BLOG… Post #134: Voting Against Peace in Colombia 28 Oct 201627 Feb 2017 Those of us who study how to end wars rather than find new ways to prosecute them must be stunned, like many Colombians, by a popular vote there on October…
BLOG… Post #129: Carrots or Sticks? Addressing North Korea’s Fifth Nuclear Test 20 Sep 201627 Feb 2017 As many experts predicted, North Korea (DPRK) followed another ballistic missile test with its fifth nuclear-weapon test on September 9. The event continues a pattern of testing increasingly sophisticated weapons…
BLOG… Post #128: The Dark Side of United Nations Peacekeeping 15 Sep 201627 Feb 2017 United Nations peacekeeping operations (PKOs) involve over 125,000 soldiers deployed in sixteen countries, with a total budget of nearly $8 billion. Their missions range from interposing themselves between combatants…
BLOG… Post #122: China’s Bad Day in Court 13 Jul 201627 Feb 2017 As had been widely expected, the Permanent Court of Arbitration under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) ruled on July 12 in favor of the Philippines’…
BLOG… Post #121: Unintended Consequences and the Warfare State 7 Jul 201627 Feb 2017 “The danger is, as ever with these things, unintended consequences.” So wrote Prime Minister Tony Blair to President George W. Bush in 2002, as Bush prepared to invade Iraq (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/06/full-text-annotated-tony-blairs-2002-iraq-memo-to-george-bush). …
BLOG… Post #119 – Too Close for Comfort: The Dangerous US-China Maritime Dispute 11 Jun 201627 Feb 2017 The Background Two recent close encounters between US spy planes and Chinese jets spell trouble for relations between Washington and Beijing. The first occurred over the South China Sea…
American Politics and the World… Post #118: Cowgirl Diplomacy? Foreign Policy Under Hillary Clinton 24 May 201627 Feb 2017 America’s mainstream media, ever attracted to the splashy rather than the serious, has a new topic to occupy the time until Election Day: President Trump. What will he do first? …
BLOG… Post #117: Evaluating Obama’s Foreign Policy Record 15 May 201627 Feb 2017 So you’re not excited by Donald Trump’s announcement of his first foreign-policy acts as president: building the Mexico Wall, the No-Muslims Wall, the End-of-NATO Wall, and the China Trade Wall. …
BLOG… Post #115: Sanctions and Defiance in North Korea 23 Apr 201627 Feb 2017 Part 1: Sanctions—A Failed Strategy (Note: This is the first of a two-part commentary on North Korea. The second part will discuss the North’s latest weapons programs, which have evidently…
American Politics and the World… Post #113: Nuclear Insecurity 5 Apr 201627 Feb 2017 The fourth Nuclear Security Summit, hosted by President Obama, has just ended. The focus was on terrorism, a perfectly reasonable topic. But the larger question, not taken up by the…
BLOG… Post #107 – Is US-Russia Engagement Still Possible? 11 Feb 201627 Feb 2017 President Obama’s failed attempt to “reset” US-Russia relations raises the question whether or not engaging Russia in the fullest sense is still possible. I think not, at least for the…
BLOG… Post #106: Deadlock: North Korea’s Nuclear Test and US Policy 2 Feb 201627 Feb 2017 North Korea continues to rattle the cages of both friend and foe. Despite near-universal condemnation of its fourth nuclear test and a deplorable human rights record, Kim Jong-un defiantly disregards…
In the Human Interest - Mel Gurtov 
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