The long night of relative peace of the Cold War masked for many of us the extent to which the old paradigms of 'might is right' and imperious dominance were alive and well, both personally and politically. If you are still dozing, there has been a wake-up call—the pursuit of 'full spectrum dominance' by the US administration under President Bush, aided and abetted by right-leaning governments in the UK, Spain and Italy, which seems to have mislaid the lessons of history on an epic scale.

Recent events in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, New York, Madrid, and Palestine underline what was already clear from the thermonuclear standoff and the impending ecological catastrophe of global warming; That the belief in, and practice of domination is a ecological, social, political and personal cul de sac.