The Way I See it

Foto del periódico ruso Kommersant en el quincuagésimo aniversario de la invasión a Checoslovaquia por el Pacto de Varsovia. (este blog fue publicado en la Página Web: https://cdainstitute.ca el 23 de agosto de 2018.) Durante cuatro meses en 1968, fui un pasante en Praga, la capital de la antigua Checoslovaquia, una ciudad de increíble belleza y gracia, a pesar del peso insoportable de veinte años de gobierno comunista. En teoría, cada día tenía que ir a mi lugar de trabajo –

1024px-Yalta_Conference_(Churchill,_Roosevelt,_Stalin)_(B&W) This blog was posted on the CDA-Institute at https://cdainstitute.ca/law-towards-yalta-two/ on 9 August. In February 1945, as it was becoming increasingly clear that Hitler Germany was about to lose World War Two, the leaders of the victory camp – US President Roosevelt, UK Prime Minister Churchill and USSR Communist Party General Secretary and Premier Stalin – met at a much-celebrated meeting in Yalta. Yalta, a res

(The view of the globe is from The Great Globe Galley.) On June 21 2018, the TopLink site of the Word Economic Forum posted a sightly revised version of this post under the title of Three Scenarios for the Future of Geopolitics To understand events in the international arena, it helps to distinguish whether our current period is essentially stable or in significant flux. In an article written a quarter of a century ago, during another time of rapid and relentless change, my c

On 18 March, Vladimir Putin will almost certainly be elected to his fourth term as President of the Russian Federation. If we include his first term as Prime Minister from 1999-2000 and his second from 2008-2012, when he was for all intents and purposes still President in all but name, by the end of this next term he will have been Russia’s leading politician for a quarter century. Only Joseph Stalin will have been longer at the pinnacle of Russian and Soviet power. Scoring c

(With my apologies to the person who produced this juxtaposition – I have lost the link and cannot credit you.) This post appeared on the website of the CDA-Institute on 9 February. There are five pivotal issues that we need to be thinking about when it comes to North Korea. The first and perhaps most important one is that North Korea is an economic basket case. The hermit kingdom, which at the end of the Korean War in 1953 was roughly at par economically with the South, now

The victory of senatorial candidate Doug Jones in Alabama on 12 December over a racist bigot, pedophile and religious zealot, supported by the incumbent President and Republic National Committee, is the first good news that America’s democrats have had in a good while. But to paraphrase Winston Churchill, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. At best, it may be the end of the beginning. America’s democrats still face an uphill struggle. There has been

This article was posted on the website of the Canadian Defence Association Institute on 19 September 2018. Photocredit: Time Magazine 20 May 2014 Part II: Seeing through the China Russia North Korea Agenda Western observers almost invariably claim that China is opposed to Kim the Third’s nuclear bombast, that Beijing means what it says when it criticizes North Korea, that it is determined to implement the sanctions it has systematically signed-up for in the United Nations Se

Photo credit: Daily Telegraph, 31 August 2017. This blog was posted on the website of the Canadian Defence Association Institute on 14 September 2017. Part I: Rethinking the Threat Since 2012, North Korea has succeeded in significantly enhancing its capacity to carry out nuclear explosions and to launch medium- and long-range missiles capable of hitting U.S. allies in Asia and, more recently, U.S. territory itself. The missile that North Korea launched over Japan on 29 August

America’s descent into chaos moved into a higher gear this past week. It will take a lot of civil courage on the part of a lot of Americans to put the dictatorship genie back in the bottle. The actions and rhetoric emanating from the Oval Office strongly suggest that Trump’s term in office will be characterized by an effort to establish a dictatorship across the United States of America. Ok, go pour yourself a stiff drink and if you are still up to it, read this and think fur

