Archive 1986 – 2017

LONDON – The serious newspapers I read used to take me an hour to get through. These days it is fifteen minutes. Nothing much is happening, at least in foreign affairs. Iraq has all but disappeared from the front page. Afghanistan and Pakistan remain there (but even so investors are still steadily upping their investments in Pakistan, presumably judging that the conflict is being over hyped). The argument with Iran over whether it is building nuclear weapons drags on, despite the forgotten report of the CIA two years ago that found that Iran was probably not, not to mention that the West and Russia look a bit silly when they turn a blind eye to Brazil for doing exactly the same as Iran. More recently is Iran’s suggestion that it might ship some of its used uranium to Russia to be converted into fuel to provide medical isotopes, or else...

October 23, 2009 Gunnar Westberg France has a reputation of being the country where the question of nuclear disarmament is taboo. Any aspect of nuclear weapons and nuclear strategy is the prerogative of the President who does not condescend to discuss these exalted questions with the parliament or – God forbid! – journalists or common citizens. French diplomats taking part in international negotiations insist that as long as there is a bow and an arrow left in the world, France needs its nuclear weapons. The reason for the French intransigence may be that the raison d’etre of the French nuclear force is so weak. To keep Germany down and the USA in When the French Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France in 1954 decided that France should develop nuclear weapons, his decision was based on his wartime experience: he feared German rearmament. As NATO grew stronger it became clear that the organization...

Good news: All Africa a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone! With the ratification of the Pelindapa treaty on July 15, 2009 by Burundi that treaty on an African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone, NWFZ, has entered into force. In a NWFZ nuclear weapons may not be used, developed, deployed or transported. The status of a NWFZ shall be recognized by the United Nations and the Nuclear Weapon States shall ratify certain conditions in any NWFZ treaty. France, China and Great Britain have done so for the Pelindaba treaty. Russia has not ratified because the island of Diego Garcia, controlled by Britain and used by the USA as a military base, has a disputed status in the treaty. USA has not ratified. The Pelindaba Treaty covers all of Africa. There are now a NWFZ zone that covers Latin America and the Caribbean – the Tlatelolco Treaty. In the South Pacific, we have the Rarotonga treaty. In South-East...

In the will on which the Nobel Peace Prize is based, Alfred Nobel clearly states the criteria that must be fulfilled. The winner shall have done the best or the most work: • for the fraternity between nations, • for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, or • for holding or promoting peace congresses, and • he or she (or the organization) must be a “champion” of peace. To put it crudely, the Prize shall be awarded to a person or organization that has succeeded in reducing the militarism/war/violence in the world. Noteworthy, it shall reward past achievements; the Committee’s self-aggrandizing idea that its Prize will help someone intending or trying to change the world is nowhere to be found in Nobel’s will. Does Barack Obama meet any of these criteria? And could he, given that he took office 11 days before the nomination deadline? • Has he worked for the...

October 7, 2009 Jonathan Power LONDON – High moments aside do we know what happiness is? Is the world becoming a happier place? Are we happier than our parent’s or grandparent’s generation? What could give us a little more happiness? I recall twenty-five years ago an article on the subject published by Geraldine Norman, the art saleroom correspondent of the London Times. I haven’t seen it bettered. She had just been to Africa for her honeymoon and being a rather bookish sort of a girl took with her the Penguin introduction to psychology and books on statistical game theory, anthropology, economics and comparative religion. After all this heavy reading, no doubt interspersed with long walks up the paths that stretch aside the Victoria Falls and, I suppose, some canoodling with her new husband, she came up with six principal factors that appeared to be universal requirements for a happy life:...

October 1, 2009 Jonathan Power LONDON – The last century found, willy-nilly, it had goals aplenty. There was always the social goal of ending unemployment, a purpose that fired people as varied as John Maynard Keynes and Adolf Hitler. There was the goal of spreading capitalism or building socialism, depending on which side of the fence you were on. Later there was the goal of defeating fascism and later still communism. Then there was the goal of ending war and the creation of a United Nations. Not least there was the goal of spreading democracy and, hard on its heels, ending colonialism. Finally, and most recently, there was the goal of spreading human rights. It was appropriate that just before the century ended on July 17th 1998, 120 nations voted (but not the U.S., China, India and Israel) to adopt a statute creating an International Criminal Court to try war...

