October 2008

The most important thing to understand about nuclear weapons is this: these weapons do not and cannot provide physical protection to their possessors.  Please let this thought sink in.  The second most important thing to understand about these weapons is that they are weapons of genocide writ large or, as the philosopher John Somerville has labeled them, weapons of omnicide, capable of the destruction of all.(1) These weapons put at risk the future of humankind and most life on earth.  Please also let this thought sink in. The third most important thing to understand about nuclear weapons is that they are in the hands of human beings with all their frailties and fallibilities, and, as such, these weapons are disasters waiting to occur.  Please let this thought sink in as well. How the new U.S. president understands the functions, limits and dangers of nuclear weapons will guide his approach to U.S. nuclear policy,...

War is not how McCain describes it October 28, 2008 LONDON – John McCain, we all know, after being shot out of the sky, was captured by the North Vietnamese, imprisoned and tortured. We know too that few of us would have had the guts or the tenacity to put up for so long with his trials of pain and sorrows. But do we know – for the journalists have failed to ask and he has omitted to mention – who he killed from the sky, how many, and how does he feel about that deep inside when he has to reflect alone and make his peace with God? Or does he think, rather than allowing God to choose which side, if any, He is on, that America itself can make that decision? These conundrums don’t seem to weigh a tenth of an ounce in the American election. But they...

I was among a handful of people worldwide who criticised the Nobel Committee’s choice of former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari as Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and characterized it as a scandal I had two main reasons. I consider his work as “peace mediator” – a term used repeatedly – in Kosovo incompatible with peace and with Alfred Nobel’s three criteria, but I deliberately did not mention his work in Aceh or Namibia of which I have no knowledge myself. Kosovo and other parts of former Yugoslav have been something I have tried to understand since my first visit there 34 years ago. Independent Kosovo is the result of a military-based conflict management or, rather, mismanagement. It militates against two of Nobel’s criteria in that it has not lead to fraternity between peoples and it has not reduced armaments in the world. Kosovo declared itself independent in February this year (probably one reason...

North Korea – the long way round October 14, 2008 LONDON – One small step forward by North Korea and the U.S ; one large step for mankind. The political fight to persuade North Korea to halt its nuclear bomb making activities seems at last, in the dying days of the Bush presidency, to be entering a serious phase. The U.S. has finally bowed to the North Korean request to remove it from the U.S. list of sponsors of terrorism- which will enable the renegade state to become eligible for international loans and sundry other economic benefits- in return for the North agreeing to re-allow inspections to verify a North Korean promise to freeze its nuclear activities, as it undertook last year and then withdrew from. After nine years of erratic U.S. policies- met by equally erratic and bellicose Nort h Korean ones- the negotiations have ended up almost where...

, said the way to U.S. involvement in Vietnam was to declare victory and get out. Having declared victory in 2004 and not got out, it is too late for President George W. Bush or his successors to do that now. But Aiken had a riposte for that contingency too. A few years later, when it was impossible to declare victory, he was asked how to get out of Vietnam. “In ships”, he replied. Both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are moving towards the only solution that will work – leaving. In Iraq, surely this is what Barack Obama, if president, must do, despite all the heavy advice trying to persuade him to drag it out until……until a miracle happens and the killing stops, the legal system functions and the ‘democracy’ works. But the killing in this very disturbed society will go on for decades. U.S. tallies of the...

LONDON – As said Mr Micawber: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen, nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds, nought and six, result misery.” If you can get past the Dickensian way of counting then there is a message for the U.S. today. It no longer has the financial wherewithal to do what it wants to do. If Barack Obama wins the election he has pledged to bring in a major reform of the health services and he has promised to cut the tax rate for the middle and work ing classes. He wants to expand the war in Afghanistan. If John McCain wins he wants to keep in place the tax breaks for the rich, fight to “victory” in Iraq, expand the war in Afghanistan and challenge Iran in such an assertive way that it could well lead to another war. There is no...