Archive 1986 – 2017

“Look at what happens in Kosovo and you would like tobelieve that all good powers worked for PREVENTION of thistragedy but that, unfortunately, tragedies happen.Governments, inter-governmental and non-governmentalorganisations are already overloaded with ongoing conflictsand catastrophes; budgets are tight etc. Admittedly theseare very complex problems; and just as all diseases cannotbe prevented, we can’t expect all wars to be prevented. According to this theory, if things go wrong it is theparties’ fault and if they go well it is thanks to theinternational community and a few shuttling envoys ordiplomats. World media naively corroborate this theory: Wewatch how diplomats, envoys, and delegations fly around,hold press conferences, meet their kin in palaces or makesolemn declarations if they don’t issue threats. In short,do all they can to stop wars and force people to negotiationtables, don’t they? Well, no outbreak of violence on earth was morepredictable than the one in Kosovo. There have been moreearly...

LONDON–India and Pakistan have had a jolly month playing with matches. Just to show the world how responsible they are with their new-found nuclear arsenals they ve traded fire almost daily over and around the border that separates the two halves of the disputed state of Kashmir, killing over 90 soldiers and civilians. Not a bad month s work for two nations that in their pre-nuclear state twice have been to war over this idyllic piece of Himalayan real estate. Both Indian and Pakistani policy makers seem blithely unaware of the immense self-discipline that kept the U.S. and the Soviet Union from letting off their missiles in the days of their nuclear stand-off, aptly named the Cold War. Fighting of any kind, much less nuclear war, was frozen. There was never a single Russian or American soldier killed by the other side. Just as important was the military self-discipline of...

I år är det tjugofyra år sedan den turkiska interventionen på Cypern som ledde till att ön delades. Grek- och turkcyprioter har sedan dess levt åtskilda på var sin sida om den buffertzon som skär tvärs igenom ön. För grekcyprioterna var interventionen och den efterföljande ockupationen av norra Cypern en nationell katastrof. Hundratusentals grekcyprioter tvingades lämna sina hem i norr och lever som flyktingar på den södra delen av ön. För den turkcypriotiska minoriteten däremot sågs interventionen, eller “fredsoperationen” som den kallas av turkcyprioterna, som en räddning undan Cyperns hotande anslutning till Grekland. Målet om enosis delades vid denna tid av den dåvarande militärjuntan i Aten och de kuppmakare som några dagar tidigare störtat den cypriotiske presidenten Makarios. Den 20 juli varje år firar turkcyprioterna därför denna dag, “Fred och frihetsdagen”, likt en nationaldag. Till skillnad från grekcyprioterna har turkcyprioterna accepterat öns delning och funnit sig tillrätta på den norra...

STOCKHOLM–How it looks, it is often said, depends on where you sit. The Financial Times reported General Alexander Lebed’s public letter as a serious front page story. The International Herald Tribune relegated it to an inside page with a headline that suggested it must be a Lebed joke. The new governor of Siberia was reported as threatening to take over a local missile base and its portion of Russia’s nuclear arsenal with it. Meanwhile the Russian parliament, the Duma, has started once again impeachment proceedings against Russian president Boris Yeltsin. Always the number one accusation is that Yeltsin initiated the breakup of the Soviet Union whose denouement, if Lebed is not joking, is still to come. No one inside Russia says it, but the truth becomes more apparent every day if Mikhail Gorbachev had stayed in power and engineered a gentler transition, not only would the Soviet Union be whole,...

LONDON–Does the U.S. have permanent interests even if perhaps it doesn’t believe it has permanent friends? Its performance the last two months over the negociations to create an International Criminal Court suggests that it doesn’t care a toss whether Canada, Japan, Germany, Britain, Denmark, Spain, or most of the world for that matter, think it’s important. Indeed, during the tense stand-off in Rome earlier in the month it went so far as to threaten its NATO allies with pulling its troops out of Europe if they didn’t kowtow to the American line and water down the court’s independence. Quite rightly, the allies called Washington’s bluff and pushed the issue to a vote. When 120 nations voted for the creation of the court and only 8 against, (the U.S., China, Israel, Libya, Quatar, India and Iraq what interesting bedfellows!) the chamber erupted into the kind of cheering more heard on the...

LONDON–When Mahbub ul Haq died in New York last week the traffic did not stop, nor did the United Nations, for which he had done so much, lower its flag. But all over the world, people who have been touched by the special wisdom of this astonishing man, felt their hearts miss a beat. He left behind one of the few great ideas of the twentieth century. When he died he was preparing to join Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union, in San Francisco in a private seminar with some of the world’s most influential minds. Simply put, Dr Haq was the greatest living expert on measuring human progress. Formerly Pakistan s minister of finance, for seven years he was the creator and continuing intellectual force behind The Human Development Report , published annually by the United Nations Development Program. In his years in ministerial office he...

