Celebration. The best work for fraternity during the precedent year. Abolition of standing armies. The formation and spreading of peace congresses. Conferring the greatest benefit on (hu)mankind. These where the elements that Alfred Nobel had in his mind when he imagined a peace prize. These elements combined in extraordinary manners should embody Alfred Nobel´s spirit… Read more »
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So, Who Will It Be This Year?
It is that time of year again. No, I’m not talking about the announcement of this years’ winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, but rather the announcement of my shortlist of favorites. This is a tradition that won’t go away. I keep, as Foreign Policy put it, soldiering on, silently hoping this will be the… Read more »
Putin’s Syrian intrigue has yielded zero dividends
Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war appeared to gain momentum every day over the past month, up until President Vladimir Putin’s address to the UN General Assembly on September 28th. The intention behind moving troops and equipment to Syria, while denying these deployments, was quite possibly to build momentum for Putin’s initiative. The… Read more »
Pakistan’s Crippling Energy Crisis and Increasing Remittances
Deadly heat exposes Pakistan’s power problems. This summer CNBC run a report titled Deadly heat exposes Pakistan’s power problems after more than a thousand people died during heatwaves during the first days of Ramadan. Insufficient preparedness for the heatwave is largely seen as the cause of deaths, yet the context of the protracted electricity… Read more »
Non-violent Resistance and Double Repression
January 12, 2013: Israeli armed forces dismantle a peaceful Palestinian sit-in in the West Bank, arresting several of the organizers. July 6, 2012: the Palestinian Authority’s security forces violently attack a peaceful demonstration against normalization with Israel in Ramallah, the West Bank. These episodes illustrate the predicament of Palestinian non-violent activists. These activists experience what… Read more »
War is Development in Reverse
The UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals are ready for adoption. For the first time, the UN will measure the incidence of one of the most controversial, but important, development indicators: the amount of armed conflict in the world. On 25 September this year, a UN summit will adopt the new Sustainable Development Goals. These will… Read more »
We are being Put to the Test
We must both take in refugees and preserve our culture and way of living. A flood of migrants is coming to Europe. They are fleeing chaos and war. They are from all levels of society. The vast majority would have remained in their homelands if they had been able. But as a result of violence,… Read more »
Refugees are Also Migrants. And All Migrants Matter
The recent debate over word choice has taken turns that undermine humanitarian principles and cloud the view of how migration is unfolding. The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, the BBC, and others have examined the usage of ‘refugees’ versus ‘migrants’ over the past week. The general impression is that ‘migrants’ are being… Read more »
World War II Becomes a Chinese War
70 years ago, Japan signed an agreement of formal surrender on an American warship in Tokyo Bay. The anniversary of this event will be marked in Beijing today, September 3rd by a massive military parade in which Chinese and Russian soldiers march together. President Xi Jinping’s most important guest during the parade will be Russian… Read more »
The Dangers of Alarmism
Threat identification and threat inflation are clearly important elements in international affairs. However, determining which threats and fears people and policymakers will embrace as notable and important is difficult. Thus, the American public and its leaders have remained remarkably calm about the dangers of genetically modified food while becoming very wary of nuclear power. The… Read more »