4 December 2003 Russian Democracy By Gwynne Dyer First, the results of the Russian parliamentary elections on 7 December: United Russia, the ‘party of power’ that supports President Vladimir Putin, wins a large majority. Second, the results of the Russian presidential election next March: Putin wins by a landslide. Third, a question: can Russia be […]
15 October 2003 The ‘Brics’: Back To The Future By Gwynne Dyer Thirty-three years after China launched its first satellite, a high-tech boom-box called Mao 1 that broadcast a tinny version of ‘The East Is Red’ to an underwhelmed world, it has finally put a man into space. But the pace is picking up: Beijing
29 September 2003 Russia and Kyoto By Gwynne Dyer President George W. Bush did not instantly kill the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change just by pulling the United States out of the treaty in March, 2001, but it did mean that every other major industrial country on the planet had to ratify it before
7 July 2003 The Chechen Quagmire By Gwynne Dyer “All terror acts committed on Chechen territory are financed by international terrorist organisations, including al-Qaida,” claimed Colonel Ilya Shabalkin, head of the Russian FSB security service’s operations in Chechnya, in May. Yes, indeed, said Russian President Vladimir Putin, and everything Russia does in Chechnya is “a
19 June 2003 Orwell Centenary – Part Two Geopolitics: the Drift Towards 1984 By Gwynne Dyer “What ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’) is really meant to do is to discuss the implications of dividing the world up into ‘Zones of Influence’,” George Orwell wrote to his publisher at the end of 1948 — and it certainly does that.
27 January 2003 Indo-Pak Nukes: A Modest Proposal By Gwynne Dyer It started with Pakistan’s ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, saying in early January that he had threatened nuclear war against India during last summer’s tense confrontation, when more than a million soldiers were mobilised along the common border. India’s defence minister, George Fernandes, replied that
19 November 2002 What Is Nato For? By Gwynne Dyer In the end, they solved the problem of Alexander Lukashenko’s determination to attend the Prague summit of NATO on Thursday and Friday by simply refusing him a visa. Lukashenko, the president and in practice the dictator of Belarus, reacted in typical fashion by threatening the
27 October 2002 How To Cover Terrorism: The New Media Rules By Gwynne Dyer Rule One: When covering terrorist attacks, do not discuss the political contex of the attacks or the terrorists’ motives and strategy. Two generations of comic books and cartoons have accustomed the general audience to villains who are evil just for the
9 September 2002 Kaliningrad: Behind the Blue Curtain By Gwynne Dyer It’s actually half the size of Belgium, but the countries get bigger as you go east across Europe so it looks very small on the map. Legally, it’s just another region of Russia — the home region of President Vladimir Putin’s wife Lyudmila, in
16 April 2000 The Dead Walrus on the Breakfast Table By Gwynne Dyer On Friday, the Russian Duma finally ratified START II (the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), six years after it was signed. The next step, rationally, would be to finish the negotiations on the START III treaty, cutting the nuclear warheads on each