Archive 1986 – 2017

“Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men”.(Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address, 1933) Humanity is undergoing in the post-Cold War era an economic crisis of unprecedented scale leading to the rapid impoverishment of large sectors of the World population. The plunge of national currencies in virtually all major regions of the World has contributed to destabilising national economies while precipitating entire countries into abysmal poverty. The crisis is not limited to Southeast Asia or the former Soviet Union. The collapse in the standard of living is taking place abruptly and simultaneously in a large number of countries. This Worldwide crisis of the late twentieth century is more devastating than the Great Depression of the 1930s. It has far-reaching geo-political implications; economic dislocation has also been accompanied by the outbreak of regional conflicts, the fracturing of...

LONDON– Not even the cynics consumed by South Korea’s dire economic crisis doubted that the country’s general election would be honest, above-board, with a result that would meet with widespread acquiescence both at home and abroad. Yet only 18 years ago this country was a dictatorship; only 50 years ago a poverty-ridden village economy. For all the magnitude of its present financial troubles it cannot be gainsaid that South Korea has gone from rags to riches, from one man rule to one man (and one woman) one vote in a generation. It is truly one of the wonders of our age. After all, only in the late 1940s did most western countries become fully-fledged democracies, with universal adult suffrage. Outstanding through the march of time South Korea’s progress has been, it is part of a broader movement that has swept most of the world in recent decades. Last year I reported...

Danmark har til årsskiftet formandsskabet i OSCE, den Europæiske Sikkerheds- og Samarbejdsorganisation og der skal være topmøde i København 18-19. december. I København bør energien bruges til konkrete handlinger og ikke spildes på floromvundne udtalelser. I perioden 1975-85 profilerede OSCE sig ved menneskerettigheder, kontakter, information, kultur og uddannelse. Mellem 1986 og 1992 tilkom tillids- og sikkerhedsskabende tiltag og våbenkontrol. Og med Paris Chartret fra 1990 ligger tyngdepunktet på folkeretten, demokrati, markedsliberale reformer, social retfærdighed og miljøaspekter samt, fra 1994, forebyggende diplomati, konfliktforebyggelse, krisestyring og kooperativ sikkerhed. I 15 af verdens brændpunkter har vi OSCE-missioner hvor der gøres et imponerene arbejde, der sjældent når ud i medierne. Medlemsstaterne, der skønt navnet også regner USA og Canada, er øget fra 34 i 1990 til 55 i dag og verden er gledet ind i en fase hvor OSCEs og FNs målsætninger og erfaringer er langt mere relevante end NATOs og f.eks. den Vest-Europæiske...

Danmark fungerar fram till årsskiftet som ordförandeland i OSSE, den Europeiska Säkerhets- och Samarbetsorganisationen. 18 &endash; 19 december arrangeras ett toppmöte i Köpenhamn. Jag hoppas att energin vid detta möte används till konkret handling och inte förspills i flortunna uttalanden. Under perioden 1975 &endash; 1985 profilerade sig OSSE när det gäller mänskliga rättigheter, information, kultur och utbildning. Mellan åren 1986 och 1992 tillkom förtroende- och säkerhetsskapande åtgärder samt vapenkontroll. Med Paris Chartret från 1990 ligger tyngdpunkten på folkrätt, demokrati, marknadsliberala reformer, social rättvisa, miljöfrågor samt från 1994 på förebyggande diplomati, konfliktförebyggande insatser, krishantering och kooperativ säkerhet. I 15 av världens brännpunkter har OSSE-insatser gjort imponerande mycket som sällan når ut i medierna. Medlemsstaterna, till vilka trots OSSEs namn också räknas USA och Kanada, har från 1990 ökat i antal från 34 till 55 i dag. Världen har gått in i ett skede, där OSSEs och FNs målsättningar och erfarenheter är...

LONDON– Graham Greene’s great novel, “The Comedians,” set in the Haiti of dictator Papa Doc, gives some support to the artist’s pious hope that “a writer is not so powerless as he usually feels, and a pen, as well as a silver bullet, can draw blood.” How else to explain how this half of a Caribbean island gets more of a press than it deserves? Moreover, it is, apart from Bosnia, the one part of the world that gets both a UN peacekeeping presence and the U.S.’s own one. It is in part the legacy of Graham Greene; it is partly the fascination with the lurid; but it is also, as it was for Central America in the last decade, because it is in America’s own backyard, with the added issue that when the politics and economics of this impoverished “vast wrinkled wasteland” go wrong the people take to their boats,...

