All Commentaries
Carbon Disarmament
During the Cold War, we managed our nuclear arsenals rather than reduced them. We treated our nukes like huge, dangerous animals. We restricted their movements but gave them ample care and feeding. Until recently, getting rid of the animals altogether was not part of the political agenda. After all, our leaders believed that these beasts were useful. They scared away the covetous neighbors.
Afghanistan: NATO’s Graveyard?
Celebrating its 60th birthday this year, NATO is looking peaked and significantly worse for wear. Aggressive and ineffectual, the organization shows signs of premature senility. Despite the smiles and reassuring rhetoric at its annual summits, its internal politics have become fractious to the point of dysfunction. Perhaps like any sexagenarian in this age of health-care crises and economic malaise, the transatlantic alliance is simply anxious about its future.
Defeating Hitler and Saving Israel
Avraham Burg, author of The Holocaust is Over: We Must Rise from its Ashes (Palgrave Macmillan 2008), is a left-leaning dissident Israeli whose views on issues such as Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians are well-known but hardly mainstream. Burg comes from a distinguished Israeli political family, and was himself speaker of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, from 1999-2003 as a member of the Labor Party. He served as a paratroop officer in Israel’s Defense Forces, opposed the 1982 war on Lebanon, and was wounded in a 1983 grenade attack by an Israeli right-winger on a demonstration sponsored by Peace Now, an Israeli nongovernmental organization that supports a just peace and conciliation with the Palestinians. He also has been Chairman of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization. His mother, born in what’s now the Israeli-occupied West Bank, survived the Hebron massacre of 1929; his father was a refugee from Nazi Germany in 1939.
Going Beyond Kyoto
International negotiators will gather in Copenhagen, Denmark in December to hammer out a new and possibly historic worldwide treaty to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Following up on the expiring Kyoto Protocol, it is widely billed as the last chance to save the planet from a temperature rise of two degrees Celsius or higher. Sascha Müller-Kraenner is the Europe coordinator of The Nature Conservancy, a U.S. environmental group. Paul Hockenos spoke to him in Berlin.
G20: Form, not Substance
As the self-appointed economic guardians of the world and thousands of protesters converge on Pittsburgh for the third summit of the Group of 20 (G20), expectations are low that a breakthrough will take place in the form of a coordinated action to address the global economic crisis.
People’s Voices: Challenging the G20’s Agenda of Corporate Globalization, September 2009
With multiple crises affecting our world – global economy, climate change, resource depletion – we must urgently redirect the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on preparing for war. The United States is far and away the largest military spender, accounting for nearly 50% of all global military expenditures. Together, the United States, Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea spent nearly $1 trillion in 2008 on the military. And despite the current financial crisis, military spending and arms exports are on the rise.
Yet, for about one-tenth of this near-trillion dollar amount – about $90 billion a year – we can achieve more genuine security by eliminating global starvation and malnutrition, educating every child on earth, making clean water and sanitation accessible for all, and reversing the global spread of AIDS and malaria.
It is time for the G-20 to take a stand on military spending. It is time for the richest countries of the world, beginning with the United States, to take the lead in shifting military spending to human needs. The world can’t wait.
The Goldstone Report
Judge Richard Goldstone’s report on the war in Gaza threatens the Obama administration’s global public diplomacy options and its scrupulously graduated approach to whatever passes for a Middle East Peace process. State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly complained that Goldstone opted for "cookie-cutter conclusions" about Israel’s actions, while keeping "the deplorable actions of Hamas to generalized remarks." However, Kelly urged the Israeli government to investigate further.
Book Review: ‘IraqiGirl’
After nearly seven years of ongoing war and occupation, many in the United States are resigned to wait for December 2011—the promised date for final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraqi soil. It’s been easier for Americans to ignore the Iraq War as headlines have faded as the war in Afghanistan becomes more prominent. But in Iraq, the war and occupation remain central to the lives of Iraqis where they are living with feeble security; a lack of basic services including electricity, water, and sanitary services; inadequate access to health care; and, a devastated economy.
Good War vs. Great Society
Like Vietnam, will the Afghanistan War drive a stake through the heart of President Barack Obama’s ambitious domestic program?
60-Second Expert: Afghanistan: What Are These People Thinking?
The Obama administration consistently fails to learn the lessons of Vietnam in Afghanistan. It mischaracterizes the Taliban threat, has not deployed an adequate number of troops, and faces waning support from the public. Despite the hopelessness of the task, the administration continues its delusional policies.