Links to Facts & Views
You want to find interesting analyses, reports, articles and papers on peace and conflict issues from around the world?
Now we do the job for you. This page provides links to a selection of the best critical and constructive materials – the essential stuff we benefit from ourselves and want to share.
Just click below at what catches your interest – read, download or send on to a friend.
A NEW COLD WAR ?
Are nuclear policies shaping a new Cold War era?• New U.S. policies anatagonize Russia and China
The Clinton administration appears to be heading for a confrontation with Russia and China on its plans to develop an antiballistic missile (ABM) system capable of warding off blows from rogue states like North Korea and Iran.High-level Chinese diplomat sees the United States developing into a rogue state.• The U.S. is drunk with its own power
Washington seems to be developing a stubbornness against abiding by weapons’ control pacts and a greater penchant to use armed force against its real or perceived enemies. This is not the era of peace it could have been, says the director-general of the Arms Control and Disarmament Department of the Chinese foreign ministry.Russia’s warfare in Chechenya, just an immitation of NATO’s in Yugoslavia?• On Winning Battles And Losing Wars
Russians who want to bomb Chechnya can cite NATO’s behavior as a moral standard. What’s the essential difference between Clinton and Putin – asks The Moscow Times in an editorial.Provocative steps continue in the direction of a less peaceful world. Does the U.S. really feel that threatened – or is it just hysteria and the military-industrial complex at work again?• U.S. missile defence plans worry and provoke
The U.S. wish to change the ABM Treaty is “extremely dangerous,” says Russia – and worries why Hungary is ready to accept NATO’s nuclear weapons. Reuters reported at the same time that Hungary intends to increase it military budget 43 per cent next year…NONVIOLENCE
Think if we could learn to see non-violence when it happens…here is an attempt:• Documentary tracks victories of nonviolent strategies for changeThe power of nonviolent resistance to check tyranny and injustice is the theme of a thoughtful new documentary that magnifies the moral victories of the 20th century – writes Gail Russell Chaddock in the Christian Science Monitor about “A Force More Powerful.”
Reconciliation and foregiveness must be part of any serious post-war policy. And the Westmay have something to learn.• Taming the desire for revengeAs the international community strives to restore stability in Kosovo and East Timor, two African countries with their own traumatic histories have dug deeply into their cultural reservoirs. A route strikingly different from Western therapeutic approaches has been taken in communities across Mozambique, where 1 million people lost their lives in a 16-year civil war that devastated the country.
GLOBALIZATION
History’s most controversial world trade meeting is about to take place•The World Trade Organization, WTO, meeting in Seattle
The World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting is attracting people who oppose global governance – such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The ruckus will make the Seattle Round, as it is known, the most controversial trade negotiations yet. And that’s before the trade ministers even start debating. “I don’t recall any trade meeting … with this kind emotion,” . Read more and find interesting links in the Christian Science Monitor.And here are two of the many sites that tell you why people protest• WTO versus human rights, the environment and against pluralismPlease use this site to learn more about issues surrounding the World Trade Organization and its effects on our society, and please get involved. The WTO must be radically changed if we are to enjoy a society based on human rights, labor rights, and environmental protection around the world. See the Sierra Club, too.
THE BALKANS
If Albania falls apart again, what will NATO do?• Will NATO fight another war – among Albanians?
Despite their long history of conflict, Albania’s divided ethnic groups presented a united front during the war in Kosovo. Now that the war is over, however, the country has elected the previous leadership and resumed its internal feuding. It is likely this feuding will escalate to a clash threatening to envelop Kosovo, and forcing NATO to become involved in yet another foreign ethnic conflict – writes Stratfor.com.We were told that NATO carried out a humanitarian intervention, preventing a genocide in Kosovo. What’s the emerging truth?• Lost in the Kosovo numbers game
In a grim and icy-cold corner of northern Kosovo is the site of what was suspected to be the country’s largest mass grave. To date, however, four months later, the International War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague has had to admit that its investigation of the site has turned up no evidence of bodies or of any wrongdoing by the Serbs – writes Jon Swain in Sunday Times.Could it be that someone deliberately exaggerated – remember we always heard Western politicians say that people in the Balkans could not be trusted?• Cook accused of misleading public on Kosovo massacresRobin Cook, the foreign secretary, is under pressure to answer claims that ministers misled the public over the scale of deaths among civilians in Kosovo to justify the Nato bombing of Belgrade. The all-party Balkans committee of MPs will ask the Foreign Office this week to comment on reports that the number of bodies of victims of Serbian ethnic cleansing is lower than the figures of dead issued during the conflict – writes Nicholas Rufford in Sunday Times.
Others also wonder about the genocide – what was called Operation Horseshoe…•Where is the evidence of genocide on Albanians?Count another victory for the Big Lie. Meanwhile, the normally reliable Society for Endangered People in Germany says 90,000 Gypsies have been forced to flee since the Serbs left Kosovo, with the KLA conducting ethnic cleansing on a grand scale. But who cares about Gypsies? – asks Alexander Cockburn in Los Angeles Times.
And what will be the status of Kosovo?• Observers disagree on future of KosovoWall Street Journal editorial features editor Max Boot asks how “colonialism, UN-style” is going in Kosovo, concluding that “the idea of Kosovo as anything but a ward of the international community seems remote.” And Carl Bildt is certain it will become a republic. Read more at the UN Foundations Wire.
THE ARMS RACE
Are we going to see a new type of war – as a consequence of Kosovo?•War in space against satellites
That’s pushing the Pentagon into a whole new kind of warfare. In the future, the U.S. military will be responsible for “countering . . . space systems and services used for hostile purposes,” says a Pentagon space policy paper published in July. That’s a nice way of saying the Pentagon needs to be prepared to defend the ultimate high ground by attacking hostile satellites.And U.S. miliary spending continues to rise• How much is enough?US defense for 2000 will be more than three times greater than the combined military spending of China, Russia, and the rogue states Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea and Cuba…writes Justin Brown in the Christian Science Monitor.
And is that why even mainstream American commentators are increasingly worried?• America The Menacing
Perhaps the big news in all this is that 10 years after the Cold War began to end, nuclear arsenals and the strategies that govern them still occupy a central place in global and American politics. The Berlin Wall went quietly into history’s long night. But Dr. Strangelove is alive and flitting–stirring ambitions and concerns on Capitol Hill, at the Kremlin, in grubby think tanks in New Delhi and in gilded salons at the Elysee Palace – writes Jim Hoagland in Washington Post.WIRE Editor
Jan Oberg with TFF Associates
