Rather than giving the opposition a decisive means to victory, arms to Syria will only prolong the violence and suggest a grander agenda: rebalancing regional power.
The people who brought us the banking crashes of 2007-2008 that became the credit crunch 2008-2009 and the economic wreckage we’ve lived in since are having another go. The very credit arrangements that brought us so much grief are fashionable again.
In the twentieth century the west’s boundless determination to extract ripped apart the social, political and cultural fabric of whole countries. Today, a century’s worth of price decline has been wiped out in a single decade, without reducing unprecedented levels of demand.
On Monday 10th December 2012, the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. For better or worse, the prize focuses attention on an important question: does Europe need peacebuilding?
Peacebuilding and development can no longer be thought of in terms of what was always an over-simplified polarisation between the powerful stability of the giver and the weak turbulence of the beneficiary. It was always wrong to see the world that way; now it’s impossible.
The high ambition of getting global agreement tends to lead to an unambitious convergence on the least demanding positions and commitments. How did Busan fare?
The wording of the Outcomes Document from the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid is largely agreed, and reflects much of the new thinking on aid: statebuilding and peacebuilding; human security; transparency and results. But it fails to reflect the huge challenge of promoting and supporting developmen
We have been round the block too many times to believe that human costs will be the decisive factor in continuing outside intervention. The political costs for Cameron, Obama and Sarkozy – personally, for the governments they lead, for the influence of their states in the coming decade – are simpl
Now the war has started, which side are you on? Should the intervention stop because the war will be long and bloody? Which means that instead the war will be short, Qaddafi will be victorious, and the aftermath will be bloody – probably as bloody as the war.
Politicians and public need to address the moral argument around the use of force, encompassing the humanitarian and democratic arguments deployed in favour of intervention balanced against risk aversion and moral objections.
The air in Brussels is thick with a storm over the European External Action Service, basically caused by the European Commission trying to break its word on peace-building.
Plans for the EEAS seem to include innovative units for conflict prevention, security and stability. It is worth considering what kind of agenda we would like to see implemented by a thoughtful new global actor oriented in this direction
