Even before the onset of hostilities in Libya it was obvious to insiders on both sides of the Atlantic that NATO was increasingly dysfunctional. Libya has now shown the wider public that the emperor has no clothes. Cohesion used to be NATO’s trademark, but there is little of that left. And the reputation of the […]
There may seem like there’s a big debate about NATO’s policy in Libya, especially after last weekend’s State of the Union episode, in which Lindsey Graham advocated a “cut the head of the snake off” policy. John McCain and Joe Lieberman also appeared on the program to make similar statements. But if we actually look […]
Southeast Asia is a hub for human trafficking. Too often, young girls are lured by traffickers through promises of well paying jobs in the cities. If you have read Half the Sky, by Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl Wudunn, you will already be aware of the horrors endured by women and girls caught in the web of modern […]
As I’ve written of Passover and Chanukah, Easter too is, ultimately, a story about the oppressed becoming the oppressors. One can interpret the Gospels to mean that Jesus advocated violence. After all, he did say “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34), though many disagree on the meaning of the […]
Greetings from Brodnica, Poland. A quick thanks to my partner in blog, Jackie Miller, who is helping keep the flame alive while I attempt to have a bit of a holiday. I managed to pick up a signal from the Polish countryside and reviewed the latest goings-on in the world. Here, with thanks to Jon […]
On February 9th, I participated in a Department of Defense Bloggers Roundtable with Dr. Jack Kem, who is the Deputy to the Commander, NATO Training Mission – Afghanistan (NTM-A) and Commander, Combined Security Transition Command – Afghanistan. As was the case with my blog last week I had intended to put this out during Women’s […]
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal published this fascinating piece on the rising, so far just cold, conflict between Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Shia-led Iran. Now these two regional powers have been in competition since the fall of the Shah in Iran in 1979, but as the article by Bill Spindle and Margaret Coker […]
Earlier this week Stephen Walt drew the wrong lesson from the Arab uprisings: So let me get this straight: one former dictator ultimately decides not to unleash massive force against anti-government demonstrators, and eventually leaves power more-or-less peacefully, if not exactly voluntarily. His reward? He winds up in jail (maybe deservedly). Another dictator responds by […]
The UN Security Council should not have referred the Libya situation to the ICC, claim many on the Right, because now Qaddafi has no incentive to step down. If potential prosecution awaits after his ouster, they say, he has every incentive to hold his ground. The ICC referral, the argument goes, is a barrier to […]
Amman is a vast, sprawling metropolis, but not very exciting. A map of the city looks like the cross section of an enormous anthill, with curving roads criss-crossing each other and leading nowhere in particular. It was an epic hassle to get to our hotel – do no Jordanian taxi drivers know how to read […]
Once again I respond to a post by FPA Israel blogger Ben Moscovitch. Not to pick on him. But because we disagree on many things and it seems worthwhile to me to discuss them. Hopefully he agrees. Ben’s most recent post criticizes Obama for drawing a parallel between the Passover story and the protest movements […]
Business relationships are often directly linked to human rights violations. A UN report, “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect, and Remedy” Framework,” will be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council during the June 2011 session. The report has three pillars (page 4, item 6): The State has […]
I stand with the FPA Israel blog’s Zev Wexler, The New York Times’ Roger Cohen, and the three Goldstone Report co-authors who are not Richard Goldstone in thinking that Goldstone’s recent recantation is “bizarre,” as Cohen put it. Goldstone asserts that Israeli military investigations “indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of […]
Pakistan has told the United States to halt drone strikes on Pakistani territory. Thus, the debate about the legality of the U.S. drones program has taken a new turn. (For background, see my analysis of the Wittes-O’Connell debate on this issue from last year.) How does one determine whether the United States can legally continue […]