Archive 1986 – 2017

LONDON—When commercial shortsightedness is compounded by lack of effective inter-governmental institutions and reinforced by ideological rigidity and then, by lack of compassion, made dangerous and deadly, it s difficult not to have sympathy for those like prime ministers Mahathir bin Mohamed of Malaysia or Yevgeny Primakov of Russia who, in effect, are telling western governments and their financial fireman, the International Monetary Fund, to go take a run and a jump. They are wrong but their wrongness is nothing compared with the West s. Whether it be the loose talk about the need for moral hazard to serve the bankers and investors right (the U.S. House of Representatives economic experts are hot on this one); or the refusal by Alan Greenspan, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board and Hans Tietmeyer, president of the German Bundesbank, to countenance an interest rate cut (still fighting the inflationary demons of yesteryear); or...

LONDON–In the 1970s it was Brazil that was going to be the superstar of the decade – – and perhaps for ever more. In the 1980s the talk was of Japan. In the 1990s China. Brazil and Japan came unstuck in different ways – – Brazil, after decades of being the century’s fastest growing economy (along with Taiwan), because it overspent and, in its massive state and social sectors, chronically underperformed. Japan because its quasi feudal company and ministerial structures too well protected the dross as well as the gold in a system that never could bring itself to embrace capitalist meritocracy in all its parts. Now the indications are increasing that China will be the third big falling star of the latter half of the twentieth century. China perhaps after all “is not a miracle about to be performed”. In China the veneer of end-of-the-century technology and know-how is...

LONDON – “Austria to Start Returning Artwork Looted by the Nazis” was a headline last week in The International Herald Tribune, exactly 53 years and 7 months after the defeat of the Nazi Reich. And close on 90% of those who should benefit from restitution, whose homes and businesses were looted and whose precious artifacts transported either to German and Austrian museums or often to the homes of Nazi leaders, are now dead. Even if you were a Rothschild your name and influence in all these post-war years may not have been sufficient to regain what was stolen. If you were Jewish in Austria it was as if the state in all its successive plumages since the war, socialists, centrists or coalition was not going to pull its finger out on your behalf. Even the promise made in the Austrian parliament earlier last month on the belated return of works of...

“Today the flames of the nuclear fire are all over. I am thankful to God…that we have jumped into these flames.” – Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif “I cannot believe that we are about to start the 21st century by having the Indian subcontinent repeat the mistakes of the 20th century, when we know it is not necessary to peace, to security, to prosperity, to national greatness, or to personal fulfilment.” – U.S. President Bill Clinton In a three week period, both India and Pakistan have conducted nuclear tests, thus becoming new members of the nuclear weapons club. Their tests have brought forth broad, even jubilant, support among the Indian and Pakistani people. Following the Pakistani tests, one Pakistani clerk effused, “Pakistan is now a superpower.” It is not surprising that India and Pakistan would view nuclear weapons as a path to international security and prestige. The five original members...

LONDON–The gathering economic crisis, which the financial papers are somberly predicting has too many of the makings of turning into a world depression, must be a time for mental stock-taking. It comes after one of the most successful boom periods in history, which for a while seemed to sweep all before it, not least the old time critics of untrammeled capitalism, free markets and wide open societies. It coined a new word “globalisation” – – open your doors wide and you’d gain more on the swings than you’d lose on the roundabouts. President Bill Clinton and his Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin are passionate proponents of this brand of economics and their faith appears unshaken despite all the turbulence. As a long run theory, globalisation and 100% wide open doors and windows in the financial and economic markets may make a lot of sense (and some of it like free trade...

Earlier published by ACCORD in South Africa Introduction United Nations peace-keeping operations have increasingly entered internal conflict areas, in which the role of an overstrained United Nations has become more complex, comprehensive and, consequently, more demanding, The United Nations now routinely faces challenges which do not always fit into a “first” or “second” generation of peace-keeping and the Member States are less inclined to be involved in operations which are considered politically insecure or may develop into costly undertakings where lives may be lost, thus creating difficulties in national and domestic politics. If peace-keeping is to remain one of the United Nations’ most important instruments for securing world peace, it requires improved as well as new peace-keeping mechanisms in areas where the international community faces potential or existing conflicts. This not only obligates greater efforts by the Member States to provide a timely availability of troops and to have them...

