Canadian drones and the UN arms embargo on Libya
The sale of a Canadian-built surveillance drone to Libyan rebels last summer may well have been in violation of the UN arms embargo. The Government says it has asked the RCMP to investigate.
Archive for 2011
Red Cross champions Nuclear Weapons Convention, Canada still tentative
The International Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement has come out strongly in support of negotiations toward a nuclear weapons convention, in a resolution passed at the biennial meeting of the Council of Delegates in Geneva a week ago.
Preventing War: an audacious fantasy or a practical objective?
The approaching season of peace and goodwill invariably rekindles
our longing for a world in which swords are beaten into ploughshares and nation refuses to take up sword against nation. The hope may be genuine, but few of us can imagine, much less believe, that this audacious vision might actually find reality in our lifetime.
Gorbachev’s Legacy of Peace
Craig and Marc Kielburger of Free the Children go on The Huffington Post to urge a new generation to take up the challenge of ending the nuclear threat.
Excerpt: “…So how do we end the threat? [Ernie] Regehr says there is little public pressure to move quickly on disarmament. ‘The political process responds to pressure.
Populations support nuclear disarmament, but they are not creating pressure,’
he says.”
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For the full Post, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/craig-and-marc-kielburger/mikhail-gorbachev_b_1105143.html?ref=impact&ir=Impact.
Uncertainty made certainty in responses to the IAEA on Iran
While Iran is clearly ignoring the Security Council’s demand that it suspend uranium enrichment, and while it also fails to satisfactorily address the outstanding questions raised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the true nature and objective of Iran’s nuclear activity is much less certain than some reporting and commentary suggests.
Lessons from Afghanistan
Professors David Bercuson and Jack Granatstein wrote that “Afghanistan’s lessons weren’t just military” in the Oct 17 Globe and Mail. The following response was sent as a letter to the editor:
Professors Bercuson and Granatstein have missed the central lesson of that war — namely that in intrastate conflict, military peace support forces rarely trump the consequences of a deeply flawed peace process.
A related lesson is that the military pursuit of security in divided societies is undermined, not advanced, by the dogged refusal to countenance engagement and negotiations with one’s adversaries in the interests of repairing a dysfunctional political framework.
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So the legitimacy of the Afghan Government, claimed by the victors in the initial phase of the war, was compromised from the start. It was further weakened by corruption and unholy alliances with serious human rights violators. Then international forces dealt the Government of Afghanistan a further blow when, in its defence, they for a time killed as many civilians as did the insurgents. International forces have improved their record significantly, but the legacy of misguided military assaults still reverberates.
I hope Canada has learned some of the important operational and domestic political lessons from Afghanistan cited by Bercuson and Granatstein, but those learnings will be secondary to the core lesson that foreign armed forces pursing security in deeply divided societies cannot prevail in the absence of the vigorous diplomatic pursuit of inclusive and accountable governance.
Ten years of war in Afghanistan and still relying on a failing strategy
On this tenth anniversary of the start of the war against Taliban rule and an al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, the central strategy of those who started the war now comes down to mounting a force of 352,000 armed Afghans to take over all the fighting in 2014.
New proposals for a durable Afghan peace
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is reviewing his strategy[i] for engaging the Taliban following their assassination of his chief peace envoy, High Peace Council (HPC) Chairman Burhanuddin Rabbani, in an attack that also severely injured the Director of the HPC Secretariat, Masoom Stanekzai.[ii] A review is in order – not to question the continued pursuit of a political settlement with the Taliban[iii], but to consider what a comprehensive peace process might actually look like. Three recent reports offer some compelling guides.
Did 9/11 “change everything”?
Current 9/11 commentaries frequently recall that “everything changed” on
that day, but ten years ago the everything-has-changed mantra didn’t so much describe a new reality as it fed the view that extraordinary times justified extraordinary measures – established values and the rule of law, was the implication, had become inadequate guidelines for action against terrorism.[i] Published as a letter in Sept 12/11 Globe and Mail.
Reviving Rajiv Gandhi’s Action Plan for Nuclear Disarmament
The world is not wanting for well-crafted, well-intentioned, and resolutely ignored blueprints for ridding the planet of nuclear weapons. So it is not at all clear that the re-emergence of yet another detailed formula is any reason to rejoice, but when the source is India, a state still energetically acquisitive when it comes to nuclear weapons, it may be worth a closer look.