian population to pervasive community surveillance. Ultimately, the chapter aims to force a re-evaluation of the American state, contending that the distinction between foreign battlefield and domestic homeland is a legal fiction. The capabilities demonstrated in the GWOT are a historically embedded structural capacity, refined over centuries of managing Black populations and simply redirected to new theaters. The battlefields of the GWOT were, in essence, prefigured in the founding crucible of American slavery. (shrink)

The chapter is dedicated to the power-sharing political system functioning in Indonesia. This system, thanks to employing specific institutions, allows the members of various segments (including ethnic groups and religious communities) and sub-segments, defined especially on ascriptive, cultural, and ideological foundations, to be part of the decision-making processes at different power levels.

Many countries in Asia are inhabited by multi-segment societies diversified in terms of race, religion, language and economic status. They have repeatedly provided the basis for analysis of the search for consensus in the construction of a political scene that would ensure the participation in power of each group. Regardless of the chosen model, the distribution of power in multi-segment societies has always been characterized by a state of "unstable equilibrium". Practical solutions constantly evolved between consociationalism, centripetalism, federalism. In extreme (...) cases they led to political disintegration of states or to permanent domination of one of the segments, most often based on authoritarian solutions. In this volume, a group of scholars specializing in countries of the region, in addition to characterizing the basic social divisions, try to point out the dynamics of the "unstable equilibrium" of power sharing in particular Asian countries and analyze the trends occurring in them in the 21st century. (shrink)

Many societies are strongly divided, especially in ethnic, religious, racial, and ideological terms. Such divisions are usually related to the existence of divergent interests that may lead to serious conflicts between groups and/or between them and state authorities. In order to limit them, participation in decision-making processes by members of different groups is needed. However, it is extremely difficult to establish and maintain effective power-sharing arrangements. This book examines the cases of Indonesia, Nigeria, Kenya, and Burundi, where hybrid models of (...) power-sharing have emerged, combining specific elements of consociational and centripetal types. It also explains the specificity, life cycle, and performance of different hybrid systems. In 2000, Donald L. Horowitz and Philippe Van Parijs began the discussion on the possibility of merging consociational and centripetal settlements within the same political system. The monograph, a quarter of a century later, demonstrates real-world examples of such hybridity. “It is clearly a formidable work of scholarship, incisive and comprehensive.” - Donald L. Horowitz, “A persuasive thesis backed up by a wealth of careful case studies.” - Philippe Van Parijs. (shrink)

Values are widely recognized as playing a central role in the formation of our identities, perspectives, and affects. If you want to know who I am, how I see the world, and what has emotional significance for me, you will need to know something about my values. However, I argue that the relationship between value and subjectivity—understood as encompassing a person’s identity, perspective, and affective life—is more complex than it initially appears. Even when two individuals share the same values, their (...) engagement with those values can diverge significantly: it can be manifest either in a positive, affirmative manner or in an oppositional, antagonistic manner. With this distinction at hand, I examine a pervasive but undertheorized phenomenon: the emergence of subjectivities that are fundamentally structured around opposition rather than pursuit of positive ideals. Drawing on examples from contemporary politics and social movements, I distinguish between contingently negative orientations, which dissolve once specific threats disappear, and constitutively negative orientations, which perpetuate themselves through a continual search for new opponents. I argue that these negative orientations are not determined by the contents of evaluative judgments, but by the particular form of valuing that individuals or groups exhibit. Certain valuings are grounded in affects such as hatred, fear, and resentment; when these affects become self-sustaining and detached from stable targets, they generate constitutively negative orientations. (shrink)

Moral injury can be understood as occurring when one feels that their moral code has been violated or relationship to their moral community meaningfully damaged. There are therefore three points of access into the experience of moral injury: as victim, bystander, or perpetrator. Because both victim and bystander incur moral injury passively, we generally place little or no blame on them for having done so. In the case of the perpetrator, however, our reactions are more mixed. We might believe that (...) perpetrators, as the active agents of a moral code violation, deserve the psychological and emotional wounds that they incur as a result of their wrongdoing. However, the literature on this subject suggests that we perform this assignment of blame often selectively. The scholarly content on moral injury and how it is overcome focuses in large part upon either historical, biblical, or literary heroes whose worlds look very different from our own, or upon contemporary soldiers who are members of the legally legitimate military of an established liberal democracy. This chapter asks, ‘where are all the bad guys’? Where are the enemy combatants, guerrilla fighters, felons, and convicts? I suggest that they are largely absent from conversations about moral injury (despite almost certainly experiencing moral injury) because our understanding of the phenomenon links recognition of moral injury with exculpation. I use Sophocles’’ Philoctetes in order to draw out this claim, and to situate the conclusion that such objective applications of the label of ‘moral injury’ do more to confuse and mislead than to accurately describe the experiences of the injured. (shrink)

