The Scourge of Modern Militarism

Worldview ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 37-41
Author(s):  
Michael T. Klare
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Gross National Product ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
World War ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Economic Progress ◽  
The World ◽  
Made In

AbstractMilitarism. The word has a faintly anachronistic ring. It conjures up images of Prussia in Bismarck's day, or perhaps Hitler's Third Reich. It suggests a static, rigid society in which a traditional officer caste dominates an authoritarian and hierarchical state system. But while this image is still valid for many societies today, it fails to convey the particular virulence and dynamism of modern militarism—a scourge that threatens to obliterate all the gains made in the areas of human rights, democratic government, and economic progress throughout the world since the end of World War II. If not checked soon, this scourge will almost certainly trigger a global conflagration that could destroy the human species.Consider: World military spending in 1977 reached the record level of $400 billion—more than the combined gross national product of the world's hundred poorest nations. Most of these funds, of course, were expended by the two superpowers, which now have sufficient nuclear weapons to destroy each other several times over.

A war hero or a Hitler soldier?

2019 ◽  
pp. 50-57
Author(s):  
Pavel Gotovetsky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
National Committee ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Third Reich

The article is devoted to the biography of General Pavlo Shandruk, an Ukrainian officer who served as a Polish contract officer in the interwar period and at the beginning of the World War II, and in 1945 became the organizer and commander of the Ukrainian National Army fighting alongside the Third Reich in the last months of the war. The author focuses on the symbolic event of 1961, which was the decoration of General Shandruk with the highest Polish (émigré) military decoration – the Virtuti Militari order, for his heroic military service in 1939. By describing the controversy and emotions among Poles and Ukrainians, which accompanied the award of the former Hitler's soldier, the author tries to answer the question of how the General Shandruk’s activities should be assessed in the perspective of the uneasy Twentieth-Century Polish-Ukrainian relations. Keywords: Pavlo Shandruk, Władysław Anders, Virtuti Militari, Ukrainian National Army, Ukrainian National Committee, contract officer.

18. Human Rights

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
World War ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Human

This chapter examines the concept of human rights, which derives primarily from the Charter of the United Nations adopted in 1945 immediately after World War II. It first provides a brief account of the history of the concept of human rights before describing the international human rights regime. It then considers two persistent problems that arise in applying the concept of human rights to the developing world: the relations between the claim that the concept is universally valid and the realities of cultural diversity around the world; and the relations between human rights and development. In particular, it explores cultural imperialism and cultural relativism, the human rights implications of the rise of political Islam and the so-called war on terror(ism), and globalization. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the new political economy of human rights.

scholarly journals The repositories of the Prussian State Library collection in Lower Silesia during the World War II

1970 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 271-283
Author(s):  
Jarosław Robert Kudelski
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
World War ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
State Library ◽  
Lower Silesia

German cultural institutions had been conducting preparations to secure their collections in the event of a war since mid-1930s. The Prussian State Library, the holdings of which included the most precious German manuscripts and prints, was one of those institutions. Air attacks carried out on the capital of the Third Reich triggered the decision to evacuate the collection to Thüringen, Brandenburg, Pomerania and Lower Silesia. Largest deposits had been located in the latter. The unique heritage items stored there included medieval manuscripts, prayer books, music autographs and newspaper yearbooks as well as letters and private documents of many prominent representatives of German culture and art. Those items were evacuated, among other places, to Fürstenstein (Książ) Gießmannsdorf (Gościszów), Gröditzburg (Grodziec), Grüssau (Krzeszów), Fischbach (Karpniki) and Hirschberg (Jelenia Góra). The evacuation was conducted in cooperation with the heritage conservator for Lower Silesia, professor Günther Grundmann. With his assistance, in the course of a few years, a unique collection was created in Lower Silesia. Towards the end of the war the collection was deprived of proper care, as the authorities lacked resources to secure it. This resulted in the destruction of some items during military actions. The remaining parts of the collection had been taken over by Polish officials and were transferred to library collections in Krakow, Warszawa, Olsztyn, Toruń, Lublin and Łódź.

