Disaster capitalism

Amidst the vicissitudes of Middle Eastern geopolitics, the United States' peace plan for Gaza emerges as a contested paradigm, oscillating between pragmatism and principle. For the benefit of empirical understanding, It becomes imperative to exercise theories, because theories are lenses through which a phenomenon can be understood. This analysis embarks on a critical examination of the plan, situating it within the theoretical crucible of liberal international relations and conflict resolution. Through a rigorous exegesis of the US Gaza plan to which encompasses demilitarization, immediate ceasefire, transitional government, economic development and Palestinian pathway to statehood amongst others and the strengths, weaknesses, and implications, this study reveals the intricate dialectics of power politics, Propaganda, national interest, and identity that underpin the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and lucidly showcase that the realism meted on Gaza is a conflict of " power hegemony" fought by proxy as Israel enjoys US military deterrence to help her maintain regional hegemony of the Middle East. By delineating on the plan's assumptions, approaches, and potential outcomes, this research elucidates the complex interplay between diplomacy, conflict, and the pursuit of peace. As the plan navigates the treacherous landscape of regional politics, this analysis provides a nuanced understanding of the US peace plan for Gaza, it strength and weakness are succinctly analyzed.

This paper applies Naomi Klein's shock doctrine framework to the 2026 US-Israeli war on Iran, examining the political economy of disaster capitalism in real time. Drawing on Klein (2007), Harvey (2005), Monbiot and Hutchison (2024), Beck (2006), and MacKinnon and Derickson (2012), alongside primary documentation from the SIGIR Iraq reconstruction record, the analysis identifies five concurrent sites of economic extraction activated by the conflict: US energy producers benefiting from Strait of Hormuz closure; Tier 1 defence contractors on emergency production surge contracts; war-risk insurers and shipping financiers; post-conflict reconstruction consortia positioned through early-entry IDIQ contracting mechanisms; and actors proximate to executive decision-making whose trading patterns have attracted congressional and regulatory scrutiny. The paper further argues that the shock may be accelerating a sixth, and structurally more significant, redistribution: the gradual displacement of the petrodollar architecture that has underpinned US fiscal and monetary primacy since 1974, with China as the principal structural beneficiary. Counterarguments from Harrison (2011), Phelps et al. (2011), and Stiglitz (2007) are engaged directly. The paper concludes that the evidence demonstrates a consistent systemic pattern independent of conspiratorial intent-and that the enforcement mechanisms ordinarily capable of establishing accountability have been simultaneously and systematically reduced.

This paper explores the intersection of disaster, colonialism, and capitalism in Darjeeling, using the 1934 Bihar-Nepal earthquake as a critical lens to understand historical processes of urbanization and vulnerability. Drawing on the framework proposed by Aguilar, Pante, and Tugado (2016), it argues that disasters are not isolated ruptures but deeply embedded in long-term socio-environmental transformations. The essay traces the colonial development of Darjeeling as a hill station, its strategic significance, and the disastrous impact of British resource extraction and urban planning on indigenous Lepcha populations. Through the case of the 1934 earthquake, this paper reveals how disasters become opportunities for state intervention, political maneuvering, and the propagation of capitalist logics, often exacerbating existing class, caste, and gender inequalities. The study critiques the hegemonic and linear narratives of development, highlighting the persistent environmental and social consequences of commodifying nature in vulnerable regions.

This article analyzes the governing, security, and economic aspects of the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict proposed by the US administration, endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2803 (17 November 2025), and further fleshed out in the speeches made by Trump and Kushner at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026. The governing aspect is an international transitional administration made up of a Board of Peace overseeing the Gaza Executive Board which will, in turn, control the Palestinian National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. The security aspect is an International Stabilization Force, a new Palestinian police force, and the Civil-Military Coordination Center. The economic aspect is a blueprint for international investment in skyscrapers, beachfront hotels, special economic zones, and securitized residential compounds. I draw on the example of Iraq after 2003 but outline the even bigger risks that Palestinians in Gaza face: a colonial administration that could sign Gaza up to the Abraham Accords; a property grab facilitated through the projection of Gaza as “terra nullius”; investment by companies connected to Israel and the UAE supported by the United States’ IMEC plan; and permanent Israeli occupation and military violence. I conclude by arguing that only Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, have the right to decide what happens to their land, resources, and future. This requires Palestinian sovereignty and self-determination. Currently, in the absence of self-determination, I argue that there are two spaces where pressure should be applied: state leaders who have joined the Board of Peace and the Palestinian experts on the National Committee.
https://www.securityincontext.org/posts/colonial-administration-counterinsurgency-pacification-and-disaster-capitalism-in-trumps-plan-for-gaza

Critical race theory (CRT), "Stop Woke" Act House Bill (HB7), and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) S 266 impede the progress of inclusiveness in the United States (U.S.), Higher Education (HE). This article comprehensively analyzes and draws on policies and practices, such as HB 7, which prohibits any training that fosters CRT, and Senate Bill (S 266), which limits DEI initiatives that educational practitioners utilize. It examines the barriers in the paradigms of shared governance to maintain a structure of shared governance that conceptualizes the interests of marginalized students. Higher education institutions recognize the aim of equity in fulfilling their mission to meet the students where they are. The article analyzes drawing on data from empirical study findings, Court Cases related to HB 7 and S 266, this article provides a framework of community practice (CoP) that engages all educational stakeholders through social justice and equity-minded approaches that would help to improve HE shared governance. This article underpins social justice and equityminded frameworks through the implications of strategies to enforce the concepts of race consciousness in higher education, such as critical race theory (CRT) and DEI, despite policy and practice barriers.