During the 1980s, tens of thousands of ideological dissidents from the Islamic Republic of Iran were exposed to religiously motivated exclusionary practices, mass killings, extermination campaigns, and systematic torture. In this article, I examine the genocidal characteristics of these mass atrocities. To this end, I adopt a genealogical approach and shed light on the social-historical process through which genocidal violence emerged and evolved throughout the 1980s in Iran. Specifically, I focus on four historical episodes that each embody an essential dimension (...) of this process. To develop my analysis, I draw on primary theoretical and archival sources, prison memoirs, and survivors’ narratives published over the last three decades. This analysis is methodologically situated in critical discussions in political theory and builds on insights from critical genocide scholarship. As will be shown, genocidal violence unfolds in a conflictual process through which the Islamic Republic defined and classified its leftist opponents as absolute religious others. These religious others were created based on theological signifiers, doctrines, and justifications. In the first phase, the Islamic rulers defined their religious outcasts as apostates, atheists, and religious hypocrites. The second phase of the genocide represents the law-constituting process through which religious outcasts became religious outlaws who were subjected to genocidal extermination. The third phase is characterized by non-lethal techniques and practices of genocidal torture that were devised to enforce religious repentance and conversion to Islam. The final stage is marked by massacres that were kept secret, denied, and disavowed. As a result of this multi-faceted process, religious others of the Islamic Republic were gradually subjected to practices and arrangements that resulted in their physical and symbolic annihilation within Iranian society. (shrink)

This interview explores the transformative impact of military drone technology on global security, warfare, and ethical responsibility. Robert Junqueira argues that while drones represent disruptive technological advancement with devastating potential—from precision strikes to autonomous swarms—the core challenge remains fundamentally human. He critiques the notion of "autonomous" drones, insisting that these systems are programmed devices embodying human volition, and that responsibility for their actions must remain exclusively with humans. The discussion addresses how AI-enabled drones are reshaping military strategy and international relations (...) while examining the social, political, and philosophical implications of attributing agency to machines rather than their human operators. (shrink)

Animals have been almost entirely absent from scholarly appraisals of the ethics of war. Just-war theory concerns when communities may permissibly resort to war; who may wage war; who they may harm in war; and what kinds of harm they may cause. Each question can be complicated by animals’ inclusion. After introducing just-war theory and the argument for an animal-inclusive just-war theory, this paper reviews ethical appraisals of war on animals’ behalf and wars against animals. It then turns to consider (...) harm to and use of animals in war. It concludes by considering questions in the ethics of war beyond just-war theory as traditionally construed. (shrink)

The paper examines the philosophical foundations of patriotic education of student youth through the prism of historical heroism. It argues that the restoration of historical memory and the interpretation of heroic examples constitute not only pedagogical and cultural tasks, but also a philosophical problem of values, identity, and meaning. Within this framework, heroism of the past is viewed as a symbolic resource that supports the formation of civic maturity, moral orientation, and national consciousness. The study emphasizes that philosophical reflection on (...) history allows for a deeper understanding of the relationship between freedom, responsibility, and collective memory in the educational process. By connecting cultural traditions, historical narratives, and ethical ideals, the research shows how patriotic education contributes to the construction of a democratic worldview and the continuity of national identity. This approach highlights the importance of philosophy of education, philosophy of history, and social philosophy in addressing the challenges of youth formation under conditions of contemporary social transformations. (shrink)

The article explores the impact of Russian imperial aggression on Ukrainian identity, focusing on the mechanisms of cultural appropriation, memory politics, and strategies of resistance. It emphasizes that Russia’s attempts to impose its “Russian World” framework are not limited to the military sphere but extend into the domains of history, education, culture, and information space. By distorting historical narratives, banning the Ukrainian language in the past, and currently enforcing russification on occupied territories, Russia systematically undermines the foundations of Ukraine’s cultural (...) subjectivity. This makes the preservation and promotion of authentic Ukrainian identity a matter of existential importance. The article draws upon the civilizational approach, which allows the current war to be interpreted as a struggle over symbolic and value-laden spaces, rather than merely over resources or territory. In this perspective, the war is understood as a “war for identity,” where the capacity to assert cultural autonomy and to resist imperial narratives becomes as decisive as military strength. Thus, the Ukrainian experience provides a unique case study of resilience, in which historical memory, civic solidarity, and democratic aspirations converge into a powerful source of resistance against imperial domination. (shrink)

