A NEW COLD WAR
?
Are nuclear policies shaping
a new Cold War era?
•
New
U.S. policies anatagonize Russia and
China
The Clinton administration appears to be heading for a
confrontation with Russia and China on its plans to
develop an antiballistic missile (ABM) system capable of
warding off blows from rogue states like North Korea and
Iran.
High-level Chinese diplomat
sees the United States developing into a rogue state.
•
The
U.S. is drunk with its own
power
Washington seems to be developing a stubbornness against
abiding by weapons' control pacts and a greater penchant
to use armed force against its real or perceived enemies.
This is not the era of peace it could have been, says
the director-general of the Arms Control and Disarmament
Department of the Chinese foreign ministry.
Russia's warfare in
Chechenya, just an immitation of NATO's in
Yugoslavia?
•
On
Winning Battles And Losing
Wars
Russians who want to bomb Chechnya can cite NATO's
behavior as a moral standard. What's the essential
difference between Clinton and Putin - asks The Moscow
Times in an editorial.
Provocative steps continue in
the direction of a less peaceful world. Does the U.S.
really feel that threatened - or is it just hysteria and
the military-industrial complex at work again?
•
U.S.
missile defence plans worry and
provoke
The U.S. wish to change the ABM Treaty is "extremely
dangerous," says Russia - and worries why
Hungary
is ready to accept NATO's nuclear weapons. Reuters
reported at the same time that Hungary intends to
increase it military budget 43 per cent next
year...
NONVIOLENCE
Think if we could learn to
see non-violence when it happens...here is an
attempt:
•
Documentary
tracks victories of nonviolent strategies for
change
The power of nonviolent
resistance to check tyranny and injustice is the theme of
a thoughtful new documentary that magnifies the moral
victories of the 20th century - writes Gail Russell
Chaddock in the Christian Science Monitor about "A Force
More Powerful."
Reconciliation and
foregiveness must be part of any serious post-war policy.
And the Westmay have something to learn.
•
Taming
the desire for
revenge
As the international
community strives to restore stability in Kosovo and East
Timor, two African countries with their own traumatic
histories have dug deeply into their cultural reservoirs.
A route strikingly different from Western therapeutic
approaches has been taken in communities across
Mozambique, where 1 million people lost their lives in a
16-year civil war that devastated the country.
GLOBALIZATION
History's most controversial
world trade meeting is about to take place
•
The
World Trade Organization, WTO, meeting in
Seattle
The World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting is attracting
people who oppose global governance - such as the
International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The ruckus
will make the Seattle Round, as it is known, the most
controversial trade negotiations yet. And that's before
the trade ministers even start debating. "I don't recall
any trade meeting ... with this kind emotion," . Read
more and find interesting links in the Christian Science
Monitor.
And here are two of the many
sites that tell you why people protest
•
WTO
versus human rights, the environment and against
pluralism
Please use this site to
learn more about issues surrounding the World Trade
Organization and its effects on our society, and please
get involved. The WTO must be radically changed if
we are to enjoy a society based on human rights, labor
rights, and environmental protection around the world.
See the Sierra
Club, too.
THE BALKANS
If Albania falls apart again,
what will NATO do?
•
Will
NATO fight another war - among
Albanians?
Despite their long history of conflict, Albania's divided
ethnic groups presented a united front during the war in
Kosovo. Now that the war is over, however, the country
has elected the previous leadership and resumed its
internal feuding. It is likely this feuding will escalate
to a clash threatening to envelop Kosovo, and forcing
NATO to become involved in yet another foreign ethnic
conflict - writes Stratfor.com.
We were told that NATO
carried out a humanitarian intervention, preventing a
genocide in Kosovo. What's the emerging truth?
•
Lost
in the Kosovo numbers
game
In a grim and icy-cold corner of northern Kosovo is the
site of what was suspected to be the country's largest
mass grave. To date, however, four months later, the
International War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague has had to
admit that its investigation of the site has turned up no
evidence of bodies or of any wrongdoing by the Serbs -
writes Jon Swain in Sunday Times.
Could it be that someone
deliberately exaggerated - remember we always heard
Western politicians say that people in the Balkans could
not be trusted?
•
Cook
accused of misleading public on Kosovo
massacres
Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, is under pressure
to answer claims that ministers misled the public over
the scale of deaths among civilians in Kosovo to justify
the Nato bombing of Belgrade. The all-party Balkans
committee of MPs will ask the Foreign Office this week to
comment on reports that the number of bodies of victims
of Serbian ethnic cleansing is lower than the figures of
dead issued during the conflict - writes Nicholas
Rufford in Sunday Times.
Others also wonder about the
genocide - what was called Operation Horseshoe...
•
Where
is the evidence of genocide on
Albanians?
Count another victory for the Big Lie. Meanwhile, the
normally reliable Society for Endangered People in
Germany says 90,000 Gypsies have been forced to flee
since the Serbs left Kosovo, with the KLA conducting
ethnic cleansing on a grand scale. But who cares about
Gypsies? - asks Alexander Cockburn in Los Angeles
Times.
And what will be the status
of Kosovo?
•
Observers
disagree on future of
Kosovo
Wall Street Journal
editorial features editor Max Boot asks how "colonialism,
UN-style" is going in Kosovo, concluding that "the idea
of Kosovo as anything but a ward of the international
community seems remote." And Carl Bildt is certain it
will become a republic. Read more at the UN
Foundations Wire.
THE ARMS RACE
Are we going to see a new
type of war - as a consequence of Kosovo?
•
War
in space against
satellites
That's pushing the Pentagon into a whole new kind of
warfare. In the future, the U.S. military will be
responsible for "countering . . . space systems and
services used for hostile purposes," says a Pentagon
space policy paper published in July. That's a nice way
of saying the Pentagon needs to be prepared to defend the
ultimate high ground by attacking hostile
satellites.
And U.S. miliary spending
continues to rise
•
How
much is
enough?
US defense for 2000 will be more than three times
greater than the combined military spending of China,
Russia, and the rogue states Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya,
North Korea and Cuba...writes Justin Brown in the
Christian Science Monitor.
And is that why even
mainstream American commentators are increasingly
worried?
•
America
The Menacing
Perhaps the big news in all this is that 10 years after
the Cold War began to end, nuclear arsenals and the
strategies that govern them still occupy a central place
in global and American politics. The Berlin Wall went
quietly into history's long night. But Dr. Strangelove is
alive and flitting--stirring ambitions and concerns on
Capitol Hill, at the Kremlin, in grubby think tanks in
New Delhi and in gilded salons at the Elysee Palace -
writes Jim Hoagland in Washington Post.
WIRE Editor
Jan Oberg with TFF
Associates
