This book interrogates the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza and asks whether meaningful distinctions can be made between just and unjust wars.
The author analyses the global roots of both wars, including unresolved clashes of contending imperialisms, rooted in different variants of capitalism. Luckham also examines how the wars have impacted on the global south and how the latter has responded and asks whether active nonalignment could be a way to contain and resolve such conflicts. He also argues that the two wars mark another stage in the evisceration of the post-Cold War peace dividend and its replacement by a warmakers dividend, in which security trumps all else.
The author also examines how the burdens of war fall upon those least able to bear them, as well as making the obvious yet neglected point that both conflicts, like all wars, have their beneficiaries. Finally the author considers the contradictory relationships between peace and power: how can nations and peoples trapped in war situations, as in Ukraine and Gaza, navigate towards just and sustainable peace, when the odds are heavily stacked against them?
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