“democracies make elections, elections don’t make democracies” After Afghanistan’s fraudulent elections President Obama’s future politics in failing state is still foggy. Conflicting views of Obama’s staff, escalation of War to Pakistan, lack of clear vision and strategy are not making choice easy. The rest of the world is waiting U.S. leadership and considering same time [...]

To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace. (Tacitus, ca. 56 – ca. 117) On 21 September 1980 Iraq launched a full-scale invasion of Iran, which was the beginning of an 8-year-long bloody war between the two countries. Ironically the International [...]

Promoting a culture of coexistence, a multi-ethnic society or at least ethnic tolerance is not an easy task, not even in Europe, not even with help of billions of aid or with “best” western practice. This can be seen especially in Balkans where regions supervised by foreign “expertise” have worst record while regions without these [...]

The “Srebrenica massacre” is the greatest triumph of  propaganda to emerge from the Balkan wars.(Edward Herman) The Srebrenica case is in headlines again – like during every anniversary – and also the story seems repeat itself from year to year. More light is however coming and the real (political) context is gaining space also in [...]

The results of the Global Peace Index for 2009 suggest that the world has become slightly less peaceful in the past year, which appears to reflect the intensification of violent conflict in some countries and the effects of both the rapidly rising food and fuel prices early in 2008 and the dramatic global economic downturn [...]

Lunatic risk assessment can seriously damage your health (and economy, and freedom). Swine flu has been in headlines nearly two weeks.  The media hype is not in any scale to the real thread, it can be good entertainment like circus in ancient Rome and a tool to put the common people’s focus on trivialities.   For [...]

Two new proposals related to European security and energy cooperation was made last week by Russia. During official state visit in Finland Russia’s President Dimitry Medvedev gave a key note speech in Helsinki on April 20th outlining a “new European security structure”. Same day Russia made public goals and principles of new framework for energy [...]

I almost got stroke while reading yesterday a headline “Worse than the Taliban – new law rolls back rights for Afghan women” in the Guardian. Not due the act itself but because it reflects the substance and outcome of EU’s civil crisis management mission. First I thought it was April fools’ joke but it wasn’t [...]

It is nearly five years since the outburst of ethnic Albanian violence in Kosovo on March 17, 2004, when 19 people killed and 954 wounded and when 35 Orthodox holy sites were ruined in two days. This pogrom got its prize a year ago on February 17th when Kosovo Albanians unilaterally – but orchestrated by [...]

I am a bit worried about a trend at the beginning of year 2009 – a trend I hope will not dominate the rest of the year.  The phenomena in my mind is the new tradition of non-negotiation.  Crisis management and solving conflicts will be much more harder if local stakeholders are unable even to talk each other. Few examples [...]