Suchergebnisse

Going through a protracted period of transition since the end of the Cold War, the world order in the making is neither what was nor what it is yet to become. It is in "the middle of the future."To get our bearings in this uncertain transition, we explore the two grand post‐Cold War narratives—"The End of History" as posited by Francis Fukuyama and "The Clash of Civilizations" posited by the late Samuel Huntington. Mikhail Gorbachev looks back at his policies that brought the old order to collapse. The British philosopher John Gray critiques the supposed "universality" of liberalism and, with Homi Bhabha, sees a world of hybrid identities and localized cultures. The Singaporean theorist Kishore Mahbubani peels away the "veneer" of Western dominance. Amartya Sen, the economist and Nobel laureate, assesses whether democratic India or autocratic China is better at building "human capacity" in their societies.

On April 2, 2005, a month-and-a half after arriving in Iraq, I was in combat for the first time. We were pounded with mortars, rockets, grenades, vehicle-borne explosives, and smallarms fire for nearly two hours. After the fighting stopped, I interrogated a few of the Iraqis who were picked up by Marines during the attack. After I wrote my reports for the night, I went to the chow hall, ate breakfast, and walked back to my bunk. I lay down and slept like a baby. I slept well every night I was in Iraq. I easily shrugged off every issue that complicated my life: problems with girls, disagreements with superiors, arguments with friends. I would grow angry about the situation in Iraq from time to time, but my anger never affected my work, and I never lost any sleep over it. But when I returned to the United States, things were different.

An Iraq war veteran discusses his frustration in returning to civilian life in terms of US popular alienation from the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan attributed in large part to the military-civilian cultural divide. Adapted from the source document.