scholarly journals Establishment of the Nazi regime in Germany and the position of American politics and diplomacy

2020 ◽  
pp. 60-69
Author(s):  
Taras Tkachuk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
New World ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
The World

The article examines the problem of relations between the two leading states of the world in the interwar period: Germany, which withdrew from the First World War as a defeated country and after the establishment of the Nazi regime started preparing revenge, and the United States, proclaimed «isolationism» and, therefore, distanced themselves from European international political problems. The scientific novelty: the author points up primarily political «isolationism», while in the economic sphere the United States has played a leading role in the reconstruction and development of the afterwar Germany. Today, due to the difficult geopolitical situation in the world, caused by the aggressive actions of the Russian Federation, which are quite similar to the former Nazi regime, there is a chance to look at the events of the 1930s in the international arena in a somewhat new way. Regarding this, the author sets out an aim of the article to carry out a comprehensive analyze and give his own assessment of the position of American politicians on the establishment of the Nazi regime in Germany. The methodological basis of the study. In the study the author used a descriptive method to identify the essence and features of American-German relations in the 1920s and early 1930s, a comparative-historical method in analyzing the positions of President Roosevelt’s enciclement on German Chancellor A. Hitler’s policy in 1933, the principles of objectivity and systematization using only verified facts and their comprehensive assessment. This made it possible for the first time to draw attention to the position of the American leadership on the establishment of the Nazi regime and its role in international diplomacy on the eve of World War II in order to the current geopolitical situation connected with Russia’s aggressive actions. The Conclusions. Finally, the author asserts that President Roosevelt’s encirclement perceived the threat of a new world war from the German Nazis, but did not change the United States’ overall foreign policy toward Europe. The reason was that Franklin Delano Roosevelt chose a wrong strategy to avert new world conflict in the relationship with Berlin. At the same time, the author underlines the differences in the attitudes of American «isolationists» towards Germany and Japan, as well as the differences between Washington’s position on the political and non-political aspects of relations with Hitler’s regime. Therefore, the author points out that not all the American politicians perceived the Nazi «Third Reich» totally negatively. As a result, the United States chose the wrong strategy to deter Nazi Germany, which did not testify its effectiveness. That’s why, the article asserts that the current United States and the Western European countries need to anticipate their past mistakes in building of the strategy of relations with Russian Federation.

scholarly journals Honoured in the Breach: Human Rights as Principles of a Past Age

2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Teeple
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
World Order ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Leverage ◽  
National Practice ◽  
Mode Of Production

Rights define the prevailing relations that constitute a community. They are in turn defined by the character of a given mode of production, and as that changes so too the system of rights. The rights that comprise ‘human rights’ evolved in the transition from feudalism to capitalism and represent the principles of the emerging world order in the 18th and 19th centuries. Only in the aftermath of World War II with the exhaustion or defeat of the European states and Japan was it possible to declare these same principles as belonging to the whole world equally and as intrinsic to all humans - yet within national frameworks. The accumulation of capital on a global scale, however, soon began to undermine the national practice of these human rights. By the end of the 1980s the construction of regional or global ‘enabling frameworks,’ quasi-states for capital, detached from any formal or legitimate means of countervailing political leverage, made human rights appear increasingly like anachronisms. An increasingly violent usurpation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other forms of rights around the world followed. In the absence of a legitimizing set of principles for this new global economy, a growing need for a rationale to govern by fiat becomes the central problem of the day.

scholarly journals Urakami Memory and the Two Popes: The Disrupting of an Abstracted Nuclear Discourse

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 950
Author(s):  
Gwyn McClelland
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
The Other ◽  
Initial Visit ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