Introduction. – Capitalism and territoriality. For a critical reflection on these two words and their connections it is important to become aware of the relationship between capitalism, as an operative and historicized expression of capital, and geography as fabrica mundi, as creation of worlds. This also implies to take on the responsibility for developing a critical reflection that is still missing on the ways in which capitalism engages with territorial processes and tries to take advantage of territoriality, making it a device to construct its particular geography of the world. David Harvey’s work gives us a relevant opportunity to initiate this problematization of the link between capitalism and territoriality. In particular, I would like to start my reflection by referring to a volume written by a geographer, Neil Smith, who studied under the supervision of Harvey. The book is «Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space», which contains an interesting pref...

In the aftermath of the forced evacuation of the island of Barbuda due to Hurricane Irma, the Barbudan people have experienced an exile and return to a ‘new’ geographical, political, and economic context, albeit on the same island. With the specter of climate change and the potential impacts on island communities and nations, we use Barbuda, sister island of Antigua in the Lesser Antilles, to examine the trajectory of nomadic identities as they navigate changes that threaten contemporary land relationships and culture. Since its first permanent settlement in the 17th Century, the island geography of Barbuda has been fundamental to Barbudan identity and provided continuity into modern Barbudan culture. The breaking down of this close relationship with the land and the introduction of a tourism monoculture reduces Barbuda’s ability to respond to crises such as hurricanes and pandemics. In the challenge of a post-disaster economic context, we will address the conditions pushing Barbuda...

This chapter examines whether the international aid context (IAC) challenges fundamental democratic principles, addressing a critical gap in corruption studies. Through three analytical perspectives, it argues that despite promoting democratic values like equality and human rights, the IAC operates as a "mild autocracy" characterized by uncontrolled executive power without corresponding legislative or judicial oversight mechanisms.
The analysis reveals that citizen indolence toward international expenditure stems from presumed virtue of altruistic activities, creating an "unquestionability" that shields the system from democratic accountability. Drawing on Burke's definition of corruption and expanding beyond individual misconduct to institutional behaviors, the chapter introduces the concept of "painography"—the systematic documentation of human suffering for fundraising purposes—which perpetuates power imbalances while claiming humanitarian objectives.
Key findings demonstrate how the proliferation of approximately 10 million NGOs worldwide operates within a regulatory vacuum, enabling "disaster capitalism" where organizational survival often supersedes beneficiary needs. The fragmented subcontracting structure dilutes accountability to the point of creating systemic impunity. The chapter concludes that the IAC's altruistic nature paradoxically insulates it from the democratic oversight necessary for legitimate operation, creating an fundamental tension between stated democratic values and operational autocratic structures.
The research calls for reconceptualizing how democratic principles can be applied to international humanitarian and development frameworks.

This article provides a critical overview of the structural forces exacerbating risk related to disasters in the Caribbean. It focuses on the historical antecedents and socio-environmental consequences of extreme weather events across the region via an anti-colonial analysis of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 and Dorian in 2019. The authors contend that the logics, practices and debts of colonial-capitalist development, neoliberal exploitation and post-independence corruption continue to reduce resilience and threaten public health in the region. They also detail the role that political economy and social geography play in the face of disasters. They end by proposing that future critiques of and solutions to vulnerability, disaster, and catastrophe in the Caribbean be more attentive to the historical trajectories of imperialism, debt and 'underdevelopment'.

Over the past decade, there has been a renewed interest in time within human geography. This temporal 'return' is especially pronounced in areas of migration research, where current scholarship examines the ways that asylum seekers are forced into racialized spaces of waiting and uncertainty. There has been less attention to the temporalities of resistance, the multiple ways that migrants and migrant activists disrupt the temporal frameworks of migration governance. In this paper I explore the ways that sanctuary practices achieve these forms of temporal disruption. Sanctuary challenges the flow of modern, progressive time by altering time's rhythm and direction. It does so through four alternative time trajectorieshistorical-memory, legal, collective, and spiritualthat effectively challenge state hegemony over the meaning and control of migrant time. This challenge enables new forms of resistance to normative disciplinary temporalities associated with the control of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers. It also explodes the linearity and stability of the modern present, revealing a constellation of subaltern movements contesting both the violent flows and blockages of racial capitalism. Through recognizing and refracting these global movements in what Allan Pred termed 'a montage of the present', an alternative spatio-temporality of modernity may be glimpsed.