Archive 1986 – 2017

LONDON – Space being space can go in all sorts of directions- Tito’s pleasure trip to be followed by Richard Branson’s floating hotels. But it could, if the U.S. Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, has his way, be filled with anti-satellite weapons, as the Pentagon makes sure it is in total command of not just the land beneath but also the sky above. Rumsfeld chaired two important commissions whilst he was out of office. The first, now well known, came up with the argument that the threat of a ballistic missile attack on the U.S. was “evolving more rapidly” than had been previously thought. The second, which received much less publicity, warned that the U.S. may someday face a “Space Pearl Harbour” with a sneak attack on all America’s precious communication satellites orbiting the planet. Space warfare has become “a virtual certainty”, Rumsfeld argued. His conclusion, reiterated in his news...

På EU:s toppmöte i Göteborg ska en integration av EU och NATO klubbas igenom. Vi är djupt oroade. Med slutet på Kalla Kriget och Warsawapaktens upplösning blev det svårt att rättfärdiga NATO:s existens och Sveriges invasionsförsvar. Hur förklara deras uppgift, hotbild och resursförbrukning när fienden hade kollapsat? Det militäre försvarets berättigande var hotat eftersom människorna i Europa förstod att säkerhet handlar om väldfärd, jämlikhet, miljövård och förtroendeskapande. Kretsar som saknar fantasi till att föreställa sig en värld med mindre upprustning, våld och vapenhandel använde i det läget en gammal klassisk militär strategi: Angrepp är det bästa försvaret! Alltså: hitta nya fiender varje månad – Castro, Kim Il-Sung, Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, Khadaffi, narkotikatrafik. Och tala om för medborgarna att nya faror, t ex “etniska konflikter” lurar runt varje hörn. Den andra strategin var att accelerara västlig kontroll: utvidga NATO:s territorium österut, ge den USA-ledda militäralliansen större resurser, göra kärnvapnen än mer...

LONDON – As if his Star Wars initiative wasn’t enough President George Bush is already considering his next provocative move – the expansion of Nato right up to Russia’s borders. The world is now in real danger of spinning off its geopolitical axis. Even a defeated, militarily moribund, Russia will feel compelled to respond, at whatever cost of sweat, blood and treasure better spent on development at home, and the consequences of this will be felt the world over. It will confirm the leaders of China in what they are already suspecting, that the U.S is going through a new period of imperialistic expansion. And anything that Beijing decides to do reverberates into Japan, Taiwan and the Koreas and, further afield, into India and thence into Pakistan. The initial expansion of Nato in 1999 that took in the former Warsaw Pact members, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, was in fact...

LONDON – So in the end the Bush Administration decided it was not going to approve the sale to Taiwan of the much-touted Aegis-class destroyers and their state-of-the-art missile tracking system. The deciding reason was political, although there is evidence a-plenty they wouldn’t have done Taiwan that much good in the military arena either. They wouldn’t be delivered for another seven or eight years and it that time China could have deployed enough missiles to easily overwhelm their capabilities. Simply put, they would be nothing more than a political provocation – a hint of other defensive systems to come- the anti-ballistic missile shield around America and theatre missile defence around Japan and Taiwan. All of which in the end will be similarly self-defeating, as China builds more nuclear-tipped rockets to overwhelm them. Along the way the political relationship would deteriorate from “strategic partner” (Clinton) to “strategic competitor” (Bush) to “enemy” (future)....

Aftonbladet berättade den 19 april att kronprinsessan Victoria fick en lektion i Kossovosituationen på ett EU-möte i Ystad om civil krishantering. I den korta notisen framhölls att “behovet av praktiska åtgärder, inte prat och politik, betonades”. “Prat och politik”, det är förhandlingar om politiska lösningar och preventiv diplomati, det är opartisk medling och konfliktläkning, fredsundervisning och bearbetning av hat, kort sagt diplomati för fredliga lösningar, inte våldsanvändning. Sveriges blivande statschef utbildades tydligen i en militarisering av utrikespolitiken och nedtoning av diplomatin. Är det framtiden? Den korta notisen om kronprinsessan Victoria var Aftonbladets enda kommentar till den viktiga EU-konferensen om civil krishantering. Men på Debattsidan samma dag skriver FN-förbundets ordförande, Aleksander Gabelic tillsammans med Gustaf Lind och Eva Chinapah i samma anda som notisen om EU-konferensen. De argumenterar för två utrikespolitiska medel. Det ena är “ett militärt samarbetsavtal mellan EU och FN”, som sägs vara det bästa sättet att förbättra global...

The Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs did it again this year. TFF is now the only – and the first ever — among peace organisations that have received organisational support during the 1990s and is thrown out.*) The conclusion is clear: You and we did not succeed with our dignified appeals last year. So, let’s forgive these decision-makers – not because they do not know what they do, but because they do not know what we do and have never concentrated their minds and hearts on peace or read Gandhi. They seek international security in past paradigms and personal security in following orders. We will waste no more time or energy being disappointed or begging for handouts. Peace is more important than government grants. TFF will concentrate fully on its tasks and hopes that funds will come in little by little – for instance from you. Our thanks to all...

