There was a couple of good articles on the front page of the opinion section of yesterday's Boston Globe.
One, with the same title as this post, was about a book which questions the whole notion of "closure" as it exists, very imprecisely, in popular thought. I won't try to summarize it, but I think it's worth thinking about.
The other one is about the influence, even power, which "non-state actors" of various types have in the post Cold War world. Al Qaeda is just the most obvious example, but there are other types as well, such as Wikileaks, transnational corporations, and social networking sites. They can have impacts on countries that governments must be concerned about, but governments are finding the tools they can use with other governments (such as war, threats of war, foreign aid, etc.) are useless when the other party is not another country. The article points out the problem, but doesn't seem to point to any real solution(s).
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3 comments:
Joe just wanted to make a hint I'm reading your stuff, will try something serious tommorrow.
Is it really a problem, though? Clearly, terrorist organizations are harmful and should be stamped out, but the rise of social networking and NGOs in the early part of the 21st Century can be viewed as a positive thing in that it has allowed citizens to mobilize against unfair governments and hold even democratic regimes up to much-needed scrutiny (think how many videos of U.S. police brutality have been uploaded to YouTube, for instance).
Thanks for the comments.
@ BrightenedBoy — Of course, it's not all bad. Some of what the "non-state actors" can be very beneficial, as you point out. It's just that governments have to figure out how to take them into account, and to deal with them effectively when they do cause trouble.
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