David Martin Jones

David Martin Jones

DAVID MARTIN JONES is a political scientist, writer and commentator. Dr Jones is an Honorary Reader in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland, and Visiting Professor and Teaching Fellow in War Studies at King’s College, University of London. He received his PhD from the London School of Economics, and has taught at the Open University, National University of Singapore, and the University of Tasmania. His works include Political Development in Pacific Asia (1997); The Image of China in Western Social and Political Thought (2001); with N. Khoo and M. L. R. Smith The Rise of China and Asia Pacific Security (Edward Elgar 2013); with M. L. R. Smith Sacred Violence. Political Religion in a Secular Age (Macmillan 2014); and The Political Impossibility of Modern Counter-Insurgency (Columbia 2015). His most recent publication, History’s Fools: The Pursuit of Idealism and the Revenge of Politics (C Hurst & Co. Publishers Ltd. 2020), examines the progressive ideas behind liberal Western practice since the end of the 20th century.

THE RUSSIA–UKRAINE War,
woke capitalism, and the net zero delusion

If truth is the first casualty of war, then the collapse of political illusions must be the second. War and its outcomes are never certain. Hence, from Thucydides to Clausewitz, connoisseurs of the phenomenon have counselled against recourse to it unless informed by clear and achievable goals. Violence clarifies. In

EUROPEAN UNION
OR THE NEW TOWER OF BABEL

‘Reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions

THE NEW TECHTOPIA OR THOMAS MORE MEETS BIG DATA

It was the European Renaissance that formed much of what became the West’s vocabulary concerning individual freedom, humanism, political order and the idea of scientific inquiry freed from religious supervision or customary oversight. It gave rise, amongst other things, to speculation about the possibility of perfection. Neo-platonists, like Pico della

INTERNATIONAL LEGAL NORMS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS

The Problem of Ambiguity in the Language of Politics The first decades of the twenty-first century witnessed a notable rise in war and political violence. After the End of History we entered, at the millennium, a new Age of Anger.1 The United States was at war a startling two out

BREXIT AND THE ART OF THE POLITICALLY POSSIBLE

Britain, like Hungary, needs a foreign policy geared to its long-term interests in a rapidly changing world no longer en route to a liberal democratic end of history. This has become an urgent task in the wake of the 23 June vote to leave the European Union. Unlike the seemingly