The historiography of philosophy in non-European regions and in a global perspective faces very specific methodological challenges. One of these challenges is the question of authorship. This chapter discusses the issue of authorship with regard to ancient Egypt and to philosophy in oral traditions and draws conclusions with regard to the debate on authorship and authenticity of the Ḥatätas of Zär’a Ya‛ǝqob and Wäldä Ḥəywät. Moreover, the paper illustrates the role of the Ḥatätas in the discourse on African philosophy since (...) the publication of an English translation by Claude Sumner in 1976 (Sumner 1976a). The case of the Ḥatätas and the discourses that developed around the manuscripts raise a number of interesting questions and problems. I argue that the debates about the Ḥatätas provide a vivid example of a process of forming a narrative of the history of philosophy in Africa. On a meta-level and in a comparative manner-particularly with regard to origin, transmission, and the various translations of one of the founding texts of European history of philosophy-Diogenes Laërtius’ Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers-this chapter discusses the question of what it means when the authenticity of a foundational text is suddenly called into question. Moreover, it addresses the particular explosiveness of such debates in the context of reconstructing philosophical traditions in formerly colonised and still marginalised regions of the world. (shrink)

The Ḥatäta Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob and the Ḥatäta Wäldä Ḥəywät are enigmatic and controversial works. Respectively an autobiography and a companion treatise by a disciple, they are composed in the Gǝʿǝz language and set in the highlands of Ethiopia during the seventeenth century. Expressed in prose of great power and beauty, they bear witness to pivotal events in Ethiopian history and develop a philosophical system of considerable depth. However, they have also been condemned by some as a forgery, an elaborate mystification (...) successful in deceiving generations of European and Ethiopian scholars. This volume breaks new ground for the study of these texts, presenting a clear account of the most up-to-date scholarship the ways they works are being investigated by contemporary philosophers, philologists, and historians. While the authorship question is addressed in the volume, it is not the sole locus of discussion. The near-exclusive focus on this question over the last century has obscured scholarly interest in the texts’ philosophical and literary qualities in their own right. Accordingly, this volume begins to fill this gap, exploring the texts' implications for the global history of philosophy and transnational intellectual history of the 17th century. (shrink)

This article explores how the necessity condition for permissible self-defense operates over time. It addresses two core questions. First: when, leading up to an attack, does the necessity condition begin to apply? Second: if it applies before an attack, what are the implications of disregarding it? I argue that if aggressors are fully culpable, the condition applies only at the moment of attack. For less culpable aggressors, however, it can require that defenders act earlier to avoid or reduce future harm. (...) However, failing to comply with these earlier demands does not automatically render all subsequent defensive harming impermissible. It only makes justifying it more difficult. Finally, I discuss some implications of my views for other-defense and third-party intervention. (shrink)

Uncorrected proofs. Please cite published version. Abstract: This chapter compares two early modern accounts of war and the possibility of enduring peace between states. The first belongs to Spinoza. The second belongs to Kant. Kant can be credited with providing an influential account grounded in his cosmopolitanism that shaped subsequent policies in international relations and war theory, while Spinoza provides a subtle, though often overlooked, realist account. Specifically, the chapter contrasts Spinoza’s views in his Political Treatise (1677) with Kant’s views (...) in Toward Perpetual Peace (1795). Spinoza argues that although the careful design of social and political institutions can go a long way towards eliminating the appeal of war to states while also promoting conditions that favor peace between states, the power for war is an essential feature of states and that states are by nature enemies. Kant, meanwhile, conceives the cosmopolitan conditions for a perpetual peace between states. Significantly, despite their dissimilarity, both Spinoza and Kant offer theories of war that stand outside of the dominant just war theory tradition. (shrink)

