January 18th, 2012
While a not-so-fringe cadre of Israelis and American Republicans can’t seem to stop talking about attacking Iran (at least for some Israelis it is still a question for debate,[i] for Republicans it’s become a campaign promise[ii]), there are still places where more sober voices struggle to be heard.
Read MoreJanuary 7th, 2012
The news that the Taliban will open a political office in Qatar is rightly being welcomed as a watershed moment – even though it is a belated one, coming at the 10-year mark of the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan. The pressing question now becomes, who will get a seat at the negotiating table that will […]
Read MoreDecember 13th, 2011
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.
Read MoreDecember 5th, 2011
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.
Read MoreNovember 28th, 2011
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.
Read MoreNovember 28th, 2011
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. […]
Read MoreNovember 23rd, 2011
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.
Read MoreOctober 21st, 2011
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 […]
Read MoreOctober 7th, 2011
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.
Read MoreOctober 4th, 2011
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 […]
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