1 July 2010 The Treason of the Attorney By Gwynne Dyer Eighty years ago, just after the First World War and with the world rapidly sliding towards the next, the French philosopher Julien Benda wrote a book called “The Treason of the Clerks” – “clerks” in the medieval sense, educated men, intellectuals, who despite their …
7 October 2009 How To Get Out Of Afghanistan By Gwynne Dyer President Barack Obama has just promised not to cut the number of US troops in Afghanistan or pull them out entirely as part of the current review of US strategy there, but he has not promised to increase them. Could he privately be …
21 November 2008 Pirates of the Horn By Gwynne Dyer On one side are the eight navies, the world’s largest shipping companies, the rich Gulf states that need to get their oil to market, and the great powers, whose commerce depends heavily on the shipping lanes around the Horn of Africa. On the other side …
19 June 2008 The Ghosts of Srebrenica By Gwynne Dyer Last week in The Hague, a Dutch court began hearing a case brought by surviving relatives of the 8,000 Bosnian Muslim civilians, supposedly under UN military protection, who were murdered by Serb forces at Srebrenica in 1995. The survivors are claiming $4 billion in damages …
21 March 2008 Abkhazia: Russian Bluff By Gwynne Dyer Last month Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia, and most of the NATO countries recognised it. Russia condemned this as an illegal and dangerous precedent, and hinted that it might recognise other breakaway states like Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But early next month Russian President Vladimir …
4 February 2008 Kosovo: The Least Bad Option? By Gwynne Dyer The Serbian presidential election on Sunday was a near-run thing, but in the end the good guy won. Not that President Boris Tadic is all that wonderful, but he positively glows with virtue in contrast to his opponent Tomislav Nikolic, an ultra-nationalist who served …
26 December 2007 Taiwan’s Sleeper Crisis By Gwynne Dyer US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice didn’t go into much detail in her year-end message, but on one topic she was very clear: “We think that Taiwan’s referendum to apply to the United Nations under the name Taiwan is a provocative policy. It unnecessarily raises tension …
18 June 2007 Kosovo and the Law By Gwynne Dyer The ratio of foreign soldiers to local citizens in Kosovo (16,500 NATO troops to two million civilians) is slightly higher than the ratio of American soldiers to Iraqi citizens. The soldiers in Kosovo are not fighting a war, but their presence has certainly been needed …
27 April 2007 The Parliament of Man By Gwynne Dyer “For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonders there would be, “Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales… …
2 October 2006 No Genocide in Darfur By Gwynne Dyer On one issue, at least, George Bush and George Clooney are in perfect accord: what is happening in Darfur is a genocide, and Something Must Be Done. But it isn’t a genocide, and Nothing Will Be Done. “What you’ll hear is, well, the government of …