A couple of days ago I was on the Moscow metro. In the interchange I asked two twenty something young women the direction. Then they asked me did I like Russia? I asked them the same question and they said “no”. They didn’t like the way President Vladimir Putin was restricting freedom.
Then I asked them what they thought of Ukraine. They said that it upset them. They had some Russian-speaking friends living in eastern Ukraine and the friends didn’t feel the militias represented them.
Interestingly, the women said they knew there were Russian troops in Ukraine.
This was one of the most explicit but rare condemnations of Russia that I came across.
I also talked to two groups of students at Moscow’s prestigious Institute of World Economy and International Relations, where I had been invited to speak by the US-Russian Forum, where top think-tankers and academics tried to thrash out their differences.Read More »
Obama faces a “three-headed monster” (INYT 5 Sep 2014): Russia-Ukraine, ISIS, and Asia with a US “pivot”. Show NATO strength in Eastern Europe; crush ISIS (Colin Powell’s 9/11 remedy for Al-Qaeda); 60% of US force and “all but China” treaties in Asia-Pacific.
It is not going to work.
Not with Obama-Biden-Kerry, nor with McCain; be it one monster with three heads or three with one each. There is no way in which Donbass will become a peaceful, integrated part of a unitary two-nation Ukraine; the Sunni-Arab world will find ways to integrate and undo Sykes-Picot; and no way in which one Asia-Pacific will choose USA over China. They want both, as the PM of Malaysia, Najib Razak, expresses it so well; eulogizing both.
For possible solutions or ways out see below; first a focus on the head of the US monster with a heavily flawed brain. Of course there are many US voices on top, heated discussions; however, policy, action produced by thought, comes as if from one brain to show unity.
However, the flaws are also many, producing and reproducing bad policies: Read More »
The following post, was previously published as a co-authored two-part article by Akbar Ganji and myself in AlJazeera English on August 20-21, 2014; its basic premise is that the persistent defiance of international law by a sovereign state should carry delegitimizing consequences; the geopolitical grant of impunity to Israel evident throughout the aggressive military operation being carried out against an essentially helpless civilian population in Gaza suggests that neither the UN, nor governments in the region, nor leading governments in the world possess the political will to challenge such a frontal assault upon the authority of international law.
We write from two very distinct backgrounds as members of civil society devoted to human rights and the global rule of law, and invite others to join in reflecting upon how civil society can bring law to bear more effectively on the behavior of the Israeli government, and in the process, help empower the people of Palestine in their quest for national self-determination and the fulfillment of their rights under international law so long denied. We try to make this central argument by positing the idea of ‘Outlaw State’ as a descriptive designation that might have some influence in civil society mobilizations of the sort associated with the global solidarity movement backing the Palestinian struggle and supporting such militant nonviolence as animating the BDS Campaign.
Israel has become an outlaw state. In his book, The Law of Peoples, John Rawls defines (pp. 5 and 90) an outlaw state as one that systematically violates the universal principles of human rights, and commits aggression against other nations.
Israel is guilty of repeated such violations as well as several massive acts of aggression, making it reasonable and responsible to identify it as an outlaw state. Such a pattern of behavior also contradicts the most basic principles of international law as embodied in the UN Charter pertaining to the use of international force, and obstructs the fundamental promise in the Preamble of the Charter “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.
It has become appropriate for the international community and global civil society to act accordingly.Read More »
TFF’s first report from Yugoslavia from September 1991 carried the title, After Yugoslavia – What? It is now one of 127 reports and articles in the huge research and policy blog – Yugoslavia – What Should Have Been Done?
It contains the equivalent of 2000 book pages authored by Johan Galtung, Jan Oberg and Hakan Wiberg. All articles are published as they were written at the time. For anyone to see whose analyses stood the test of time.
We opened this blog two days ago – on the 23rd year of TFF’s first of some 70 peace missions into the war zones.
While it is important to analyse the world, it is more important to criticise it and most important to search – and re-search – alternatives to it. Thus the title. You are kindly invited to browse.
Such work is not only of historical interest. It carries a message for the future – as does all good research.
While inner factors were certainly dominant, the West – in its misguided attempt at playing peace maker – Read More »
Violence should have had its day. Look at its non-achievements: The US/British/French invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. The upheavals of the “Arab Spring”. And now Ukraine.
Will we ever learn its limitations?
In Iraq outsiders’ violence overthrew the dictator Saddam Hussein who for all his faults provided stability, safety on the streets, food, a falling infant mortality rate and universal health services. What did it substitute beside the worthwhile job of killing off Saddam?
Mayhem, tens of thousands of deaths of innocents, fear of the street, shortages of food, upheavals in the health services and schools. And an ongoing instability, not least the opening given to ISIS.
Is the title of a book published by TRANSCEND University Press in 2009, now in second printing, and several translations including Chinese. There were two subtitles indicating answers: Successors, Regionalization or Globalization? – US Blossoming or US Fascism?
What is the situation today, five years later?
Successors? UK is militarily with USA to keep Anglo-America as a dominant world force even if a shadow of 50 years ago; France tries to keep its hold on former colonies in Africa; they use NATO-North Atlantic Treaty Organization for military and EU-European Union for political support. In empires the local elites line up to do the killing; yet the Western powers have mainly to do that themselves.
China is very active economically abroad, some of it structural violence; however, the military component has not been used aggressively.
