9 February 2022 Ukraine: The Invasion Never Comes By Gwynne Dyer On 18 January US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that “our assessment has been that (a Russian invasion of Ukraine) could happen any time between mid-January and mid-February.” On 28 January US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said that the United States …
7 February 2022 The Rise and Decline of Sociopathy By Gwynne Dyer I generally leave the psychohistory to Hari Seldon, but just this once I feel sufficiently motivated to venture into the field. The immediate spur for this departure is the spectacle – half-fascination, half-disgust – of Boris Johnson, Britain’s part-time prime minister, gradually foundering …
2 February 2022 African Coups By Gwynne Dyer Military coups are back in fashion in Africa. There have been over 200 attempted coups in the continent since 1960, about half of them successful, but in the past two decades they had dropped to only two a year. Last year saw six, however, and there have …
31 January 2022 North Korea: The Sting in the Tail By Gwynne Dyer “They want to have a deterrence system that is like a scorpion’s tail,” said Prof. Kim Dong Yup, a former South Korean naval commander. “North Korea’s main purpose is not to attack but to defend themselves.” They want a “diversified deterrent capability,” …
26 January 2022 Boris Johnson: The Long Goodbye By Gwynne Dyer The plot couldn’t be more familiar: criminal mastermind gets away with endless daring escapades, and is brought down in the end by some silly little mistake. That’s Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who slid effortlessly through endless scrapes and scandals that would have finished …
24 January 2022 Shrinking Asia By Gwynne Dyer In the politics of population, the magic number is 2.1. That is ‘replacement level’: if a country’s fertility rate (the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime) is 2.1, then the country’s population will remain level. Above that number, it starts to grow; below …
19 January 2024 Italy: President Berlusconi? By Gwynne Dyer It was looking like a good year for democracy. Donald Trump is gone in the United States, at least for the moment, and other populist demagogues in power seem about to lose it. Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom is teetering on the brink, Viktor Orban …
16 Jan 22 Will Russia Play The ‘Cuban Card’? By Gwynne Dyer After a week of intense discussions about ‘security’ between Russia and the NATO countries, this is the week when the Western allies will send their written replies to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Various pundits, some of whom have actually been to Russia, warn …
12 January 2022 Covid Fatigue By Gwynne Dyer Once they called it ‘combat fatigue’, and treated the soldiers who showed the symptoms with a mixture of pity and contempt. Then they renamed it ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ (PTSD) and broadened the definition to cover similar responses to other stressful situations. And now we have Covid fatigue. …
5 January 2022 The Industrialisation of Space By Gwynne Dyer It will be a bumper year for big space launches to the Moon, Mars, and asteroids, including many manned flights, but the real shocker is the number of satellites and spaceships being launched by private companies. Never mind Elon Musk’s twelve-thousand-small-satellite Starlink programme, which is …