Showing 1 - 10 of 32
Iran war: One miscalculation after another
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 24/03/2026
» Still not four full weeks into the war, and already Donald Trump's "short-term excursion" -- decapitate the Iranian regime with a surprise attack and impose harsh terms on the defeated survivors -- has morphed into a global economic crisis and a region-wide war that could destroy the wealth of all the countries on both sides of the Gulf. At the very least.
Peace on Earth? Democracy everywhere?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 29/12/2025
» Democracy is in retreat or at least on the defensive almost everywhere, while wars are getting bigger and more frequent. The trend lines are frighteningly bad.
Arab fraternity weakens and hegemons rule
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/11/2025
» 'This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper," wrote T S Eliot in 1925, probably responding to the profoundly unsatisfactory aftermath of World War I (although with a poet, you never really know). At any rate, it's happening again, this time in the Middle East.
Brazil and the US: Same crime, different fate
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/09/2025
» If Donald Trump were a religious man, he might have said "There but for the grace of God go I" when he heard that former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro had been sentenced to 27 years in prison. Bolsonaro's crime was to have plotted a coup to take back the presidency he lost in the 2022 election.
Sudan's war and the Africa we don't see
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/04/2025
» Last Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: "Many have given up on Sudan, but that is wrong. It's morally wrong when we see so many civilians beheaded, infants as young as one subjected to sexual violence, more people facing famine than anywhere else in the world.... We simply cannot look away."
Farewell Nato: The late, great military alliance
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/03/2025
» The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) retired to its sickbed as soon as Donald Trump won the presidential election last November. It finally died last Friday in the White House, when Mr Trump and Vice-President JD Vance launched a vicious attack on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before the massed cameras of the American media.
FGM and the need for Islamic scholars
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/07/2024
» There was a small victory in The Gambia this week when a proposed law to legalise female genital mutilation (FGM) was defeated by human rights campaigners. It was quite a small victory, however, because the great majority of little girls in The Gambia are still being mutilated by the professional "cutters" who move from village to village.
Has crunch time arrived for 'Bibi' Netanyahu?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 24/05/2024
» It has not been a good week for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, chief decision-maker in the war in the Gaza Strip that has already cost at least 35,000 civilian deaths. (Some thousands of those 35,000 may have been Hamas fighters.)
India election fuels nationalist sentiments
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/04/2024
» Extreme nationalism always looks foolish or even deranged to those who have not caught the virus, but in India it's now official.
The utility of neutrality, now in steep decline
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/03/2024
» Neutrality used to be a European thing, but it is now in steep decline. If it were an animal, we'd have to declare it an endangered species.