In the name of freedom comes a totalizing war-machine

War, or more technically, 'militarized peace', continues to prevail in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel-Palestine. In Kosovo they are still rebuilding their devastated social infrastructure with limited support and in North Korea new tensions are developing. In short, the application of massive force has not brought about a positive peace anywhere. Nevertheless, the headlines point to the United States preparing for new zones of military engagement. The accompanying war of words has been ratcheted up as the self-designated 'allies' continue the cultural legitimation of further acts of state terror. It is fitting that Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, gets the penultimate word. Attempting to find an explanation for the extension of war to Iraq, Mr Downer likened the situation to the choice the Allies had in the Second World War in response to the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany: appeasement of the bad guys, or deployment of the good war-machine. The problem, as I have been concerned to argue, is that world politics and the consequences of military action are rarely that simple. Even the evidence from the tiny Kosovan village of Racak produces more questions than answers. Racak, the site of a massacre of forty-five people, was presented as a trigger for the NATO intervention. As it turns out, of the massive list of offences listed against Milosevic by the International Criminal Tribunal, Racak provides the only indictable evidence of a massacre in Kosovo prior to that fateful day, 24 March 1999, when far away some NATO generals and politicians decided the only answer to the military activities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was a deluge of bombs. As time goes on, it seems less and less likely that the advocates of total security will deliver positive peace. The answer is much more likely to come from politically engaged people, living in a diversity of places--from Jerusalem, Belgrade and Kabul to New York and Melbourne--working across all levels of the social from the local and regional to the global. By contrast, hoping that the war-machine will bring peace has its parallels half a century ago in those who hoped that, on balance, the Third Reich would bring world stability.