Archive 1986 – 2017

LONDON–If Saddam Hussein bothered to read Paul McCartney’s hand-written eulogy after the death of his wife, Linda, we can be sure that he laughed/simply didn’t understand the sentiment/uttered an expletive–or all three. The partnership of Paul and Linda symbolised not just the rewards of marital harmony but a change deep in the soul of western culture. William Rees-Mogg, a former editor of the conservative London Times, described it approvingly in his recent column as a “reaction against the world of masculine discipline, of khaki and rifles, the world culture in the first half of the century, in the direction of peace and love.” Hence, it is no surprise that when today’s West, with leaders at its helm who matured in the sixties and seventies, come up against the machismo of Saddam Hussein there is an enormous gulf of understanding that diplomacy finds hard to bridge and that, perversely, creates a...

“All concerned should come together and discuss theOBVIOUS alternatives to militarist policies in general andNATO expansion in particular,” appeals Dr. Oberg. “Accordingto President Clinton and Secretary of State MadeleineAlbright, the present expansion involving Poland, the CzechRepublic and Hungary is only the first in a series. Now isthe time, therefore, to prepare for a new advocacy ofalternatives to the continuation of this dangerousdevelopment. Further NATO expansion must be stopped,” saysthe TFF director. “NATO was and remains geared to the Cold War. In itsessence, the alliance has not changed. NATO must not beallowed forever to lead or monopolise world securityaffairs. Its military priorities and nuclearism inparticular make NATO a part of humanity’s problem, not aninstrument in the exploration of the new peace policies thatought to unfold in this genuinely new era. NATO expansion is sheer folly. It contradicts everyvision of a world in which we learn to clash as civilisedcreatures, solve our...

“Svi zainteresirani bi se trebali okupiti i krozrazgovor utvrditi OCIGLEDNE alternative militaristickojpolitici uopce a narocito politici sirenja NATO saveza,”apelira dr Oberg. “Prema izjavama predsednika Clintona idrzavnog tajnika, Madelaine Albright, trenutni iskorak naprosirenju koji ukljucuje Poljsku, Cesku i Madjarsku samo jeprvi u nizu. Zbog toga smatramo da je upravo sada trenutakkada trebamo pripremiti i zastupati nove alternativesuprotstavljene nastavljanju ovog opasnog procesa. Buducesirenje NATO-a treba biti zaustavljeno,” izjavljuje direktorTFF-a. “NATO je bio i ostaje prilagodjen za vodjenje hladnograta. U samoj svojoj sustini, savez se nije niti najmanjeizmjenio. Ne smije se dozvoliti da NATO zauvjek predvodi imonopolizira u pitanjima sigurnosti svjeta. Vojni prioritetikojima se on rukovodi, te osobito njegovo nuklearnonaoruzanje, cine NATO jednim od problema sa kojima secovjecanstvo danas suocava a nikako ne instrumentom kojitreba iskoristiti za iznalazenje novih miroljubivihpostupaka pomocu kojih bi trebali olaksati prelazak u novo isasvim drugacije razdoblje. Sirenje NATO-a predstavlja cistu glupost. Ono sesuprotstavlja svakoj viziji svijeta buducnosti u...

LONDON– Not much in the dark arts of international relations is purposely kept more opaque than the Missile Technology Control Regime. Although a western creation, founded by the U.S., Canada, France, Britain and Germany in 1987, one might conclude from its byzantine penchant for secrecy it was designed by Russia which signed up only in 1995 or even by Turkey which signed last year. Its purpose is to limit the diffusion of the know-how for building rockets that can deliver nuclear weapons. Anyone these days can build a nuclear weapon, but delivering it by long-range missile remains an art mastered by a restricted inner circle. Thanks to a small group of American and Russian scholars working under the auspices of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, but sheltering under the dispensation granted by the comradeship of the Russian-American space cooperation effort, we have been given a dispassionate, but quite frightening,...

LONDON– The unanswered question for the new government in India: is the country now going to come out of the closet and declare itself an armed nuclear power, ready and prepared if necessary to strike a mortal blow at its adversaries? Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said shortly after the election that the government has resolved to “re-evaluate the country’s nuclear policy and exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons”. Yet the delicate balancing act of his coalition government is clearly a brake on what his Hindu-nationalist Bharitiya Janata Party would do if left to its own devices. But how much of a brake remains unclear. If the government does go ahead then the world before very long should expect to see a series of nuclear tests and within a year the commissioning of around a 100 aircraft to carry nuclear weapons and a step up in the pace of an...

Action Kit from Earth Action If you care about human rights, this may be your biggest single chanceto make a difference. In our time, the world has seen some of the most horrific mass crimes in history. Yet most of the criminals walk free. In 1946, the defeated war criminals of World War II were tried for their crimes at historic tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo. The international community determined that war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and military aggression should never again go unpunished. They talked of setting up a permanent international court to address such horrors and help prevent them in the future. But nothing was done. As a result, military and political leaders responsible for the deaths of millions-such as Saddam Hussein and Pol Pot-never had to fear prosecution for their crimes. Right now, a process is going on at the UN which will, finally, make an...