The many proclamations that “the 1930s are back,” coupled with the increasing use of the term “totalitarianism” to describe our present moment, prompt Simona Forti’s investigation: Is the current revival of the term appropriate? Forti aims to provide a philosophical approach to the concept in lieu of what she sees as the unsatisfactory accounts offered by political science and history. The term’s potential, for Forti, lies in its capacity to endow “the most tragic side of the twentieth century with a (...) unitary meaning,” although this meaning “has not been properly expressed.” She argues that totalitarianism provides “an extreme response to the questions that political modernity poses and cannot resolve.”. (shrink)

Hegel criticizes revenge (Rache), which he contrasts with justice: revenge provides only subjective satisfaction and leads to destructive cycles of violence, whereas justice is objective, meted out with due process by a rational modern state to vindicate right (Recht). I defend Hegel’s position against two recent criticisms: Shai Lavi argues that revenge can be used positively to overcome a history of victimization and assert a new national identity, pointing to the use of violence by Jews against Nazis after WWII; and (...) Christian Uwe challenges Hegel’s claims that a state has a monopoly of ‘full rationality’ and objectively metes out justice. I argue that Hegel recognizes that a modern state may fail to live up to its ideals and may be imperfectly just, but this does not undermine his view that revenge is not justice and is destructive. (shrink)

Political rioting is a durable feature of societies across time, space, and political structure. It is also highly morally contentious. Among those who take rioting to be justifiable, the dominant approach has been to appeal to the ethics of war and its interpersonal counterpart, the framework of defensive ethics, in order to determine which harms rioting may permissibly inflict. I raise several novel problems for this approach and argue that in most cases it is unlikely to succeed. I then propose (...) and develop an alternative analysis, according to which the expressive norms to which rioting as a form of protest is subject may license its characteristic harms directly. (shrink)

Both Amílcar Cabral and Ghassan Kanafani can be said to belong to the second generation of anti-colonial leaders in the wave of independence movements that characterized the second half of the twentieth century. In this essay I show that not only was there a significant overlap between their primary concerns, particularly revolving around the need for a theoretical analysis of the limitations of the leadership of the first wave of independence movements, but also, a convergence with respect to their understanding (...) of the importance of social analysis, and, more specifically, class analysis in the struggle for liberation from colonialism. In fact, one of the things that they wanted to point out when they claimed that the leaders of the first wave of independence movements did not develop an adequate ideology was that these leaders failed to understand the social structure of their own societies; in particular, they failed to understand that liberation from colonialism and neo-colonialism was not in the interests of all members of the colonized societies and that appeals to an amorphous entity called “the people” were likely to backfire. In fact, both Cabral and Kanafani pointed out that there were some classes in their respective societies who benefitted from colonialism and who therefore could not be expected to support the struggle against it. (shrink)

what really needs to remain from the text at the end of the day is that which contains all there is to know about how to live the end (The Final Text). The most effective technique of acceleration to the summit of history is to forget all that needs to be forgotten. Perhaps languages must compete and merge for unification. One thing that for sure has to go is that who wrote what and when. Once the author is physically dead, (...) absolutely nothing benefits him posthumously. What matters is Total semiosis and internalization of terms of hegemonic anarchism constrained by zero violence and singular acutely politically concentrated free market. (shrink)

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) lived through an era of great political turmoil, but previous assessments of his political thought have portrayed him as a pessimistic observer with no constructive solutions to offer. By assembling and contextualizing Schopenhauer's dispersed comments on political matters, this book reveals that he developed a distinct conception of politics. In opposition to rising ideological movements such as nationalism or socialism, Schopenhauer denied that politics can ever bring about universal emancipation or fraternal unity. Instead, he viewed politics as (...) a tool for mitigating rather than resolving the conflicts of a fundamentally imperfect world. Jakob Norberg's fascinating book reconstructs Schopenhauer's political ideas and shows how they relate to the dominant debates and trends during the period in which he lived. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

How do we determine whether a migration is voluntary when persons organize their own displacement under the shadow of ethnic violence? I examine this question through a case study of a 1989 Soviet village exchange between Azerbaijanis from Gizil-Shafag (in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic – SSR) and Armenians from Karkanj (in the Azerbaijani SSR), where residents negotiated their mutual relocation while operating under threats to their safety. Through analyzing competing accounts of voluntary migration, I demonstrate why the agential account (...) fails to capture the fundamental difference between fleeing ethnic violence and migrating for career advancement. This inability makes the agential account susceptible to misuse by nationalists attempting to justify ethnic cleansing. However, the political account – which focuses on whether migration is motivated by one’s belief that one lacks objectively acceptable alternatives – not only better reflects the lived experiences of ethnic minorities facing displacement but also provides clearer guidance for migration policies. (shrink)

