Independence in an Age of Empire: Assessing Unilaterism and Multilaterism

CIAO DATE: 5/04

Graham F. Walker

February 2004

Abstract

Scarcely could there be anybody alive today who is unaware of the fact that we now live in a new, and deeply troubling, era of international politics. The popular Atlantic Monthly article of 1990 by John Mearsheimer amenting "Why We Shall Soon Miss The Cold War" could not have been more farsighted. To wax metaphoric, the all too brief period of 'morning calm' represented by the short post-Cold War era, that period between the dawn's cresting that was the felling of the Berlin Wall and the cacophony of morning rush-hour gridlock which was the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York, has given way to the stinging sunburn of America's global war against terror and the WMD proliferators comprising the 'axis of evil.' While a handful of prognostic experts had warned that such a catastrophe as 9/11 was imminent, they had expected such an assault to come from a "rogue" weapon of mass destruction, unleashed from a state's armoury and by a state-sponsored perpetrator. Neither premise turned out to be the case, as the unbelievable was brought forth in full view of the international public, via globalisation's premiere instrument of television, by only a handful of nihilist zealots armed with nothing more complicated than box cutters. It was a successful attack on modernity eerily reminiscent of the prophecies from the book of Daniel regarding Armageddon, where the battles between good and evil would be waged not with highly advanced super-weapons, but with the primitive arms of sticks and knives.

Table of Contents

Section One: The Issue — Independence in an Age of Empire

Introduction (PDF format, 15 pages, 321.7 KB)
by Graham F. Walker

Canada in the Age of Terror — Multilateralism Meets A Moment of Truth (PDF format, 6 pages, 196.0 KB)
by Michael Ignatieff