LONDON–War is today sweeping Kosovo. The UN-brokered peace is breaking down in Angola. In Rwanda, Hutu militiamen killed 34 Tutsis watching the World Cup in an hotel. We hear about it all and ring our hands in despair at the ethnic hatred that now seems to be unhindered by the disciplines imposed by the exigencies of big power politics during the Cold War. What we don’t do much of is to look at it in, should I say, more positive terms. What use is conflict? In whose interest is it waged? We assume too blithely that these wars happen despite the intentions of rational people. In fact they happen often BECAUSE of the intentions of thinking people. War is often not simply a breakdown of the system but a way of creating an alternative system of profit, power and protection. To paraphrase Clausewitz, war has increaingly become the continuation of...

To be published in The Times of India Nuclearism is the ideology of nuclear weaponry and nuclear arms-based security. It is the most depraved, shameless, and costly pornography of our times. Such an ideology cannot be judged only by the canons of international relations, geopolitics, political sociology, or ethics. It is also a well known, identifiable, psychopathological syndrome. The following is a brief introduction to its clinical picture, epidemiology, and prognosis. Nuclearism does not reside in institutions, though it may set up, symbolise, or find expression in social and political institutions. It is an individual pathology and has clear identifiers. Many years ago, Brian Isley argued in his book, Fathering the Unthinkable, that nuclearism went with strong masculinity strivings. Isley was no psychologist, but the works of Carol Cohn’s and others have endorsed the broad contours of Isley’s analysis. They show that not only the language and ideology, but the...

The abridged version of the interview in Serbian was published by “Blic”on July 6, 1998 – http://www.decani.yunet.com/intervju1.pdf The peace and harmony. The sun shines while the monks are working in the fields of Decani Monastery. The church bell calls for communal meal in the refectory. This is a scene which someone could hardly expect only a mile from the town of Decani where serious clashes between the Serbian security forces and the KLA occurred just a month ago. The love and peace which shine on the faces of the abbot and his monks give an impression of an oasis of true peace and Christian blessing. “I would rather devote myself to monastic life, silence and prayer. But I simply cannot close my eyes in front of what is going on before us. Our brotherhood is helping all the people in need here as much as we can. I know that we...

LONDON–It would be fair to assume that while in China President Bill Clinton didn’t give much thought to Israel and the Palestinians. Even before he left Washington his whole body language seemed to suggest, “What more can I do? They’ve really got to work it out between them.” The steam has gone out of American diplomacy. Israel’s prime minister, the sand-blaster, Benjamin Netanyahu, has won the battle of attrition but lost the war for peace. In retrospect, it appears that the Clinton Administration saw this coming–only six weeks ago Secretary of State Madeleine Albright publically lectured Netanyahu saying, in so many words, that nothing had happened in the two years since he became prime minister and underlined the barb with praise for the cooperative attitude of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader. The Clinton Administration feel they’ve lent their weight to what was essentially a pro-Netanyahu compromise on the next stage...

The World Bank last week approved a DEM 74 million(US$40.6 million equivalent) Recon-struction Project forEastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srijem Loan forCroatia. The project area is one of the most fertileparts of the Balkans and prior to the war, was known as the“bread basket” of the region. Due to damage to the extensiveflood control and drainage system, much of the agriculturalland has become unusable. The project will: 1) Repair and rebuild the flood control and drainagefacilities; 2) Clear the landmines left behind in the flood controlnetwork; 3) Provide for sound and sustainable environmentalmanagement of the adjoining nature reserve at Kopackirit; 4) Rebuild a partially completed wastewater system in oneof the major towns in the area. The World Bank explains that the project is expectedto make a major contribution in stimulating the localeconomy, thereby creating an incentive for people to returnhome. It is an important contribution to reconstructionand is the result...

LONDON – If President Bill Clinton is feeling beleaguered by his many domestic critics of his trip to China he should perhaps recall the damning chorus he helped orchestrate against his predecessor George Bush for pursuing much the same policies. In his first presidential debate with Bush, Clinton tore into him, accusing him, in effect, of being soft on China and promising that if he were elected the age of conciliation would end. No more would America kowtow to the Chinese economic behemoth if it meant tolerating human-rights abuses and prison labour in Chinese factories. This line always plays well to the American public. But the centre holds, as it did before, and has for every U.S. president since Richard Nixon made his historic U-turn with his sensational Foreign Affairs article, “Asia After Vietnam”. Here Nixon spelt out the reasons for a more conciliatory policy towards China. His most important point...