Given US and Russian presidential capacity for springing surprises, we risk losing the degree of safety we gained with the end of the Cold War and have enjoyed since then.
At the Munich Security Conference, there is more agreement that current situations are tragic and risky, than accord on who is to blame and what to do.
Progress against gender-based violence means thinking about models of masculinity and femininity, and how these may encourage violent, victimising and victimised behaviour.
We have moved beyond the tired old controversy about whether climate change causes armed conflict. The new discussion must look to compound risks: where climate change, arbitrary governance and lawlessness interact.
Or at least, who cares enough to try to start thinking anew? The region is burning. Apart from the parties to the conflicts who want to win, nobody seems to have any idea of what to do.
The last two decades have seen a growing global appetite for peace but unless concerted, informed action is taken the next two could bring darker times
If by any chance a rogue group gets hold of CW – even from an entirely different source – and uses them, we will be back to the prospect of missile strikes again. Knowing that to be the case, some rogue groups may well set out to provoke just that.
Those who would help from the outside must rely on dialogue, contact and diplomacy, which means Russia, Iran and Assad himself all being involved, like it or not.
Soon, military action against the Assad regime by western powers may be all but inevitable. But what kind of action, for what purpose, in the service of what larger strategy?
EU High Representative Catherine Ashton steps down from leading the European External Action Service in late 2014. But despite her best efforts, the basic case for the EEAS remains unclear to many.
