War and Peace
Items on the quest for peace and the fact of war
Forgiving Enemies in Northern Ireland
Wed 06 Jan 2010 by Nigel Biggar
Spiritual Self-preservation, Absolution, and Compassion
Professor Nigel Biggar presented this talk on his understanding of reconciliation and its specific application at an evening event for the Westminster Forum of Trinity Forum Europe in December 2009.
Citizens of the World Unite?
Wed 11 Feb 2009 • Responses: 1 • by Pete Peterson
Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy by Natan Sharansky (New York: PublicAffairs, 2008), 304 pages.
Obama’s Challenges Overseas
Tue 23 Dec 2008 by David Aikman
It’s likely that historians will view the 2008 election as a moment when America turned inward and looked hard at what was going on inside the country. Many recently-elected presidents have taken office with a decidedly strong pre-occupation with foreign affairs: Richard Nixon was one, and George H. W. Bush another. Both men, incidentally, accomplished major things in foreign affairs but were tripped up by American domestic developments.
Korean Anxieties
Wed 05 Nov 2008 by David Aikman
While the attention of almost all Americans and much of the world has been focused on the presidential election campaign that ended November 4, tensions are rising alarmingly in a part of the world thousands of miles away. North Korea is up to its old tricks, threatening fire and brimstone on the South, and keeping the world guessing as to the whereabouts, and indeed the health, of its “Dear Leader” President Kim Jong-il. The combination of leadership uncertainty in North Korea, a South Korean administration notably more hard-nosed towards North Korea than its predecessors, and an imminent political change in Washington, constitute the ingredients for a possible serious rise in tensions on the Korean peninsula.
New Approach to Muslim States?
Tue 30 Sep 2008 by Joseph Loconte
Last week a diverse group of political, business, military, academic, and religious leaders released a report, Changing Course: A New Direction for U.S. Relations With the Muslim World. Convened by the Search for Common Ground and the Consensus Building Institute, the group issued several recommendations, including the promotion of economic growth and good governance in Muslim states.
They summarized their work thus:
Humanitarian ‘Impulses’ vs. Convictions
Wed 20 Aug 2008 by Joseph Loconte
Writing in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Princeton professor Gary Bass observes that despite the ongoing crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan and the difficulties in the U.S.-led war in Iraq, “the idea of humanitarian intervention remains intact.”
In his essay, “Humanitarian Impulses: Why Interventions Aren’t Going Away,” Mr. Bass argues that the concept of military intervention to stop ethnic cleansing and genocide is as much a European idea as an American one:
Putin’s Brezhnev Doctrine
Wed 20 Aug 2008 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
Forty years ago this August, all of Europe and the U.S. watched with horror as the Soviet army, in conjunction with units from four of its Warsaw Pact allies, rolled into Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring.” The “Spring” had been a dramatic movement for reform and liberalization of Czechoslovakia’s Communist system that had been introduced by Czech Communist leader Alexander Dubcek and some others.
The 200,000 invading troops met only token resistance, because Dubcek had ordered Czech citizens not to oppose the invasion. But in a singular act of brutal humiliation, Dubcek and his associates were transported to Moscow in chains in the belly of a Soviet cargo plane, then made to face the bullying shouts of the assembled Soviet Politburo. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s rationale for the invasion became known as the “Brezhnev doctrine,” a principle that Communist Party control of the countries of Eastern Europe should never have to submit to reforms that might bring capitalism and democracy to them.
Muslims Challenge Islamic Hypocrisy
Fri 25 Jul 2008 by Joseph Loconte
The Arab regime of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan has long been accused of ethnic cleansing in its war against black African rebels in Darfur. Since fighting broke out in the spring of 2004, various U.N. investigators and human-rights groups have offered strong evidence of government complicity in the destruction of villages, sexual violence against women, and the brutal dislocation of nearly two million non-Arab Sudanese. Indeed, last week the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Mr. al-Bashir, accusing him of genocide. Yet, as best as I can tell, not a single Arab state has spoken out clearly and forcefully against the Islamist government in Khartoum.
The manifest hypocrisy of the Arab world toward Sudan, however, is becoming too much for some Muslims to bear.
Israel-Lebanon: A Clash of Cultures
Fri 18 Jul 2008 by David Aikman
The biggest loser in the “transaction” between Israel and Hezbollah is Lebanon.
In the Middle East last week, no two scenes could have highlighted more vividly the clash of cultures in the Arab-Israeli dispute than the contrasting events in Lebanon and in Israel. In Beirut, there were shouts of acclamation, brass bands, and kisses on the cheek for the returning heroes—along with crowing signs in Arabic that read “humiliation” across a photograph of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. In Israel, the return of the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, was followed by the mournful sounds of funerals conducted with quiet dignity in Nahariya and Haifa for the two men. The exchange of two dead soldiers for five living prisoners and 199 dead Lebanese and Palestinian fighters was the fruit of some eighteen months of painful negotiation between Israel and Hezbollah that followed the 33-day “July War” in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah.
Christian Realism and the United Nations
Wed 09 Jul 2008 by Joseph Loconte
The myth of a morally empowered United Nations, which continues to thrive on both sides of the Atlantic, is becoming absurdly difficult to sustain. The spectacle of U.N. paralysis in the face of international aggression, ethnic cleansing, and genocide—as the brutality and economic meltdown in Zimbabwe illustrates—demands a better response than the tranquilizing diplo-speak of “multilateralism.”
