A blog about a criminal enterprise
In December 1934, Arthur Henderson, a leader of the British Labour Party, declared in his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize that the immense human suffering caused by World War I “led to the very clear realization that international anarchy must be abandoned if civilization was to survive.”
Unfortunately, that realization did not go very far or very deep. Although, since that time, international law has been refined, nations remain far from adhering to its provisions or accepting its
Addressing the UN Security Council on September 20, 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a heartfelt plea “to update the existing security architecture in the world, in particular, to restore the real power of the UN Charter.”
This call for strengthening international security under the aegis of the United Nations makes sense not only for Ukraine―a country suffering from brutal military invasion, occupation, and annexation by its much larger, more powerful neighbor, the
In recent decades, a segment of the global Left has looked upon the U.S. government as the Great Satan in international affairs, responsible for the world’s major ills. Thus, on those occasions when countries at odds with the United States behaved like brutal imperialist powers, these “campists” (as they were called thanks to their division of the world into an evil U.S. imperialist
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the immensely destructive Ukraine War lies in the fact that it could have been averted.
The most obvious way was for the Russian government to abandon its plan for the military conquest of Ukraine.
The problem on this score, though, was that Vladimir Putin was determined to revive Russia’s “great power” status. Although his predecessors had signed the UN Charter (which prohibits the “use of
In the conflict-ridden realm of international relations, certain terms are particularly useful, and one of them is “Red Lines.” Derived from the concept of a “line in the sand,” first employed in antiquity, the term “Red Lines” appears to have emerged in the 1970s to denote what one nation regards as unacceptable from other nations. In short, it is an implicit threat.
Vladimir Putin, self-anointed restorer of the Russian empire, has tossed about the term repeatedly in recent years.
Although great empires rank among the most powerful engines of world history, they are also among the most dangerous, especially as they brood over their decline.
The Russian empire provides a striking illustration of this phenomenon. Traditionally referred to as the “prison of nations,” Russia, in its Czarist and Soviet phases, controlled a vast Eurasian land mass of subject
Although the rulers of the world’s major military and economic powers have repeatedly claimed that they are making their nations great again, their policies have not resulted in widespread happiness among their citizens.
That conclusion emerges from the recent World Happiness Report-2022, published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Based on Gallup World Polls conducted from 2019 through 2021, this extensive study
A key factor that explains Vladimir Putin’s military invasion of Ukraine is traditional Russian imperialism.
Throughout the world’s long and bloody history, other powerful territories (and, later, nations) expanded their lands through imperial conquest, including Rome, China, Spain, France, Britain, Germany, Japan, and the United States.
Russia was no exception. Beginning with the small principality of Moscow in 1300, Russia employed
Commentators on the current Ukraine crisis have sometimes compared it to the Cuban missile crisis. This is a good comparison―and not only because they both involve a dangerous U.S.-Russian confrontation capable of leading to a nuclear war.
During the 1962 Cuban crisis, the situation was remarkably similar to that in today’s Eastern Europe, although the great power roles were reversed.
In 1962, the Soviet Union had encroached on the U.S. government’s self-defined sphere of influence by installing
The vast destruction wrought by the atomic bombing of Japan in August 1945 should have been enough to convince national governments that the game of war was over.
Wars have had a long run among rival territories and, later, nations, with fierce conflicts between Athens and Sparta, Rome