Prologue

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

pp. 1-10

in: Alexander Astrov, On world politics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005

Abstract

Responding to the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 in New York, British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, diagnosed the situation: "This is a moment to seize. The kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us."¹ Despite all the talk about the new war of the new millennium, which on the level of technology and military strategy this war soon turned out to be, the metaphor itself was familiar. Almost a century earlier, while preparing for the Peace Conference to be held in Paris so as to seize yet another opportunity provided by yet another disaster, General Smuts described the outcome of the Great War in similar terms: "The very foundations have been shakened and loosened, and things are again fluid. The tents have been struck, and the great caravan of humanity is once more on the march."²