LONDON–You can interpret it on any level you like–that the Russians are inherently incompetent and had it coming to them; that Russia is wonderfully machiavellian and having failed to overpower the west with communism is now undermining it with capitalism; or that the situation could have been salvaged as recently as a couple of weeks ago if only President Bill Clinton was not mired in controversy and Chancellor Helmut Kohl was too tightly focused on winning re-election. The truth is more prosaic: it is the West’s chickens coming home to roost. If the western powers had gambled 2% of NATO’s budget and met the Soviet Union’s economic needs in Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost era there would have been a much less de-stabilising transition. Then, having misjudged that window of opportunity, preferring Boris Yeltsin for reasons that now appear rather ludicrous–he seemed fresher, more pro-western and more democratic – – they missed...

LUND, SWEDEN—If you want to win a lot of money in a three way political bet, then gamble that by the end of the autumn that Bill Clinton, Helmut Kohl and Goran Persson will all be still firmly in office. No one should underestimate how fine grind the wheels of the American legal system. But, in the end, whether Clinton goes or stays is a political matter. No Congress of the United States would want to go down in history as the one that stripped a president of office for breaking his marital vows and lying to cover this up. Even if the stock market should plummet and Clinton’s poll ratings drop precipitously, nothing can change this very basic political fact. In Germany Helmut Kohl, after 16 non-stop years in the Chancellor’s chair, looks set for defeat in next month’s general election. But don’t believe it until you see it....

Lund, August 25, 1998 – “The standard media backgroundto the conflict tells us that it all started in 1989 whenSlobodan Milosevic, then President of Serbia, repealed theautonomous status granted the Kosovo province in the 1974constitution. This is wrong and propagated by journalistswho have not bothered to study root causes, attitudes orother complexities. It’s a typical example of KISS reporting– ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid.’ But the deliberate choice ofthis particular political action as ‘the cause of all of thetrouble’ conveys the image that the Serb side alone is toblame,” says Jan Oberg who has been engaged in this conflictsince 1992. “This is an age-old conflict between two peoples who aremuch more different and segregated than any other twopeoples or nations in ex-Yugoslavia. The basic causes of conflict were and remain: 1)historically based inter-ethnic mistrust, b) economicunderdevelopment and inequality, and 3) how to – if at all –integrate the Kosovo province meaningfully...

“To understand a conflict – and, thus, help solve it –we need to know something about at least three things:Attitudes, Behaviour and the root Causes of the conflict.That’s the ABC. Most media simply report on behaviour andignore the two other dimensions. This is why people ingeneral feel that they don’t understand much of it all, inspite of watching and listening carefully to news reports.And when media cover conflict behaviour, many seem to usethe KISS principle – Keep It Simple, Stupid. What youhave heard about human rights in Kosovo/a is a good exampleof KISS journalism,” says Jan Oberg, head of TFF’sConflict-Mitigation team upon returning from yet anothermission to Belgrade, Prishtina and Skopje. “I want to make it clear that I consider the Serbgovernment guilty of extremely serious and systematic humanrights violations in the Kosovo province. Over the years,the Serb leadership has pursued an absolutely immoral andself-defeating policy of repression. Having listened tohundreds...

Lund, August 23, 1998 – “There are dangerously manyhalf truths and biases in the reporting from Kosovo/a. Thegeneralised media image of the conflict shapes publicopinion which in turn threatens to push politicians intoaction that will have counterproductive effects on theground,” says Jan Oberg, head of TFF’s Conflict-Mitigationteam, upon returning from yet another mission to Belgrade,Prishtina and Skopje. “The standard media story about Kosovo the last sixmonths goes like this: ‘Kosovo is a province in Serbiainhabited by about 2 million people, 90 per cent of whom areAlbanians and 10 per cent Serbs. The dissolution of Tito’sYugoslavia started in 1989 when Serbian president SlobodanMilosevic repealed the autonomy which the province hadenjoyed since 1974. The region is characterised by extremepoverty and systematic human rights violations by Serbianauthorities against the Albanians, to the extent that one isjustified in calling it a police state or an ‘apartheid’system. The Serb ‘offensive’ is an attempt by Belgrade...

STOCKHOLM–In spite of America’s surprise attacks on terrorist refuges many American foreign policy commentators are perturbed by Bill Clinton’s way of dealing with the world, even as American public opinion welcomes a presidency with a low body count and an absence of bloody overseas engagements. Jim Hoagland in the Washington Post calls it “soft” power and one need look no further than the White House effort to tell the UN arms inspectors in Iraq to cool it, the most recent example, to see that it is the way Clinton foreign policy appears to be heading. Whether it be Iraq, Iran, Israel/Palestine, Kosovo, North Korea, the Congo, Clintonesque foreign policy is becoming increasingly of the live and let live variety. Whether this is driven by the distractions of the Monica Lewinsky business or by some carefully thought out brainstorming is unclear. Certainly the media is no more interested in reporting an...