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LONDON- “The arm of the moral universe is long it bends towards justice”. So said Martin Luther King. And indeed, since Nuremberg and the first international court for war crimes to try Nazi leaders, the development of international human rights law has steadily improved. Justice, even if it’s often two steps forward, one step back, is by the decade reaching further. The case of ex-dictator General Augusto Pinochet is now back before the law lords in London and the betting here is that they will confirm their earlier ruling that he does not have sovereign immunity. But even if the decision goes the other way it will have pushed the British and other governments to clarify the standing of international law–the treaties on genocide, torture, hostage-taking and the supression of terrorism in particular–in domestic law. In any event the ruling ought to be overshadowed by the debate now coming to a...

LONDON – If it’s eight years since the Gulf War and Saddam Hussein still rules then it is as well not to forget it’s 46 years since the end of the Korean War and Kim Il Sung still rules. Well, although dead, he is still “Eternal President”, whilst his son, Kim Jong Il manages day to day mortal affairs from his position as Secretary General of the Korean Workers’ Party. In terms of danger posed to the outside world North Korea is a much greater threat than Iraq. North Korea is much further ahead in the outcasts’ rush to produce an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. It clearly has the capacity to develop–and may well have long ago built–nuclear weapons. And it is not far short of being able to construct an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. Last August it sent a three stage rocket hurtling over Japan–in an attempt to launch...

LONDON – Will historians a hundred years hence look at the end of the twentieth century much as we now look at the end of the nineteenth and say, `unfortunately the peace and prosperity of that moment was but an interlude before the bloodiest century in mankind’s history?’ Will they conclude as Aldous Huxley did, that “Every road towards a better state of society is blocked, sooner or later, by war, by threats of war, preparations for war. That is the truth, the odious and unacceptable truth.” The pessimists of our day have grist for their mill–President Bill Clinton has just announced he wants the largest rise in the military budget since the end of the Cold War build up under Ronald Reagan: the nightmare of containing and restraining Iraq and North Korea continues; civil wars that target civilians more than soldiers are all over the place; and nuclear weapons are...

Peace Information Center, Faculty of Political ScienceThammasat University On August 7, 1998 two bombs exploded at the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 263 people and wounded approximately 4,000. Two weeks later , on August 20, the US navy launched 75 to 80 Tomahawk cruise missiles from its ships in the Arabian and the Red Sea at targets the American government believes to have been a chemical weapons plant somewhere Northeast of Khartoum, Sudan and a training camp for terrorists 150 Km. Southeast of Kabul, Afghanistan. Thirty people were reported killed by these missiles. Soon after the attacks, US President Bill Clinton said they were not aimed against Islam, but at “fanatics and killers who wrap murder in the cloak of righteousness”. Supporters of the attack include Newt Gingrich, the Republican House Speaker, who said the US “did exactly the right thing”, traditional allies such as Chancellor Kohl of...

LONDON – Writing in 1751 Voltaire described Europe as “a kind of great republic, divided into several states, some monarchical, the others mixed but all corresponding with one another. They have all the same religious foundation, even if divided into several confessions. They all have the same principles of public law and politics unknown in other parts of the world.” At 11.30 pm. Central European Time, on December 31st, European Union central bankers will send their currency rates versus the dollar to the central bank of Belgium. The “Big Bang” of currency union can then be set underway as midnight strikes. In a way that Charlemagne, Voltaire, William Penn and Gladstone, the early advocates of European unity, could only dream, a united Europe becomes an almighty reality. A single currency is the most dramatic of the steps taken so far towards what surely one day will be a single political entity....

Der er ret bred enighed om at sikkerhedpolitik idag handler om andet og mere end militær. Almindelige mennesker véd det, eksperter og statsmænd taler om menneskelig og social sikkerhed, om betydningen af at forebygge og håndtere konflikter. Vi ser i medierne at sikkerhed drejer sig om miljøet, om den globale økonomiske krise, om flygtninge og fremmedhad. Vi ser at våbenhandlere, krigsherrer og maffiosi bidrager til krige, der handler om historie, identitet og etnisk rensning. Og vi véd at kærnevåben udgør en trussel, særligt dér hvor politikere er ansvarløse nok til at true med dem og dér hvor der savnes penge til at vedligeholde systemerne. Vi véd også at stadigt flere fattige, arbejdsløse og tilsidesatte på vor jord skaber bitterhed, fundamentalisme, kort sagt usikkerhed. Og selvfølgelig véd alle, der har deres sunde fornuft i behold, at danske tanks eller F16-fly ikke kan være løsningen på sådanne problemer. Men den danske regering...

