March 2011

March 29, 2011 Jonathan Power Now that the new nuclear arms reduction treaty between the US and Russia is safely tucked up in bed we have to ask “What next?” There are a number of imperatives: to agree to further sharp cuts in nuclear armouries and this time including the UK, France, China and Israel, a Test Ban Treaty,  a ban on the further stockpiling of fissile material, getting rid of short range missiles based in Europe, agreeing to joint NATO-Russian anti-missile defences in Europe and, not least, burying the doctrine of “No First Use”. An agreement on the “No First Use” (NFU) doctrine would make the protagonists agree that none of them would be the first to use nuclear weapons, that they would only use them in case of a nuclear attack. For years the Soviet Union had such a policy. But a few years ago its successor state, Russia, rescinded...

Jan Öberg, TFF direktör 21.a mars, 2011 Här följer i telegramstil en kort uppräkning av motsägelser, dåraktiga antaganden och missriktad humanism. En likaledes kortfattad slutsats med förutsägelse följer efter uppräkningen. Jag kommer inom kort att utarbeta någonting kortfattat om vad som kunde och borde ha gjorts i stället för dessa fruktansvärda och kontraproduktiva bombningar. 1. Vi kan inte sammanträffa, tala och förhandla med en sådan!En lång rad av västvärldens ledare har sammanträffat med honom och sett honom som en allierad under de senaste åren. 2. Humanistiska argument och ädla motiv i stället för uttalade intressen och syften.Men överallt annars har västs länder följt sina nationella, strategiska och oljeintressen, en-två miljoner oskyldiga irakier dödades av västvärldens sanktioner och ockupation under åtta år. 3. Uttalanden om att vi inte kan bara stå och titta på när Gadaffi mördar sitt eget folk.Utan att visa upp ett enda bevis på massdödande, brott mot mänskligheten,...

To intervene or not to intervene in Libya, that is the question. Indeed, the next two lines of Hamlet’s soliloquy are also apposite: “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against the sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?” The way the civil war is raging it is becoming clear that, as James Clapper, director of US National Intelligence, said last week, “Over the longer term the regime will prevail.” Only outside intervention can save the rebel cause. But, as the US Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, has pointed out, anyone who advocates a third large scale army military intervention in Asia “needs his head examined”. Iraq and Afghanistan are a full enough plate. Moreover, both show up as living examples the dangers of intervention even thought at the onset it all looked so right- to end the...

March 2, 2011 Jonathan Power An important legal milestone has been crossed, almost as difficult as crossing the Rubicon or the Red Sea. On Saturday in the Security Council the US voted unanimously in favour of a French and British resolution to forward an indictment of Muammar Gaddafi to the International Criminal Court otherwise known as the Court for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. This was the first time the US had done this. However, during the tenure as president of George W. Bush it did abstain on the vote to do the same with Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir. Early in his tenure Bush had bitterly opposed US membership of the War Crimes Court, withdrawing America’s signature from the treaty founding the Court and conducting a savage arms twisting with many signed up members. Later it saw the value of the Court and quietly helped push for indictments. Under the...