It always fascinates me how people can re-write history with 20-20 hindsight. In reply to my blog on Pakistan, one of my most faithful readers suggested that Pakistan’s current instability accounts for India’s nuclear weapons. Sorry, but India’s first nuclear detonation (composed of about 90% of naive Canadian technology exports) took place in 1974, after Pakistan […]
Archive | May, 2007
Civil War in Pakistan?
News reports coming from Pakistan are no longer speaking of civil unrest, but of a looming civil war. The causes are complex: ethnic, religious, regional, and economic all melding and overlapping. But the cause doesn’t really matter. The Americans and NATO think life is tough in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now think of a country of 160 million people, armed with nuclear weapons, […]
Relations with Russia could "spin out of control"
It is shocking how badly relations between NATO (the U.S.) and Russia have deteriorated recently – but what is more shocking is how little media attention is being paid to it. It’s a car wreck in slow motion, and over the past several days my office has issued four different releases to Canadian journalists sending out a warning – […]
How Americans Do the Taliban's Job
My May 1st post on the Omar Khadr case continues to draw debate and comments, 25 as of this writing. I think I’ll just stand back and watch, as the arguments are familiar and the debate fierce. Today a new question: what happened to the Taliban’s much-heralded “spring offensive” that NATO was preparing for? The news […]
Lawrence Martin joins growing consensus for diplomacy in Afghanistan
As we have been pointing out – there is a growing consensus that there will only be a diplomatic end to the war in Afghanistan – not a military one. Here is the latest analysis from Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin: On war, a little diplomacy couldn’t hurt Peace talks with the Taliban? Not […]
Afghan Senate Calls for Talks with Taliban
Wow! My last post on Afghanistan brought a firestorm of invective pro and con. Some real old fashioned democratic debate for a change. I’ll comment on some of these posts in a day or two. Right now I’m still recovering from a lecture tour (more precisely from the unavoidable interaction with Air Canada). Meanwhile, a news flash […]