Since 1945, official Catholic discourse around nuclear weapons has condemned their existence on the one hand and supported them as deterrents on the other. This paper argues the largely abstracted discourse on nuclear weapons within the World Church has been disrupted by voices of Urakami in Nagasaki since at least 1981, as the Vatican has re-considered both memory and Catholic treatments of the bombing of this city since the end of World War II. On 9 August 1945, a plutonium A-bomb, nicknamed ‘Fat Man’, was detonated by the United States over the northern suburb of Nagasaki known as Urakami. Approximately 8500 Catholics were killed by the deployment of the bomb in this place that was once known as the Rome of the East. Many years on, two popes visited Nagasaki, the first in 1981 and the second in 2019. Throughout the period from John Paul II’s initial visit to Pope Francis’s visit in 2019, the Catholic Church’s official stance on nuclear weapons evolved significantly. Pope John Paul II’s contribution to the involvement in peace discourses of Catholics who had suffered the bombing attack in Nagasaki has been noted by scholars previously, but we should not assume influence in 1981 was unidirectional. Drawing upon interviews conducted in the Catholic community in Nagasaki between 2014 and 2019, and by reference to the two papal visits, this article re-evaluates the ongoing potentialities and concomitant weaknesses of religious discourse. Such discourses continue to exert an influence on international relations in the enduring atomic age.

scholarly journals The Role of Media and Social Movement in Human Rights Issue: The Case of ‘Comfort Women’ by Japan Colonization

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna C. Suwardi ◽  
Atina Rosydiana
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Comfort Women ◽  
World War ◽  
Movement Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Rights Issue

Many countries in Asia were conquered by Japan during the World War II, including Korea and Indonesia. Romusha, or slavery system introduced by Japan, also imposed to women. Girls were sent to brothels as Jugun Ianfu/‘comfort women’. Differ from men, women got double burdens, both physically and mentally, thus trauma was inevitable. The belief of taboo is also spreading, hence the movement of victims which demands to get their dignity back is rarely found. Using setting agenda theory and social movement theory, this paper argues that the best potential to promote human rights and justice of ‘comfort women’ goes to media. In South Korea, social movement has been advocating people about ‘comfort women’ as forced victims, not a voluntarily choice. Through engaging media, they hope to use its power to persuade people, changing the paradigm that ’comfort women’ were not sexual workers, but victims of war who needs assistance from society to heal their trauma.Keywords: ‘comfort women’, Japan colonization, media, sexual harassment, social movement

scholarly journals NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION AND ROGUE STATES: CONCERNS, REALITIES AND FUTURE THREATS

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr. Rani Erum
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Proliferation ◽  
World War ◽  
Material Technology ◽  
Government Programs ◽  
Rogue States ◽  
Private Organizations ◽  
Energy Projects ◽  
The World

Proliferation of Nuclear technology is accepted as a grave threat to the world. However, after the initial use of this lethal weapon at the end of World War II, the technology and techniques were transferred from secret government programs and by private organizations in various fields. Such transformation has been amplified by the privatization of civil nuclear energy projects, as well as other established industries in such way that at the time of need they can use the technology in making of nuclear weapons. Thus, this advancement of nuclear weapons program, material, technology and expertise are not only accessible for purchase from nongovernmental institutions but it has also increased the threat of its misuse by non-state actors. This study examines not only reasons of military nuclearization adopted by powers that be and their regional rivals but also provide comprehensive analysis of relating threats of acquiring this devastating technology by Rogue states and non-states actors and possible future perils faced by the world due to misuse.

scholarly journals WATER FOR ALL? DEVELOPING A HUMAN RIGHT TO WATER IN NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 771-789 ◽  
Author(s):  
The Rt Hon Lady Justice Arden
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
International Law ◽  
Universal Declaration ◽  
European Convention ◽  
World War ◽  
Human Right ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

Human rights are one of the great ideas of the twentieth century. After World War II, first Eleanor Roosevelt in relation to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (‘the Universal Declaration’), and then later the drafters of the European Convention on Human Rights (‘the European Convention’) saw human rights as the way to make the world fairer and safer.

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