Under den kolde krig handlede sikkerheds- og forsvarspolitik ikke om at løse konflikter eller forebygge vold. Konflikten mellem Øst- og Vestblokkene blev bevaret gennem at balancere, afskrække og forberede sig for det tilfælde at krig skulle blive en realitet. I næsten 50 år betragtede politikere, intellektuelle, diplomater og medier derfor konfliktanalyse, mægling, konflikthåndtering og -løsning, voldsforebyggelse og emner som forsoning og tilgivelse som stort set irrelevante. Ikkevoldelige, civile indsatser derfor en beskeden rolle. Øst-Vestkonflikten blev da heller ikke løst; hvad der skete var at Østblokken gik i opløsning. Nu er det anderledes. Der er ikke to blokke og et sæt veldefinerede spilleregler; der er sammenbrud i en række stater, opløsning af spillleregler og udvikling af paramilitære hære og private krigsherrer. Der er én supermagt, USA. Der er alt andet end orden. Vi har oplevet krig i Europa og Danmark er med langt fremme i udviklingen af det ekspansive, såkaldt nye...

Er danskerne mon klare over at den nye forsvarskommissions rapport lægger op til en politik, der indebærer voksende risici for Danmark og for danske soldater – og at den ikke behandler disse risici? Kommissionens resonnement ser sådan ud: Det er ikke muligt at få øje på en direkte militær trussel mod dansk territorium, vor direkte sikkerhed. Vi skal derfor bruge flere resourcer på den indirekte sikkerhed, nemlig deltagelse i internationale fredsstøttende operation, som de kaldes. Det ligger heri at Danmarks egen sikkerhed er summen af hvad vi stiller op mod såvel den direkte som den indirekte sikkerheds udfordringer. Selvom vi skal deltage i internationale operationer, så skal vi fortsat være forberedte på en turbulente udvikling i Rusland, der – siges det – kunne have neo-imperiale hensigter. Hermed sikrer man naturligtvis det danske militærs mere eller mindre uforandrede eksistens samtidig med at man kan ekspandere med de nye opgaver og nyt...

LONDON–One of the greatest ironies of our fin de siecle age is that arms control in the post Cold War dispensation has been much more frozen than it was during the superpower permafrost itself. Then there was SALT and START, the acronyms of nuclear arms limits and cuts and, arguably most important of all, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. But since START 2 was signed in 1993 the only positive element working towards pushing forward the frontiers of arms control has been H20* and O2*– in common parlance rust. Russian missiles are literally rusting in their silos with the unforeseen result that even the Pentagon’s top brass are becoming uneasy that this gives the U.S. such superiority in the (workable) missile count that to spend even more money on renewing and modernising the U.S. arsenal to maintain the numbers allowed under START 2 is to throw money away. Rust has achieved...

LONDON–The continuing detention of the Kurdish guerrilla leader, Abdullah Ocalan, head of the violent Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) remains the biggest issue on the new Italian, ex-communist led, government’s plate. There is no easy way of resolving it. Which ever way the courts and government rule on Turkey’s request for his extradition the decision will ensure ongoing problems of enormous and far reaching magnitude. Turkey, to boot, doesn’t have a fully functioning government and it remains an open question whether the veteran centre-left leader, prime minister-designate Bulent Ecevit, can pull even a temporary one together. Even if both governments were utterly stable and secure it would take enormous political effort to find a passage through rocks such as this case throws in their path (as the British and Irish governments are now finding as they face the most difficult stumbling block of the Ulster peace negociations thus far–when should the...

Remembering the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights LONDON – In captivity Augusto Pinochet should perhaps find time to read Mahatma Gandhi who used to say that one could assess a civilization by the manner with which it dealt with minorities and those that disagreed with it. Ralf Dahrendorf, the eminence grise of European education, made a similar point in an address before that remarkable campaigning power-house, the Minority Rights Group. “Defense of minority rights is the litmus test of liberty and the rule of law”, Professor Dahrendorf said and went on wryly to note, “ruling interests and beliefs need no protection: power protects, though it may corrupt as well.” A Martian arriving today could be pardoned for thinking earthlings had never confronted minority rights issues until Yugoslavia exploded, so bewitched and bewildered they still appear to be by the experience. The Cold War was a frozen...

LONDON – When the United Nations pulled its troops out of the Congo in June 1964 Secretary General U Thant reported “The UN cannot permanently protect the Congo from internal tensions and disturbances created by its own organic growth towards unity and nationhood”. That was some kind of relief after a peacekeeping operation that nearly tore apart the UN and claimed the life of U Thant’s predecessor, Dag Hammerskjold. Yet the UN did bring a measure of peace to the Congo in the sense that it ended a civil war fought over the succession of the mineral rich province of Katanga and provided an alternative to what was in danger of becoming an East-West grab for influence that threatened to turn the Congo into a major Cold War battleground. Once again the Congo has become a maelstrom. Susan Rice, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa, warns that the fighting...