In this column for New Age, I discuss the following a) the rhetoric of sacrifice from 1971, once inspiring, now distracts from pressing national issues; b) Emotional responses and symbolic gestures, like redrawing maps, harm diplomatic credibility and regional alliances; c) Leadership's overuse of sacrifice rhetoric undermines governance and deflects attention from issues like unemployment, corruption, and climate change; d) Ideological rhetoric burdens the younger generation, sidelining critical engagement and practical solutions; e) Bangladesh must prioritize reforms in job creation, institutional (...) accountability, and climate adaptation over populist distractions. I claim that true patriotism lies not in clinging to hollow rhetoric but in building a system that values lives, ensures opportunities, and addresses the challenges of our time. It’s time to pivot from populism to pragmatism. (shrink)

La historia se ha contado muchas veces. Georgy Arbatov venía a ser el hombre puente entre las dos orillas que dividían el mundo durante la Guerra Fría. Fundador del Instituto de Estudios de los Estados Unidos de América y el Canadá en la Academia Soviética de Ciencias, había sabido ganarse el aprecio del público norteamericano con su presencia asidua en los medios de comunicación. Partidario de una política de distensión con el competidor americano, fue uno de los asesores más influyentes (...) de Gorbachov en su travesía hacia la recomposición del universo ruso. Por aquel entonces el escenario trazado al término de la Segunda Guerra Mundial había experimentado una transformación formidable: de la lucha bilateral por la hegemonía de posibles consecuencias catastróficas se iba abriendo paso una geopolítica basada en la interdependencia multipolar y el reconocimiento mutuo. Arbatov era la cara visible de esta nueva posición de la Unión Soviética ante millones de espectadores estadounidenses. Por eso, en 1987, en una de sus frecuentes entrevistas televisivas, sus palabras debieron sonar algo inquietantes: «Os vamos a hacer una cosa terrible», advirtió a su interlocutor. En plena escalada armamentística, ¿de qué podría tratarse aquello tan terrible? «We will deprive you of your enemy», dijo: os vamos a privar del enemigo. Y así fue, en efecto. (shrink)

En Occidente nos aferrábamos, casi ideológicamente, a unas expectativas de paz perdurable suscitadas en 1995. En aquel entorno, tras la unificación de Alemania y superada la Guerra Fría, celebrábamos los doscientos años de la publicación del opúsculo La Paz perpetua de Immanuel Kant (1795-1995). Treinta años después el mundo ha cambiado, hemos entrado en una nueva época con dos guerras importantes vivas, sin fin a la vista, una en Europa (Ucrania) y otra en Oriente próximo (Israel), con crecientes tensiones y (...) el riesgo de arrastrar al mundo a un conflicto de mayor amplitud. Además, crecen numerosas crisis: en el Mar Rojo, por el hostigamiento de los hutíes del Yemen; la alta tensión entre las dos Coreas; en el Indo Pacífico la continua presión de China a Taiwán y su asertiva presencia en el Mar de la China Meridional. Hay brasas encendidas en otros conflictos como Nagorno? Karabaj; los territorios Kurdos de Turquía; los conflictos civiles en Siria, Yemen, Sudán del Sur, República Centroafricana y Birmania. Hemos entrado en una era de conflictos. Este giro del curso histórico plantea diversos interrogantes decisivos para su estudio científico: ¿Qué ha ocurrido? ¿Cómo se ha llegado a esto? ¿Estamos ante el declive de la democracia? ¿Hay nuevamente una confrontación hegemónica? ¿Se ha roto la globalización e iniciamos un periodo de desglobalización? ¿Nos encontramos en un punto de inflexión en la historia reciente (Zeitenwende)? ¿Afloran síntomas de una decadencia de occidente? ¿Entramos de nuevo en un pasaje hacia una "civilización brutalizada"? Estas y otras preguntas se tratan aquí de la mano de grandes especialistas y académicos como Aquilino Cayuela, Jerónimo Molina, Enrique Bonete, Carlos Pérez del Valle, Miguel Ángel Belmonte, Domingo González y Juan Carlos Valderrama. Nos ofrecen con este libro un riguroso trabajo científico y reflexivo, centrado en el esclarecimiento, la evaluación y la crítica de los marcos morales y políticos del presente. (shrink)