May 2009

May 29, 2009 Gunnar Westberg North Korea is again at the centre of the world stage. The regime has challenged the strong powers in the world and in the UN Security Council (UNSC). The strong reactions from international politicians and media serve the interest of the leader of the Democratic Peoples Republic of North Korea and give him an undeserved but highly desired important role in world politics. At the same time this reaction shows that the rules of international law as applied by the UNSC are unequal. Laws that restrict and condemn smaller countries are not applied to the nuclear weapon states themselves. This decreases the respect for international law and agreements. I wish to express as strongly as I can that the nuclear weapons test and the test of long distance missiles by North Korea increases the tension in the region and decreases chances of a lasting peace....

When a country tests a nuclear weapon, it is sending a message. It is not always clear, however, what that message is. In the case of the recent nuclear test by North Korea, some commentators have argued that the North Koreans are sending a “pay attention to me” message to the international community and particularly the United States. Other commentators have argued that the nuclear test was carried out for domestic purposes, to inspire the country with a display of technological prowess. A short statement from North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency suggests that both international and domestic audiences were relevant to the bomb testing message. The North Korean announcement indicated that the test had several purposes, including to “bolster up its nuclear deterrent for self-defense”; “settle the scientific and technological problems arising in further increasing the power of nuclear weapons”; “inspiring the army and people of the DPRK”; “contribute...

May 26, 2009 Jonathan Power LONDON – With the election behind it, it shouldn’t be back to square one for India in its quest to settle the bitterly divisive issue of Kashmir, one that has led to three wars and once brought the two countries to the brink of nuclear war. India missed its great opportunity to settle the burning dispute while the military president, Pervez Musharraf, who ruled Pakistan until his overthrow last year, was in power. According to diplomats I talked to eighteen months ago, both British and American, in New Delhi and Islamabad, a deal was tantalisingly close. One British ambassador told me that the main barrier to a deal was ‘psychological’ and that India had to make very few concessions to make a final deal. If Musharraf wasn’t prepared to give away the store, the Pakistani compromises came close to it. But India, despite the seemingly...

LONDON – I walk up Sonia Gandhi’s drive way, past  guards with Uzi machine guns, and can’t help thinking that when I came to interview Mrs. Indira Gandhi (Sonia’s mother-in-law) on the eve of her great comeback and massive electoral win, I walked up to her front door and knocked. There were no guards and only one servant to let me in. I am ushered into Sonia G’s office. She barely acknowledges my presence. “Buon giorno”, I say. There is no reply. I have been warned that she’s cold and she doesn’t offer me a hand. She walks over to me and asks me to sit down. I look her in the eye and ask my first question to the Italian widow of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was cruelly blown to smithereens by a female Tamil terrorist, a member of the now defeated Tamil independence struggle in neighbouring Sri...

May 13, 2009 Jonathan Power LONDON – Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine who lived 460-357BC, concluded that diseases were naturally caused and were cured by natural remedies. Opium, he wrote, was one of the latter. But he was also of the opinion that it should be used sparingly and under control. If only our governments today could take such a sanguine and informed view of the use of opiates in medicine today. No one needs a more enlightened attitude than the Western forces now operating in Afghanistan where they are committed to destroying the peasants’ main source of income. The tough, no nonsense, eradication programme has done as much as Western military action to push country people into the Taliban camp. The West has long been shooting itself in the foot. Both the former president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf and the wise senior statesman and former finance minister Sartaj...

LONDON – Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine who lived 460-357BC, concluded that diseases were naturally caused and were cured by natural remedies. Opium, he wrote, was one of the latter. But he was also of the opinion that it should be used sparingly and under control.If only our governments today could take such a sanguine and informed view of the use of opiates in medicine today.No one needs a more enlightened attitude than the Western forces now operating in Afghanistan where they are committed to destroying the peasants’ main source of income. The tough, no nonsense, eradication programme has done as much as Western military action to push country people into the Taliban camp. The West has long been shooting itself in the foot. Both the former president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf and the wise senior statesman and former finance minister Sartaj Aziz, who probably knows more about the economics...

May 8, 2009 Farhang Jahanpour During their first meeting on the margins of the G-20 conference in London on 1st April 2009, President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced the start of negotiations on a new strategic arms-control treaty that would cut each nation’s long-range nuclear arsenal further than previous agreements. In his first major foreign policy speech in Prague, the president went further and introduced an ambitious vision of getting rid of all nuclear weapons, although he said that this might not happen in his lifetime. He rightly stressed the danger of the existence and ultimate use of nuclear weapons. He also set a four-year target for ‘locking down’ all loose nuclear material scattered around the world to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists. While the president referred to North Korea’s satellite launch and Iran’s nuclear programme, he significantly failed to mention Israel’s nuclear...

LONDON – Igor Yurgens is probably as close to Dmitri Medvedev as one can get without interviewing the president himself. His influence is regarded by those who follow the inner workings of the Kremlin as immense. By disposition a liberal academic, committed to the rule of law, he runs his own think tank which gives him the research and intellectual firepower to influence his close friend. Yurgens had something to do with clearing the path for the president to give his first on the record interview to the remarkably brave and independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, whose star reporters, including Anna Politkovskaya, have been gunned down. I recently interviewed Yurgens and we talked about Georgia, where the Russian army last August defeated the Georgian forces which had precipitated an unnecessary war by invading its neighbour, the pro-Russian mini state of South Ossetia.I’ve long maintained that although Russia was acting within its...