September 15, 2009 Jonathan Power LONDON – “5,500 journalists and 700 in the American delegation alone” reported a London newspaper on the Kyoto global warming jamboree. Doubtless, given the world’s newly awoken interest there will be many, many more at tee follow up conference in Copenhagen at the end of the year. If only one tenth of those would turn up for a conference on supplying pure water and giving every girl a basic primary education then we might be getting somewhere with the most tangible pressing environmental need of our age. (And one that cannot be scientifically questioned, to boot.) Still, give Kyoto its due. This is the way issues get placed firmly on the political map. “I have only a modest proposal” said Kierkegaard “to make the true state of affairs known.” It may be the wrong issue, it may be an overblown issue but if you believe...

September 22, 2009 Jonathan Power LONDON – An unpleasant truth often overlooked is that although war is a great evil, it does have a great virtue: ‘it can resolve political conflicts and lead to peace’. So wrote Edward Luttwak in Foreign Affairs. The end of the bombing in ex-Yugoslavia was a case in point. It ended with both sides claiming victory – the Western allies got the Serbian army removed from Kosovo and the Serbs won agreement from NATO that it would disarm the Kosovo Liberation Army. The tragedy of war or violence is not that sometimes it does not have positive outcomes, it is that these same goals could have been met without war, if the protagonists had only been prepared to be more farsighted, wiser, and more prepared to be more patient and creative in their diplomacy and less bellicose in their confrontation. Tossing such arguments back and...

15 september, 2009 Håkan Wiberg Recension av Fredrik S. HeffermehlNobels viljeVidarforlagetOslo 2008 På 1890-talet var Alfred Nobel en av de rikaste svenskarna och hade skapat ett industriimperium över hela Europa baserat på flera hundra patent. Han var också en ensam, sjuk och periodvis deprimerad man. Hans överväganden om vad hans förmögenhet skulle användas till resulterade i hans testamente 1895, vilket blev offentligt känt efter hans död följande år vid 63 års ålder. Testamentet har varit omgivet av drama från första början. Heffermehl beskriver hur den unge testamentsexekutorn Ragnar Sohlman lyckades rädda förmögenheten från otaliga angrepp. Franska skattemyndigheter hoppades på väldiga arvsskatter. Ett koppel advokater med ambitioner om oändliga processer kom snabbt i gång. Oscar II försökte manipulera brorsonen Emanuel att få Nobel-familjen att sätta stopp för planerna på Nobelpriserna, vartill Alfred Nobel enligt honom förletts ”av fantaster och särskilt fruntimmer”. Allt gick dock väl, såtillvida att den därtill testamenterade delen...

September 7, 2009 Jonathan Power LONDON – Will historians a hundred years hence look at the beginning of the twenty first century, much as we look at the end of the nineteenth century, and say, Unfortunately the peace and prosperity of the moment was but an interlude before the bloodiest century in mankind’s history? Will they conclude, as Aldous Huxley did, that “every road towards a better society is blocked, sooner or later, by war, by threats of war and preparations for war?” This is the truth, the odious and unacceptable truth. The pessimists of today have grist for their mill. President Barack Obama is engaging America in what is going to a long and bloody battle in Afghanistan. Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace recently warned this could be his Iraq or even Vietnam. Despite this the big picture is good, arguably far better and more inherently...

LONDON – Six days after the attack on the World Trade Centre, President George W. Bush declared that the capture of Osama bin Laden was his prime objective. “I want justice”, he said, “There’s an old poster out west that I recall that said “wanted dead or alive”. He also said that the purpose of going to war was to “smoke him out”. The U.S. and the U.K. then unleashed their bombs all over Afghanistan, killing far more innocent Afghans than were killed on 9/11. It did no good at all, and it certainly didn’t touch bin Laden and his team who were safely hidden in caves in the impenetrable mountains of Pakistan. Not long after Bush turned his attention to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Less and less was spoken of the need to hunt down bin Laden. None of this made sense. Afghanistan is now in a mess. The U.S....

. And it adds that there will be a significant increase in the number of malnourished children. It also says that there will be between 30,000 and 50,000 more infant deaths each year until 2015. But does this mean that over the last 20 years we have not made progress and that it will now get worse? First the one billion figure for the hungry is an invention of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation and the G8. It appears to be based on nothing more than a back of an envelope calculation. There is no hard evidence to support it. Indeed, the number of hungry may have already peaked and is on its way down again. It is true that in 2007 and in early 2008 there was a fast rise in food prices and a fall off in food stocks. It was this that panicked the rich country...