Russia went into the “near abroad”, CIS-Commonwealth of Independent States, Ukraine; but for other reasons. The gift of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 was a mistake to be corrected as conditions changed; and Moscow, not Kiev, proposes federal solutions for “one country, two nations”. In short, no successors.Read More »
As announced just a few minutes ago, the Ukrainian and Russian president have agreed to what the first reports call a permanent ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine.
That’s indeed the best piece of news from that region.
It places the NATO Summit in Wales this Thursday and Friday in a new light.
The ceasefire must be solidified
However, an agreement over a phone is only a beginning; the devil is in the details. Secondly, there is no mention – yet – of the East Ukrainian fighters are on board this agreement.
Time for UN peacekeeping
Third, a credible ceasefire should be monitored by neutral observers and competent people. The only ones who can do that is the UN peace-keepers – perhaps with some staff also from Russia and Ukraine.Read More »
Kuala Lumpur, International Islamic University of Malaysia, 19 Aug 2014
Nothing good. But let us have a look at it in the standard peace studies way: Diagnosis – analyzing, Prognosis – forecasting, and Therapy – remedies, even solutions.
“Israel-Palestine” is the discourse Tel Aviv-Washington prefers. They have all the strong cards: overwhelming military power, political veto in the United Nations Security Council, the economic upper hand in interlocking economies – not just oil cash from Saudi Arabia-Qatar–and the idea of working for a solution with Washington as “mediator” – only the U.S. can bring the two together, gently or roughly–toward a sustainable peace.
A great distance from reality is needed to believe in that spin.
USA and Israel are interlocked by a much deeper tieRead More »
My post below, an earlier version of which was published in AlJazeera English as an opinion piece. It was written before I had the opportunity to read an illuminating assessment of the regional and global turmoil that culminated for now in the massacre carried out by Israeli armed forces in Gaza. I highly recommend “The Tragedy of Great Power: The Massacre of Gaza and the Inevitable Failure of the Arab Spring” written by the learned Islamic jurist and scholar, Khaled Abou El Fadl, a distinguished professor at UCLA School of Law, with the link to the article below:
What makes Professor El Fadl profound essay particularly valuable is his ability to fit the regional pieces together in a convincing manner, showing how and why governments that rule in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, encouraged the overthrow of Egypt’s elected government headed by Mohamed Morsi in mid-2013 and more recently encouraged Israel to destroy Hamas.
He also shows that Hamas is not accurately perceived as a byproduct of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, but has its own “very distinct pedagogies, objectives and methodologies.” In depicting the forces of resistance and transformation as opposed to the geopolitics of counterrevolution as constituting the core struggle taking place throughout the region it becomes clear why the alignments in the Middle East are assuming their current configurations.
It is telling and provocative for Professor El Fadl to situate the Palestinian Liberation Organization (and by implication, the Palestinian Authority) as de facto allies of Sisi’s Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE as well as being existential partners of the United States and Israel in subjugating the region to Western goals.
What has developed further since the end of the Cold War rivalry that long dominated the region should be considered a geopolitical protection racket that gained political salience in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The upheavals of 2011 shook the foundations of the old order, and led to renewals throughout the region of Faustian Bargains by which various authoritarian regimes receive protection, including help with the destruction of any political actor, whether Islamic or not, that dares to challenge this established order composed of ultra-rich native elites claiming dynastic privileges conferred by colonial powers then seeking native collaborators to manage exploited and oppressed populations.
While these elites appease Israel, the masses in the same political space remain passionately and symbolically dedicated to the Palestinian struggle as became evident in the September 9, 2011 attack by several thousand Egyptians on the Israeli Embassy shortly while the heroic memories of the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak were still fresh.
Of all the complexities surrounding the reaction of the world to the horrifying spectacle of Israel’s severe criminality in Gaza none is more perplexing than the complicity of most governments throughout the Arab world.
What makes their political posture particularly bewildering is the degree of ethnic, religious, cultural, and historical commonality that creates such close ties of identity among the peoples of the region. And no single issue has been as unifying over the decades for these people than has their long intensely felt opposition to the injustice, suffering, and exploitation that the Palestinian people have endured for the past century as a result of the encroachments of the Zionist movement on their lands. Read More »
Unless something totally unforseen happens, Denmark will begin to participate in the war against ISIS and Co., this week.
But a week ago it was only a humanitarian mission.
There is indeed something rotten in the – rogue – state of Denmark…
Iraq – the worst Danish foreign policy decision since 1945
Denmark’s participation in the Iraq war and as occupying power 2003-2007 is, without a doubt, the worst and most criminal piece of foreign policy since 1945.
It was decided by the government of Anders Fogh Rasmussen who afterwards was rewarded by being appointed to the post of NATO S-G.
Now a military transport for the U.S.
On Wednesday this week, the Danish parliament, Folketinget, will decided to continue this foreign policy blunder by authorising a Danish Hercules military transport aircraft to participate in bringing weapons into the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq at the request of the U.S.
Humanitarian less than a week ago
Conspicuously, this operation was – less than a week ago – presented to the Danish media and public as an exclusively humanitarian operation.
The chairperson of the Parliament’s Foregin Policy Committee talked with passion about the need to help all the people who suffered, had fled and needed our immediate attention. At the time I thought it was a good idea.
All the political parties, from the extreme right to the extreme left are now behind the military operation. And unless something totally unforseen happens, Denmark will begin to participate in the war against ISIS and Co., this week.
The mission has been changed from humanitarian aid to weapons and is, according the Defence minister, ready to depart even Wednesday.Read More »
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