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Volume 16, Number 3, October 2004
Contributors
Pre-emption and paradox by Laurie Calhoun
The series of events leading up to the US invasion of Iraq on 19 March 2003 is examined from the perspective of theoretical and practical rationality and in the light of The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, the Charter of the United Nations (1945) and elements of just war theory. Strikingly, even without assuming the authority of the Charter of the United Nations and the validity of just war theory, the decision to wage war pre-emptively and outside the bounds of international law proves to be equally unjustifiable on pragmatic grounds alone.
Border terror: policing, forced migration and terrorism by Sharon Pickering
The symbiotic relationship between refugees and the police is increasing around key zones of global exclusion: the US/Mexico border, the European Union and the Southeast Asian/Australasian rim.11
Penny Green and Mike Grewcock, 'The War against Illegal Immigration: State Crime and the Construction of a European Identity', Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 14,1 (2002), pp. 87-101.
Examining these relationships uncovers the contradictory yet stunted deployment of sovereignty-led responses of the Global North to refugees, particularly those responses that cluster around the frontier, marking and patrolling the border. Moreover, the police/refugee relationship and the discourses underpinning it have prepared the way for problematic constructions of, and responses to, terrorism as it is patrolled at the border. Refugees are not just a problem, but a policing problem. Terrorism is not a problem, but a counter-terrorism policing problem. Increasingly the securitisation of borders explicitly and implicitly conflates these two 'policing' problems. This article will examine the discursive resources underpinning border-policing efforts against refugees and terrorism, and the repercussions for the law enforcement apparatus. In the case of Australia, it will argue that the border-policing effort has become a site for the recrafting of federal law enforcement with significant consequences for regional governance as policing becomes unshackled from territory and merged with military functions. In making this argument in relation to Australia within the Southeast Asian region, the article will also draw on evidence from Europe and North America.
The OECD and offshore financial centres: rearguard action against globalisation? by William Vlcek
With publication of Harmful Tax Competition: An Emerging Global Issue the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) initiated a campaign to eliminate income tax competition. The OECD characterised income tax rate competition between states as 'harmful'. The advancement of communication technologies has broadened and deepened opportunities for citizens to utilise this gap within international relations to avoid taxes. Using technological features of globalisation to avoid tax, it is suggested these citizens are engaged in civil disobedience against income redistribution. Thus the action of the OECD is as much an action against globalisation as are street protests against World Trade Organisation (WTO) meetings. The argument here introduces the concept of harmful tax competition and describes the nature of the offshore financial centre. This is followed by a discussion exploring the interplay of taxation, technology, and the myriad small ways citizens avoid paying tax. The conclusion finds that the OECD is attempting to interdict opportunities to avoid taxation that are offered by the globalisation of financial services.
Symposium Christian Reus-Smit's American Power and World Order by Benjamin de Carvalho
Book Reviews