January 2009

January 27, 2009 Jonathan Power LONDON – It is rapidly becoming a truism that all the Middle East problems are so intertwined that they must be all negotiated into tolerance and disarmament at more or less the same time – not sequentially as before. Still, it is better in an analysis such as this to single out Iran, because if Iran can be got right then a lot of the other dominoes will be easier to fit into place. It is Iran that Israel fears most. It is Iran that has much influence on Hamas. It is Iran that can contribute significantly to peace in Iraq and the Lebanon. And to discuss Iran we must talk about Libya. Libya only a few years ago had many of the same problems as Iran tod ay. Not only was it on the cusp of producing nuclear weapons it was a terrorist state...

he penned an article in Foreign Affairs which caused almost as much shock as his previous “The Clash of Civilizations”. “In the past few years the U.S. has attempted unilaterally to do the following: prevent other countries from acquiring military capabilities that could counter American conventional superiority; enforce American law extra territorially in other societies; grade countries according to American standards on human rights, drugs, terrorism, nuclear proliferation and religious freedom; apply sanctions against countries that do not meet American standards on these issues; promote American corporate interests under the slogans of free trade and open markets; shape World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies to serve the same corporate interests; intervene in local conflicts in which it has relatively little direct interest; bludgeon other countries to adopt economic and social policies that will benefit American economic interests; promote American arms sales abroad; expand NATO; and categorize certain countries as...

January 19, 2009 Jonathan Power LONDON – Perhaps after all, the healthy ones among us in the Western world and the middle class in the Third World have a chance of living for ever. Already, according to the World Health Organisation, a child born today has a 50% chance of living until 100.But by the time they reach 100, medical science will have continued its immense strides forward and they could easily make 200. In fact for those who will make 95 without Alzheimer’s the same goes. Look at the graph of medical discoveries, life saving drugs and surgery, the graph is geometric. Over the next 100 years it will become vertical. What can stop it? – AIDS or an epidemic of universal flue or some malign reaction to a drug like Thalidomide? Look at this graph and they are just minor blips. So why haven’t the great professors of...

allowing the prosecution of citizens who commit torture overseas. (Taylor was born in the U.S. But then moved to Liberia to join his father.) Is there now one law in America for those who commit torture overseas and those who commit it at home with the authority of government? Perhaps for not much longer. In a television interview last weekend President-elect Barack Obama said that the attorney general would investigate whether some senior members of the Bush administration should be prosecuted for their part in torture, although he said that his belief was that “what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future”. Also last week he said that he had given his new appointees to top intelligence positions a clear charge to restore the U.S.’s stance of human rights. “Under my administration the United States does not torture.” Obama should also have reminded his audience...

January 6, 2009Jonathan Power LONDON – Just what Barack Obama needs as he prepares to take his oath of office as the 44th president of the USA – another Israeli/Palestinian war inflaming passions anew all over the Arab world and much of the Muslim world outside too, from Iran to Indonesia. What will his middle name “Hussein” count for in this intense firefight? Well, maybe something, but only if he moves fast to change the long time American emphasis on supporting, by both word and deed, the Israeli side at the expense of the Palestinian. It is as simple – and as complicated – as that. After the Bush years, during which the “clash of civilizations” became the de facto interpretation of American, and to some extent European, policy in the region, the West quickly needs to de-escalate its fixation with what it often sees as the rabid policies of...