accepting furet’s claim that events acquire meaning and significance only in the context of narratives, this article argues that a particular type of international relations narrative has emerged with greater distinction after the traumatic experience of september 11: the gothic narrative. in a sense the political rhetoric of president bush marks the latest example of america’s fine tradition in the gothic genre that began with edgar allan poe and nathaniel hawthorne and extends through henry james to stephen king. his discourse of national security, it will be shown, assumes many of the predicates of gothic narratives. the gothic scenes evoked by bush as much as poe involve monsters and ghosts in tenebrous atmospheres that generate fear and anxiety, where terror is a pervasive tormentor of the senses. poe’s narratives, for example, turn on encounters with dark, perverse, seemingly indomitable, forces often entombed in haunted houses. similarly, bush’s post-september 11 narratives play upon fears of terrorists and rogue states who are equally dark, perverse and indomitable forces. in both cases, ineffable and potently violent and cruel forces haunt and terrorise the civilised, human world.

un arms embargoes have been increasingly applied to civil wars, yet these embargoes have tended to be either irrelevant or malevolent in their effects. arms embargoes are rarely enforced in a civil war; they undermine the credibility of the un; they are unlikely to change the political positions of civil war participants; they criminalise target societies; and they benefit arms suppliers willing to break the rules. this article argues for the reform of partial arms embargoes, which target select groups in a civil war. it also argues for the restriction in use of impartial embargoes, which apply to all sides in a civil war. enforcing impartial embargoes can actually make the situation worse, by shaping the course of the civil war in unpredictable and immoral ways.

although the proximate cause of africa’s aids crisis is hiv, the underlining societal causes are much broader and familiar. across the continent, poverty structures not only the contours of the pandemic but also the outcome once an individual is infected with hiv. thus, until poverty is reduced there will be little progress with either reducing transmission of the virus or creating an enhanced capacity to cope with its socioeconomic consequences. it follows that sustained human development is an essential precondition for any effective response to the pandemic in africa.

‘a useful conceptual distinction in understanding the motivation for civil war is that between greed and grievance’. thus wrote paul collier in 1999. drawing on statistical data of civil wars since the mid-sixties, his conclusion at the time was stark and unequivocal: ‘grievance-based explanations of civil war’ were ‘seriously wrong’. in seemingly uncompromising terms, he argued instead that the key to understanding why such wars erupt lay in greed and the quest for loot by rebel actors. it most certainly was not to be found in self-serving ‘narratives of grievance’ or in any claim on the part of insurgents to be fighting for justice. the likelihood of greed-driven wars breaking out was particularly high, collier suggested further, in countries that relied heavily on primary commodity exports, had a surfeit of young, unemployed and poorly educated men, and were experiencing a period of rapid economic decline. this, in short, was the ‘greed thesis’ of contemporary civil wars.

in an excellent and thoughtful piece in the april 2005 issue of review of international studies, david dunn draws our attention to seven myths about american isolationism. his points are well made and generally unexceptionable. however, since david dunn takes an article i wrote in 1999 as the starting point for several of his criticisms, i thought i would take the opportunity to offer a response. i have three main points to make.

china’s situation lends itself to hyperbole. the people’s republic of china (prc) has the largest population in the world, the fastest growing economy in the world, the largest army in the world, the largest middle class in the world, a permanent seat on the united nations security council, a manned space programme, a nuclear arsenal, and so on. but analysts, commentators and policymakers have yet to decide just how to understand china.

the rapid economic and military development of china over the decades since the death of mao zedong in 1976 are already changing asia and the world. but what are the longer-term implications of this rise? even in china itself there seems to be disagreement. thus current president hu jintao and his brains trust have advanced the term ‘peaceful rise’ [heping jueqi] in an apparent effort to reassure neighbours who are increasingly troubled not only by china’s increasing economic clout, but by her military strength as well. hence, china’s rising is taken for granted – and has been for a long time. the classic introduction to the modern period, by immanuel hsu and now in its sixth edition, has been titled, for thirty five years, the rise of modern china.

when gerry segal asked ‘does china matter?’ in 1999, his answer was an unequivocal ‘no’:

the country that is home to a fifth of humankind is overrated as a market, a power, and a source of ideas. at best, china is a second-rank middle power that has mastered the art of diplomatic theater: it has us willingly suspending our disbelief in its strength. in fact, china is better understood as a theoretical power – a country that has promised to deliver for much of the last 150 years but has consistently disappointed. after 50 years of mao’s revolution and 20 years of reform, it is time to leave the theater and see china for what it is. only when we finally understand how little china matters will we be able to craft a sensible policy toward it.

the rise of china became a popular subject in china comparatively recently, gaining prominence only in the last decade. for those in china who were used to understanding modern chinese history as a history of victimisation at the hands of imperialism, recognising such a return to the world stage was an uneasy shift. in the context of international concerns that china’s rise poses a threat to world peace or a contribution to the clash of civilisations, chinese narrators initially refused to portray a ‘rising china’ because this could easily lead to china becoming the target of a us-organised containment policy in the post-cold war era. shortly before the chinese communist party (ccp) outlined new policy directions at its fifteenth congress in 1997, leaders in beijing began to think about a way of describing china’s rise as unthreatening. yet this was a reluctant change because beijing was willing to acknowledge china’s rise only indirectly. what came out of the congress was the recognition of the necessity that beijing should frame its foreign policy to emphasise its relations with the other great powers more than those with the third world. accordingly, they decided that beijing should develop a distinctive strategy specifically to deal with the other great powers.

first, ‘peaceful rise’ was the theme of a keynote speech to a regional policy forum created by the chinese government, aptly named the bo’ao forum for asia, then it was an emphatic point made by china’s premier wen jiabao in a speech at harvard university, and still later it was a key feature in china’s president hu jintao’s talk at a gathering to mark the 110th anniversary of mao zedong’s birth. the phrase ‘peaceful rise’ (heping jueqi) has caught the imagination both inside china and abroad partly because all three events took place within a short two-month period beginning at the end of 2003. the chinese leadership seems to have a well-coordinated campaign to officially present the notion to the country and the world.