LONDON–When Martin Luther King died 30 years ago this weekend the outlook for America’s race relations looked on the surface unredeemable: a future of more urban riots, further polarisation of the races, white reaction feeding black reaction in ever ascending spirals of bitterness and hate. There seemed to be little on the horizon to give ground for hope. The south was fighting what appeared at the time to be a successful rearguard action against the 1954 Supreme Court decision to desegregate schools and the 1964 Civil Rights Act that outlawed discrimination in public places. The north was becoming increasingly segregated. The electoral drift was towards the right, soon to bring to power Richard Nixon and the end to any thought of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”. Black revolutionary militancy was becoming more bold and confident. Yet within only three years the picture had changed dramatically. Polarisation didn’t worsen. Blacks en masse...

Until the 1998 financial meltdown (“black September” 1998), the World economy was said to be booming under the impetus of the “free market” reforms. Without debate or discussion, so-called “sound macro-economic policies” (meaning the gamut of budgetary austerity, deregulation, downsizing and privatisation) continue to be heralded as the key to economic success and poverty alleviation. In turn, both the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have asserted authoritatively that economic growth in the late 20th Century has contributed to a reduction in the levels of World poverty. According to the UNDP, “the progress in reducing poverty over the 20th century is remarkable and unprecedented… The key indicators of human development have advanced strongly.” The Devastating Impacts of Macro-economic Reform are casually deniedThe increasing levels of global poverty resulting from macro-economic reform are casually denied by G7 governments and international institutions (including the World Bank and the IMF);...

LONDON– Two and a half years ago France’s minister for overseas development, Jacques Godfrain, startled an international conference suggesting that “Africa is on the way to becoming the tiger of the twentyfirst century–following the pattern of the tiger economies of east Asia 30 years ago”. Few people predicted their fabulous growth rates, he observed, “Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were at war. Malaysia and Cambodia were battling communist insurrection. South Korea was still emerging from a debilitating war…but look what they achieved and now it is going to be the same story with Africa.” At the time Mr Godfrain was widely disparaged. Today, it seems, half the world is jumping on the African bandwagon. What was yesterday’s disaster continent is tomorrow’s tropical repository of unrealized, latent possibilities. President Bill Clinton may have his own reasons for taking such a long trip to Africa but his troubles at home rebound to Africa’s advantage....

LONDON–All the dons sitting around the tea table with China’s most famous dissident, Wei Jingsheng, seemed decidedly nervous and unusually quiet by the everyday standards of Britain’s most revered university. It took me a few minutes to figure out why and then I guessed if your brain is telling you that this may be the Nelson Mandela of China, future ruler of one third of the world, then a little awe and a roomful of silence are to be expected.After the tea there was the speech to students. Direct, eloquent, his 18 years in jail on a wind-swept, bitterly cold, 10,000 feet high plateau, behind him, he tore into the Chinese communist regime and to the western governments who give it so much comfort and assistance. With almost serene self-confidence he appeared to predict that his cause will triumph sooner rather than later–“every ordinary Chinese now recognises the need for...

LONDON– The most dangerous frontier of the post Second World War world was the Iron Curtain, the ideological barrier which at the command of Soviet Russia fell in 1945 from Lubeck Bay on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic. It was given its name by Winston Churchill and as Jan Morris has observed, “it separated not just states, or people or territories, or histories, but ideas” The apex, the epitome and the most public shame of the Iron Curtain was the Berlin Wall. When that was breached in 1989 we knew that European communism was dead, liberty was restored and military confrontation that came close to nearly incinerating half the planet was over. Or did we? We had not counted on President Bill Clinton’s decision 9 years later to expand the military alliance Nato, whose sole raison d’etre was this Iron Curtain, right up to the western frontiers of the...

Kejsarna i internationell politik säger gärna att det finns vissa människor som bara förstår våldets språk. Situationen i Kosovo skickar en bumerang tillbaka till dem. Ingen aktör har gjort en analys, lagd en strategi eller företagit sig något som helst före eller efter det att Jugoslavien bröt samman, som kunde ha hjälpt serber och albaner att undvika dét förutsägbara, som nu har hänt. De samma kejsare gör alltså först något när en konflikt har gått över i våld. Och våld var det enda som inte fick hända för en självständighetsrörelse som pragmatiskt-politiskt bekänner sig till icke-våld. Så mycket, alltså, för det reella innehållet i modeord som preventiv diplomati, fredsbevarande, OSSE:s konfliktförebyggande, det nya NATO och europeisk säkerhetsarkitektur och gemensam utrikes- och säkerhetspolitik i EU. Så mycket om den aktivistiska svenska politiken i Irak-frågan och bristen på diplomatiska insatser i i Kosovo-frågan. Dessa kejsare kan expandera NATO och bygga nya kärnvapen...