By Jonathan Power August 27, 2019 “In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.” This must be one of the best opening lines ever penned by a novelist. It’s the […]
By Jonathan Power August 20, 2019 In 1995 in a little remembered event Li Ruthuan, a member of the Chinese Politburo (containing the top seven in the government), made a speech likening the Chinese take-over of Hong Kong to the case of a lady who had agreed to sell a 100-year-old Yi-Xiang teapot that was […]
By Jonathan Power August 14, 2019 In her famous decree in 1767 Empress Catherine the Great proclaimed Russia to be a European power. She wanted Russia to be a major player in European politics. She compelled the Europeans to accept Russia as a great power as a condition for doing business. In 1815 Russia was […]
By Jonathan Power August 6, 2019 – Hiroshima Day If MAD was Mad then the decision of President Donald Trump to renounce the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) is MADDER. MAD is Mutually Assured Destruction, a concept which underlay the nuclear deterrence of the Cold War. Presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan began the hard […]
By Jonathan Power July 30, 2019 In 2010 the signatory states of the International Criminal Court, established to prosecute war crimes, convened a conference to add aggression to the list of crimes the court could try. (See the Rome Statute here, the relevant provisions and definitions of the concept of “aggression” are described in Article […]
By Jonathan Power July 24, 2019 There’s never been a full-scale war between two nuclear-armed states. If Iran one day did cross the nuclear threshold the same deterrence will apply. No one rational would want to provoke their own incineration. Columbia University professor, Kenneth Waltz, the distinguished theorist on the conduct of war, wrote in […]
By Jonathan Power July 17, 2019 A sword of Damocles hangs over the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The sword of Netanyahu hangs over Palestine- and Israel. Which will fall first? A court case approaches. A new election in September approaches. Netanyahu is being accused of a serious crime of corruption. He is fighting not […]
By Jonathan Power July 9, 2019 The attack on “the liberal idea” by Vladimir Putin in his long interview in the Financial Times at the end of June is still vibrating in my mind. First, I’d like to know if the Russian people share his views on immigration. In Britain and the US, despite the […]
By Jonathan Power July 2, 2019 Here’s a joke, borrowed from a Russian website. The Russians always have had a dry humour. “Trump, Merkel, May and Macon – Putin is heartily sick of them all. They keep calling and calling, so he switches his phone to voicemail. His message says; “Hello, you have called Russian […]
By Jonathan Power June 25, 2019 Xi Jinping, president of China, remains an enigma. You watched him on television this past weekend reviewing the dancing in Pyongyang in the company of Kim Jong-un and his face is near to expressionless when in repose. He doesn’t stand like an arrogant man and we recall that time […]