1986. . . TFF took the first steps in January 1986. We have recently described what TFF is about.Today we are a network of 71 scholars, activists, diplomats, officers in 22 countries. We are Orthodox and Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists, Quakers, Gandhians, atheists and, well, God knows what. The foundation has spearheaded the Gandhi-inspired concept and practise of conflict-mitigation. It has conducted over 40 missions to former and present Yugoslavia, to all conflicts regions and parties since 1991. It’s been a small force for the UN norm of “peace with peaceful means” it has done impartial analysis, mitigation and peace education way before all the talk about preventive diplomacy. It’s a small bridge-builder between scholarly and on-the-ground peace work. There are some 60 publications in our TFF Store and Donations. We work also in Georgia and in Burundi and we teach in many countries. TFF reaches out through mails and two websites...

Bush d.y. (en mann som ikke ble valgt men blir utvalgt av en Hoeyesterett delvis utpekt av faren er ikke president) har hittil gjort åtte feil med tunge konsekvenser for USA og resten av oss: 1. Fortsatt bombing og sanksjoner mot det noedlidende irakske folk, med sterke reaksjoner i alle arabiske/islamske land; 2. Sanksjoner mot et av verdens fattigste land, Afghanistan fordi USA har problemer med en person de en gang stoettet (bin Laden). Som Chalmers Johnson papeker i sin briljante Blowback (Hevn) er terrorisme som regel hevn for amerikansk statsterrorisme, og den er det mye av, altsa stadig oekende terrorisme i kommende år. 3. Veto mot observatoerer i den kronisk betente Israel-Palestina situasjonen, stoettet av feige allierte som “avholder seg”. Til varig erindring: FNs Sikkeretsrad har fire kristne og ett konfusiansk medlem, intet av de 56 muslimske land er med. Hvordan vile vi ha reagert pa fire muslimske land, og Kina?...

LONDON – The arrest of the greatest European war criminal since Hitler could change the world. Significant though the arrest of Pinochet was in London two and a half years ago, in comparison that was dealing with a dead duck. This arrest is next to catching the bird on the wing. Milosevic only lost power a matter of months ago. His party still wields much influence in Serbian affairs. Yet the pressure to bring him to trail before the UN-created ad hoc criminal court for Yugoslavia has been strong enough to precipitate his arrest by the Serbian authorities. It is only now a question of time, although he may first stand trial in his home country on lesser charges, before he is arraigned before the international tribunal on a charge of genocide. For some time now the so-called Pinochet effect has been at play – encouraging authorities in many parts of...

LONDON – After ten years of Balkan sectarian madness the outside world thought it had caught its breath. The hard-line nationalist president of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, died in 1999. Last year the ruthless Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic resigned due to old age. Most marvellous of all in October Slobodan Milosevic, who began the Balkan wars, was finally voted out of office. Yet as the new fighting in Macedonia abundantly makes clear the forces of disintegration in the region remain stronger than those of integration. It takes a quarter of a million Nato soldiers to hold the ring and still there is no peace. The issue posed by President Boris Trajkovski of Macedonia hangs in the air, imperfectly answered. “We cannot redraw borders and boundaries, making smaller units of ever purer ethnic states. We cannot survive as a region if ethnicity becomes the sole defining justification of statehood.” But why not?...

LONDON – It is hard to watch the most sensible foreign policy of the Clinton Administration being crumpled before our eyes. Particularly so when it is being done for the most malevolent of reasons- to resurrect an enemy that had decided to make its peace with America, so that the advocacy of missile defence for America could be seen to be based on a real rogue missile threat rather, than as hitherto, a make believe one. President George Bush is being given the benefit of the doubt with his new hard line policy towards North Korea, even as he overrides his more far-sighted Secretary of State, Colin Powell. General Powell had tried to get it on to the record, before the Gang of Two, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, could bend the novice president’s ear back towards the dark ages, that the Bush Administration intended “to pick...

LONDON – Nothing could have been more revealing of the ambiguities at the heart of western policy towards China than when, in March 1997, the annual vote came up at the UN Human Rights Commission to condemn China’s record on the treatment of its dissidents and minorities. Denmark, with strong support from the Netherlands, had tabled a critical motion. The Chinese lobbyists went into overdrive. Denmark was told by Beijing that its criticism would be a “rock that smashed down on the Danish government’s head”. Several Danish contracts were cancelled and, as Chris Patten, now the European Union commissioner responsible for foreign affairs, wrote in his book, “East and West”, “And what did anyone do? Nothing. What in particular did members of the EU do? They looked the other way”. In 1998 Europe went one step further or, as Human Rights Watch described it, “a major step backwards”. Rewarding China for...