Democracy, Sovereignty and Terror: Lakshman Kadirgamar on the Foundations of International Order

Description

'For those of us who have to live with terrorism, when we leave home in the morning there is no guarantee that we will come back.' Thus Lakshman Kadirgamar, Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister, foreshadowed his own assassination in 2005. He was an astute and brave thinker and practitioner on many key issues in international politics. Long before 9/11 he warned Western democracies that they were too passive about the activities on their soil of foreign terrorist movements and their front organizations. He was a strong advocate of democracy and human rights, conducting the first-ever Amnesty investigation into the problems of a particular country - Vietnam. He was uniquely effective in countering the propaganda campaigns of the separatist Tamil Tigers in his native Sri Lanka - the movement which ultimately took his life. This definitive work explores the continuing relevance of his ideas for the modern world. Democracy, Sovereignty and Terror presents Kadirgamar's distinctive voice in his major speeches. It also offers a convincing picture, by those who knew him, of a scholar-statesman who was both a realist and an idealist. He showed that these approaches can be combined in both thought and action.

Adam Roberts is President of the British Academy, a post he has held since July 2009, having been elected to the Fellowship of the Academy in 1990. He is a renowned expert in international relations, with research expertise in international security, international organizations and international law, including the laws of war. He is Senior Research Fellow, Department of Politics and International Relations, Oxford University, and an Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. From 1986 to 2007 he was Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford University, and before that he held appointments at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and St Antony's College, Oxford. He has held visiting appointments at New York University, Tokyo University, the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington DC. He was knighted (KCMG ) in 2002 and has been a member of the UK Defence Academy Advisory Board since 2003. His publications include: Nations in Arms: The Theory and Practice of Territorial Defence; Hugo Grotius and International Relations; Documents on the Laws of War; The United Nations Security Council and War: The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 and Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present.