September 2008

to refer the conflict in the Sudan to the ICC, arguing that it was only the threat of a war crimes court that brought the protagonists of the Yugoslavia wars to the negotiating table and that the same stick is necessary over Sudan. The announced prosecution by the ICC of the Sudanese leader, Omar al-Bashir, has coincided with a major shift in American elite opinion about the usefulness of the ICC. Democrat foreign policy experts are talking as if the U.S. were already a signed up, ratified, member. But more interesting is the stance of the Bush Administration. In the first days of his presidency George W. Bush ‘unsigned’ the U.S. membership. Yet now it is pushing hard in the Security Council for the ICC to act faster over the Sudan prosecution. The turn round suggests it may not be too long before the U.S. formally endorses the Court. This...

Under hösten 2008 kommer jag att arbeta för att svensk vapenexport ska upphöra. Detta gör jag inom Kampanjen Avrusta som är en del av nätverket Ofog. Read more.

LONDON – How far is downhill? Well, that’s like asking how long is a piece of string. But whatever the answer, the American/NATO military effort in Afghanistan, triggered by 9/11, seems to have all the marks of a quick descent. In Barack Obama’s phrase, American public opinion doesn’t get it. How could they when Obama himself, supposedly a fresh eye on the international scene, bangs the drum for more troops and yet more force? Does European and Canadian opinion get it? Apart from the Canadians, who have had the good sense and the foresight to give a date for the withdrawal of their troops, public opinion appears to be asleep at the switch. Their young men are dying for a method of attack that the older men have devised without ever being challenge d to think it through. The policy, made within hours of the atrocity of 9/11, seemed to be...

September 12, 2008 Jonathan Power LONDON – Does America know what a dangerous game its leaders are playing? Does it know its history? And do the leaders of Europe, who should be a brake on American determination, go along with Washington because they are almost equally ignorant? After all none of the present crop of European leaders have had time to study much history, and all of them made their way upwards in their party ranks because of their skill and knowledge of domestic affairs. They have had little or no preparation for the affairs of the world. On the Russian, Georgian and Ukrainian side one can make the same argument. Ignorance reigns so history can be repeated. World War I was the most important geopolitically of the last century. After forty three years of unbroken peace in Europe, the continent slipped into war with barely a diplomatic thought. The issues...

at the time of the independence movement. It is true that Africa over the last decade and a half has been through a period of great turmoil. But, according to the just published annual report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, that monitors world trends in violence, Africa along with Europe, is now the most peaceful continent in the world, with only one significant tribal or interstate conflict last year, and this. (That is with over 1000 battle-related deaths.) Are we still transfixed and extrapolating from the mad late 80’s and early 90’s when countries as diverse as Yugoslavia, Zaire, Somalia and Indonesia seemed to tearing themselves apart with ethnic strife? The then U.S. Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, was heard to say “Where will it end? Will it end with 5,000 countries?” It was a gross misjudgment. Two thirds of all the campaigns of ethnic protest and rebellion...