February 2008

and the international law.’ Strangely, EU’s President has to defend his Union against critics who maintain that its mission called LEX – meaning law! – is not established according to international law. Unfortunately for Barosso, they are right and have read and understood Resolution 1244 of 1999 (after NATO’s bombing) in which the members were: – “Reaffirming the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other States of the region, as set out in the Helsinki Final Act and annex 2,” and – “Reaffirming the call in previous resolutions for substantial autonomy and meaningful self-administration for Kosovo.”  Indeed, what is there to discuss? If 1244 were respected by Western law-breaking governments, EULEX could only have been established in agreement with Serbia/Belgrade as were all other international missions in Kosovo since 1999 – and by the local authorities and...

February 20, 2008 Jan Oberg Do you believe that freedom of opinion, diversity, fairness, impartiality, basic knowledge, and research should be defining principles behind the news YOU get? Then read the press release from TFF below which contains a fairly unique background story. It was mailed to about 400 journalists and editorial offices in Scandinavia and over 1000 worldwide, specialised in international affairs. We got about the response we expected: 3 – CNN International, Radio Netherlands and Voima in Finland. 1397 chose to cut and paste telegrams from exclusively Western bureaus or write without relying on external expertise or research. So, routine-routine and politically correct – they repeat what for instance George W. Bush, Javier Solana, Nikolas Sarkozy and other Western leaders say interspersed with “angry” Serbs torching a border station on the Kosovo-Serbia border and “defiant” Belgrade – allied with the Russians so we know what to think about them – may...

LONDON – Just how emancipated are we white westerners? What is the acid test? – Electing a black man as president of the U.S., or smiling weakly at the doctor who we have just been told is going to perform a complex surgical manoeuvre on our heart and who turns out to be a big hulking black man? I suspect many of us may be ready for the first, but not so sure about the second. It doesn’t seem that long ago that flying to India I walked up to the cockpit to see if it really was brown men flying that great big 747. These days I fly all over Africa with all black crews and only worry when I’m in Nigeria, not because the pilots are black but because the airline industry imposed no safety standards until recently. Nevertheless, the fact that Barack Obama is now the frontrunner...

11:e februari, 2008 NATO är en militärallians med kärnvapen som en viktig del av sina möjliga insatser. Denna innebär att NATO är berett att sätta in kärnvapen när så är militärt motiverat, även om motståndaren inte satt in nukleära vapen, kanske inte ens förfogar över dem. Skulle Sverige bli medlem i NATO måste vi acceptera denna doktrin och delta i övningar där kärnvapenoptionen finns med. Inga undantag är möjliga. Sverige skulle också få mindre möjligheter att agera för kärnvapnens avskaffande.  Detta har t ex Norges regering fått erfara. Man har av hänsyn till NATO och kärnvapenländer i NATO inte kunnat rösta för förslag i FN som syftar till att minska risken för kärnvapenkrig, trots att den norska regeringen varit positivt till förslagen. Nyligen har ett omfattande diskussionsunderlag om NATO:s doktriner i framtiden lagts fram av tidigare överbefälhavare i Storbritannien, Frankrike, Nederländerna, Tyskland och USA. I förslaget hävdas att fler beslut...

By Jonathan PowerFebruary 8, 2008 LONDON – I interviewed Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor and now foreign policy mentor to Barack Obama, before the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was published. But it did not go into print until this month (in World Policy Journal in the U.S., Prospect magazine in Britain, Global Affairs in Russia and the Arab News in Saudi Arabia, among others). I asked Brzezinski if he wanted to re-write his apocalyptic scenario for Iranian-U.S. relations. He didn’t. “Some people with good reason fear an Iranian-US military clash before Bush leaves office in 12 months time”, he says. “There are still some people in the Administration of Neo-Con persuasion who seem to be tempted by what I believe is a suicidal inclination to compound the Iraqi problem by some sort of military action against Iran.” Brzezinski’s fear is that the Iraqi war instead of winding...

LONDON – It is not a question of who has the dominant personality- Bill or Hillary Clinton? It is how the world works, a world that is, even in its most liberal quarters, essentially male chauvinistic. Margaret Thatcher chose a cabinet that was 100% male, although it was said they were alternately seduced and scared by her. If we hadn’t caught the penny before we certainly heard it drop in South Carolina. Bill and Hilary is ‘two for one’ and where she goes he goes too. If she became president, whilst she would have the constitutional authority he would have the political clout. Can you imagine in some moment of tension Vladimir Putin (or Dimitri Medvedev) or the King of Saudi Arabia not picking up the phone first to Bill rather than Hillary for a clarifying ‘background chat’ on what U.S. policy exactly is. Come to that, why are we...