April 1998

LONDON–If Saddam Hussein bothered to read Paul McCartney’s hand-written eulogy after the death of his wife, Linda, we can be sure that he laughed/simply didn’t understand the sentiment/uttered an expletive–or all three. The partnership of Paul and Linda symbolised not just the rewards of marital harmony but a change deep in the soul of western culture. William Rees-Mogg, a former editor of the conservative London Times, described it approvingly in his recent column as a “reaction against the world of masculine discipline, of khaki and rifles, the world culture in the first half of the century, in the direction of peace and love.” Hence, it is no surprise that when today’s West, with leaders at its helm who matured in the sixties and seventies, come up against the machismo of Saddam Hussein there is an enormous gulf of understanding that diplomacy finds hard to bridge and that, perversely, creates a...

LONDON– Not much in the dark arts of international relations is purposely kept more opaque than the Missile Technology Control Regime. Although a western creation, founded by the U.S., Canada, France, Britain and Germany in 1987, one might conclude from its byzantine penchant for secrecy it was designed by Russia which signed up only in 1995 or even by Turkey which signed last year. Its purpose is to limit the diffusion of the know-how for building rockets that can deliver nuclear weapons. Anyone these days can build a nuclear weapon, but delivering it by long-range missile remains an art mastered by a restricted inner circle. Thanks to a small group of American and Russian scholars working under the auspices of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, but sheltering under the dispensation granted by the comradeship of the Russian-American space cooperation effort, we have been given a dispassionate, but quite frightening,...

LONDON– The unanswered question for the new government in India: is the country now going to come out of the closet and declare itself an armed nuclear power, ready and prepared if necessary to strike a mortal blow at its adversaries? Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said shortly after the election that the government has resolved to “re-evaluate the country’s nuclear policy and exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons”. Yet the delicate balancing act of his coalition government is clearly a brake on what his Hindu-nationalist Bharitiya Janata Party would do if left to its own devices. But how much of a brake remains unclear. If the government does go ahead then the world before very long should expect to see a series of nuclear tests and within a year the commissioning of around a 100 aircraft to carry nuclear weapons and a step up in the pace of an...

LONDON–When Martin Luther King died 30 years ago this weekend the outlook for America’s race relations looked on the surface unredeemable: a future of more urban riots, further polarisation of the races, white reaction feeding black reaction in ever ascending spirals of bitterness and hate. There seemed to be little on the horizon to give ground for hope. The south was fighting what appeared at the time to be a successful rearguard action against the 1954 Supreme Court decision to desegregate schools and the 1964 Civil Rights Act that outlawed discrimination in public places. The north was becoming increasingly segregated. The electoral drift was towards the right, soon to bring to power Richard Nixon and the end to any thought of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”. Black revolutionary militancy was becoming more bold and confident. Yet within only three years the picture had changed dramatically. Polarisation didn’t worsen. Blacks en masse...

“Svi zainteresirani bi se trebali okupiti i krozrazgovor utvrditi OCIGLEDNE alternative militaristickojpolitici uopce a narocito politici sirenja NATO saveza,”apelira dr Oberg. “Prema izjavama predsednika Clintona idrzavnog tajnika, Madelaine Albright, trenutni iskorak naprosirenju koji ukljucuje Poljsku, Cesku i Madjarsku samo jeprvi u nizu. Zbog toga smatramo da je upravo sada trenutakkada trebamo pripremiti i zastupati nove alternativesuprotstavljene nastavljanju ovog opasnog procesa. Buducesirenje NATO-a treba biti zaustavljeno,” izjavljuje direktorTFF-a. “NATO je bio i ostaje prilagodjen za vodjenje hladnograta. U samoj svojoj sustini, savez se nije niti najmanjeizmjenio. Ne smije se dozvoliti da NATO zauvjek predvodi imonopolizira u pitanjima sigurnosti svjeta. Vojni prioritetikojima se on rukovodi, te osobito njegovo nuklearnonaoruzanje, cine NATO jednim od problema sa kojima secovjecanstvo danas suocava a nikako ne instrumentom kojitreba iskoristiti za iznalazenje novih miroljubivihpostupaka pomocu kojih bi trebali olaksati prelazak u novo isasvim drugacije razdoblje. Sirenje NATO-a predstavlja cistu glupost. Ono sesuprotstavlja svakoj viziji svijeta buducnosti u...

“All concerned should come together and discuss theOBVIOUS alternatives to militarist policies in general andNATO expansion in particular,” appeals Dr. Oberg. “Accordingto President Clinton and Secretary of State MadeleineAlbright, the present expansion involving Poland, the CzechRepublic and Hungary is only the first in a series. Now isthe time, therefore, to prepare for a new advocacy ofalternatives to the continuation of this dangerousdevelopment. Further NATO expansion must be stopped,” saysthe TFF director. “NATO was and remains geared to the Cold War. In itsessence, the alliance has not changed. NATO must not beallowed forever to lead or monopolise world securityaffairs. Its military priorities and nuclearism inparticular make NATO a part of humanity’s problem, not aninstrument in the exploration of the new peace policies thatought to unfold in this genuinely new era. NATO expansion is sheer folly. It contradicts everyvision of a world in which we learn to clash as civilisedcreatures, solve our...