Once again, the Persian Gulf is threatening to become a tinderbox and Bahrain is emerging as ground zero. Saudi Arabia, the Gulf’s preeminent power, is playing the role of antagonist in chief. Riyadh is unnecessarily provoking a stand-off with its long-time nemesis in Tehran and is leading the region into another potential crisis. The tragedy of the current course is that it is entirely avoidable. But the autocrats in the Gulf have made clear that they are willing to use any means necessary to cling to power.
The English revolution in the middle of the 17th Century, the French revolution at the end of the 18th Century, and the Russian revolution at the beginning of the 20th Century— all were revolutions of the same nature.Similarly, there is no doubt that the 2011 Arab Spring has been provoked by a food crisis. But the food crisis does not only influence the Middle East. In India and Bangladesh revolution is inevitable.
Given how the Security Council has acted with regard to Libya via Resolution 1973, many have queried its failure to act in other situations, such as Bahrain, Yemen and Syria. The lethal responses by the governments of those countries to pro-democracy protests are appalling, but it cannot be said that the crisis in those States has reached the proportions of Libya. After all, humanitarian intervention is war.
Since the 1990s, the phenomenon of globalization has been widely discussed. contemporary economic globalization is often exaggerated, and it can be argued that there are some current patterns that are more limited, less integrated, and less interdependent in comparison with 19th century economic globalization, especially the period from 1870 to 1914
The minds and hearts of US citizens were lost because the media coverage of the Vietnam War, watched in millions of American homes, was uncensored, straightforward and highlighted all the cruelties of the conflict. The media coverage of the 1991 Gulf War was entirely different.
The ‘Arab Spring’ is a pivotal moment in the political and social development of the wider Middle East. Some have likened it to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, others to the impact of the 1979 Iranian revolution. Nowhere encapsulates the tensions and contradictory forces now shaping the Arab Spring than Yemen, a state that has become synonymous with the epithets ‘failed’ or ‘failing’.
The European Union does not currently have a strategic culture, but it is in a process of creating one and putting it into practice. But the real question is whether the European Union has the capacity to transition from a civilian to a strategic actor, by developing a concrete strategic culture and a higher level of autonomy for the EU regarding security and defence issues
History has placed two peoples, both with legitimate claims, in competition for the same land. The brutality of the Murders at Itamar is a reminder that the conflict on the West Bank, indeed the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians in all of its aspects, should be understood as a secular, rather than a religious, event.
There is no strategic theory that can, yet, fully replace the classical strategists Sun Tzu and Clausewitz. The information age and modern technology have not altered the fundamental nature of war. As long as the nature of war remains unchanged, it is the same phenomenon that Sun Tzu contemplated millennia ago and that Clausewitz studied in the nineteenth century.
Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary General of the United Nations from 1953 to 1961, steered the organisation through a period which saw it develop as a peacekeeper in a mould that would set the agenda for decades to come, particularly via the publication of the “Summary Study” in 1958, which established the foundations of classical peacekeeping.
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