LONDON– It has been whispered that Bill Clinton is deeply envious of his vice-president, Al Gore. Mr. Gore stands the chance of being the president Mr. Clinton wanted to be, trained and matured for the job, able to set his own agenda and priorities. Clinton, when he ran for the Democratic nomination, never expected to win; his intention was to position himself for a future attempt. Perhaps this is what explains his lack-lustre performance in foreign affairs. Unschooled, his ill thought out, event-driven foreign policy has been arguably the greatest twentieth century opportunity missed. Every leader’s foreign policy is event-driven to some extent, since the unpredictable is a large part of human life. But no other American president in my memory has made it almost an art form. Nothing demonstrates this more than Iraq. For all the sabre rattling of the last couple of weeks, Clinton the last few years has...

LONDON– By the hour the outline of the Russian-brokered deal is becoming clearer. Saddam Hussein has won what he has long sought– light at the end of the sanctions tunnel. But in return he has to renew his long-standing, but very on and off, commitment to the UN–to let its arms inspectors and dismantlers do their work unimpeded, until they are totally satisfied they have done their job. It is a good deal. America is giving away what it should have done a long time ago–the right for Iraq to live sanctions-free once the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction is complete. In return Iraq will give the world peace of mind. Over the last six years the UN inspectors have successfully dismantled Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme. Now they will continue the work of keeping his biological and chemical weapons programmes contained. The world has belatedly begun to wake up to...

By Dr. Zlatko Isakovic Center for Strategic Studies Survey, BelgradeNovember 1997 NATO enlargement – for what? The process of NATO enlargement has a great potential to influence significantly the security and sovereignty of Yugoslavia, and this trend will probably both continue and intensify in the future. The members of NATO and the Partnership for Peace program exercised a most significant influences upon the conflicts in Yugoslavia and in some of the neighboring countries; these conflicts, on the other hand, effect the security and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia. However, it seems that to the extent to which NATO armament alone was not able to stop communism (without a parallel activity of the civic society) on the European continent, it is equally not capable (alone) of eliminating ethnic conflicts (that determine the sovereignty and security of not only Yugoslavia, but practically also of all other states in the Balkans and in Central...

Top Stories from the Editorial/Opinion pages of theInternational Herald Tribune, Friday, November 14, 1997 WILMINGTON, Delaware – The recent dramatic announcements of record-setting contributions to international causes by Ted Turner and George Soros suggest tremendous possibilities for the future.These two men signify the rise of a new breed of global philanthropist active in fashioning an international civil society. It was globalization that gave them the opportunities to amass extraordinary wealth. It now provides them and others with a unique opportunity to contribute to human well-being. This includes pushing for the democratization of the global order, a goal that governments are reluctant to promote. Such individuals could do this most imaginatively by providing funds for the establishment of a popularly elected Global Peoples’ Assembly, which would provide the world’s citizens for the first time with a forum to express their planetary aspirations and grievances outside the traditional nation-state context. Elections for this...

LONDON– Bill Clinton’s first foreign policy action when he became president was to bomb Iraq. Now five years on perhaps he is going to end up bombing Iraq again. With a military whose firepower has no peer, supported by a budget more than the military budgets of all the other industrial nations of the world combined, the temptation to work outside of UN authority and deliver a quick one is doubtless difficult to resist. The job of U.S. president comes with the burden of two hundred years of America’s twin aspirations–to be invulnerable and to be able to realize its imperial ambitions. One thing can be said with assurance after watching Mr. Clinton as commander-in-chief for five years: he never absorbed in any significant amounts the worldly wisdom of his mentor, William Fulbright, the Arkansas senator who became chairman of the Senate’s foreign relations committee and who resisted president Lyndon Johnson’s...

By Seiji Yoshida In April of 1996, the “U.N. Kuwarasuwami Report” by Ms. Kuwarasuwami, the special reporter, was officially approved by the plenary session of the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee held in the U.N. European Headquarter. And my name and part of my book were referred to in Clause 29 of this report for the “Conform Women” of the World War II. During the war, the Japanese army organized “comfort stations” in occupied areas and on the front lines, forcing more than hundred thousand young women to be prostitutes for Japanese officers and solders. Comfort women were caged like cattle and forced to work as sexual slaves, each raped by tens of Japanese solders every day. In the Philippines, the only Christian country in Asia, the Japanese army forced even Catholic nuns into sexual slavery. In 1943 to 1944, I worked as an official for Japan’s labor recruitment organization...

The disintegration of the last Stalinist redoubt continues apace–and is still way ahead of schedule. That is if one assumes, as the world did a mere ten years ago, that even the “liberal” Soviet satellite states, such as Poland and Hungary, would not turn to democracy for another generation. The fall of one man communism before the end of the millennium, now probably imminent in North Korea, could not have been supposed until we learnt by living experience how friable the Berlin Wall really was. Yet both South Korea and the U.S. behave for far too much of the time as if North Korea is still a behemoth to be feared, a piece of reinforced concrete that is impenetrable to the ideas and influences of the outside world. No one in their right mind, remembering the Korean War and the subsequent years of terrifying sabre rattling and terrorism by the...