The situation is indeed serious, but don’t expect Kim Jong-un to go over the strategic edge. (This blog appeared on the website of Open.Canada on 16 August.) The American Defense Intelligence Agency has recently assessed that North Korea has succeeded in miniaturizing a nuclear warhead. This would allow it to place a nuclear device on a ballistic missile, such as the two it tested successfully earlier this year. While North Korea probably does not yet have the capacity to att

At the G20 Summit that took place in Hamburg on 7-8 July, Presidents Putin and Trump met on at least three occasions. Two of them were rather typical for this kind of event, the third not at all. The first was not really a meeting, just a handshake at the opening session. The second saw the Russian and American Presidents holding a bilateral. As is typical of this kind of event, the two leaders were seconded by their respective foreign ministers and supported by their interpr

On America’s Independence Day, North Korea successfully launched a missile that some experts assert can hit targets as far away as Alaska. Apparently, Pyongyang does not yet have the capacity to place a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile. That said, at the rate Kim the Third has been upgrading his country’s attack potential, this may be months as opposed to years away. The launch happened as the Russian and Chinese Presidents were meeting in Moscow, and

So for Kim Jung-un, or Kim the Third as I have called him, the support for his regime from Beijing and Moscow is absolutely indispensable. Kim came to power in 2011. He inherited a very bad economic situation from his father as did his father from his grandfather. At the end of the Korean War in 1953, the North Korean economy was roughly at par with that of the South. Now it is one of the weakest in the world while that of South Korea is in eleventh position, between that of

With Donald Trump now sworn in as the American President and Commander–in-Chief, here are some thoughts on where the world may be headed. In 1948, Winston Churchill published The Gathering Storm, the first in his epic six-​volume account about the lead-​up to and the course of the Second World War. In this conflict, the British statesman would play a decisive role, leading his country and the then Western world to a hard fought and historic victory but one that was also hugel

In the first part of this post, I argued that one of the more important back stories of the 2016 US elections was a Russian-​American effort to restore the sagging fortunes of their traditional energy businesses. This second part explains how this may actually happen. the first part of this post, I argued that one of the more important back stories of the 2016 US elections was a Russian-​American effort to restore the sagging fortunes of their traditional energy businesses. T

Much of the post-​election chatter in the United States has focused on the relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and Russia’s security services, their role in the US elections of 7 November and whether their intervention sought to favour the Republican candidate at the expense of his Democratic opponent. For me, this is a no-​brainer. Russia has involved itself in the electoral politics of a host of European Union countries in recent years. Why should Putin th

Trump and Hitler have much more than hair issues in common. Of course, the America of 2016 is not the Germany of 1933, and Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler. That said, there are a number of chilling similarities in their approaches and eerie parallels in their propos. Hitler was anti-Semitic, anti-Gypsy and anti-Handicapped.Trump has taken hostile positions against Mexicans and Muslims. He has insulted Invalids. On top of that he has shown himself to be a Misogynist, somethin

The partisans in favour of the UK leaving the European Union (EU) prevailed with almost 52 percent of the votes cast in the referendum on 23 June 2016. The turnout was around 72 percent of the electorate, an impressive number. But is the UK really on its way out? I am not so sure. What I am certain of is that this will not be a simple process. It will be complicated, complex and long, probably much longer than the three-​year window presently being discussed. If the UK activa

On 15 August, the Russian and Turkish Presidents met in St Petersburg. This was their first encounter since their two countries’ bilateral relations went very seriously south after Turkey shot down a Russian jet in November 2015. The two leaders made all sorts of nice noises about their commitment to repairing their relations after the fall-out of recent months. But it was clear that Putin, interested in wresting Turkey from its western moorings of now well over half a centur

At the time of writing, it looks likely that Trump will not win the US presidential election. His numbers are gravitating around 40 percent. Leading Republicans and Republican party financiers have started to take their distance. Those that assumed that Trump would not prove a flash in the pan but would later move to the centre in a show of presidentialism are now licking their wounds. Full disclosure: I am one of the latter. In September 2015, I posted a blog piece that asse