#worldwar

Aug 26, 2018

La Primavera de Praga, medio siglo después

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 –

Aug 1, 2018

Towards Yalta Two

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

Jul 6, 2018

NATO Defence Spending in Perspective

(A link to this article was provided in the Newsletter of the Canadian Association of Defence Organizations on 6 July: www.cdainstitute.ca) President Trump’s letter to a number of NATO Allies in the lead-up to the Alliance Summit on 11-12 July, warning them that America is running out of patience as regards their failure to jack up their defence spending is a cheap shot, but a shot nonetheless. It needs to be taken seriously. NATO defence spending is about more than one-digit

Mar 22, 2018

Global Futures and their Underlying Drivers

(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

Feb 11, 2018

North Korea 101

(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

Sep 27, 2017

The Almost Perfect Ploy: how to understand the accelerated enhancement of the North Korean threat: P

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

Sep 26, 2017

The Almost Perfect Ploy: how to understand the accelerated enhancement of the North Korean threat: P

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

Aug 17, 2017

Descent into Dictatorship?

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

Aug 3, 2017

President Trump in Europe: how to discredit and dismantle an Alliance

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

Jul 31, 2017

NORTH KOREA – HIGH TIME TO GET REAL, PART I

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

Jul 20, 2017

NORTH KOREA – HIGH TIME TO GET REAL, PART II

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

Jan 23, 2017

The Gathering Storm

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

Jun 30, 2016

Ukraine and the Sino-Russian Relationship

This piece served as the basis for a presentation transmitted via Skype from Kiev, Ukraine to Kingston, Canada for a conference organized on the militarization of Russian foreign policy in June 2016 Introduction A young state, founded only in 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine has since gone from one crisis to another. Its growth pains assumed a new quality in 2014, however, with Russia’s seizure of Crimea and the incursion of Russian military elements into Eastern U

Feb 20, 2016

Reflections on the Sino-Russian Relationship

This article originally appeared at http://www.cdainstitute.ca/images/on_track/On_Track_Winter_2016/On_Track_20.3_-_Law.pdf Whither the relationship between the Russian Federation (RF) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC)? Will the two countries continue on their current strategically ambiguous path? Will their competition in Central Asia lead them to conflict? Will they become full-blooded allies, goose-stepping in unison against the West? One way or the other, it would

Oct 21, 2015

Russia, Syria, Ukraine – and the Rest of the World

Putin’s objectives in Syria have as much or more to do with Russian concerns about developments in the former Soviet Union as with the situation in and around Syria. But the overall thrust of his Syrian campaign can have an impact well beyond that. First and foremost, Putin is trying to project power abroad in an effort to compensate for the fading effectiveness of the model of growth and governance that have been associated with his now fifteen years at and near the pinnacle

Sep 30, 2015

R2P and the Responsibility to Receive

In 2005, a UN World Summit that brought together governmental leaders from around the world agreed on a statement that broke new ground in the obligations of states and inter-state relations. As theretofore, states were to have the primary responsibility for protecting their populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. The statement also recognized that the international community had a responsibility to assist a conflicted state in m

Aug 25, 2015

Knocking on the Door of World War IV

Introduction[1] The world is on a precipice. The international community faces a growing array of situations that could precipitate major regional and cross-continental conflict. The norms, patterns of cooperation and the institutions that the West has relied on for over three generations to ensure its protection and rising prosperity – and to spread its benefits to an ever larger part of the world – are under serious fire. The Western track record is anything but pristine:

Aug 6, 2015

Nukes: never again?

The sixth and ninth of August 2015 mark the seventieth anniversaries of the nuclear bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The total death toll exacted by these first ever, and as yet only, use of nuclear weapons may never really be known. Estimates range from 70,000 to double that number depending on the counting criteria used. Nuclear weapons surely deserve the descriptor “weapons of mass destruction,” but it is also true that the incendiary bombs droppe

Jul 21, 2015

Challenges facing the West – Part 5 of the World War IV Series

In this five-part series, I explore the development and scope of what I have termed World War IV. This series is based on my presentation at the CDA Institute Roundtable “Knocking on the Door of World War IV,” held in Ottawa on 10 June 2015. Part 4 of this series looked at the West’s strong points. This concluding post examines the other side of the coin. The situation, while anything but hopeless, is rather less than encouraging. Five issues stand out. First, the credibility

Jul 20, 2015

Strong Points of the West – Part 4 of the World War IV Series

In this five-part series, I explore the development and scope of what I term World War IV. This series is based on my presentation at the CDA Institute Roundtable “Knocking on the Door of World War IV,” held in Ottawa on 10 June 2015. In dealing with the current challenges to international peace and stability, the West currently enjoys several strong suits. Here are what I think to be the most important ones. First, and most obviously, all the members of NATO and the Europea

David M Law

The Way I See it

David M Law

The Way I See it