Showing 91 - 100 of 113
Venezuela sits on civil war knife-edge
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/08/2017
» There are two stories about the assault on Fuerte Paramacay military barracks in Carabobo state on Sunday. The Venezuelan government says that about half the 20 attackers were killed or captured, and the rest are being hunted down. Sgt Giomar Flores, who defected from the Venezuelan navy in June and now lives in Colombia, told The Guardian that the attack had been "a complete success".
Was the creation of Pakistan a monumental mistake?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/08/2017
» It was never my plan to tell Pakistanis their country had been a mistake. I was 19 years old at the time, in Pakistan for the summer with 40 other young Canadian university students on a trip to foster international understanding. I had already realised that this was a completely pointless exercise, but it was a free trip and I had never been out of North America before.
'Principled Realism' without principles or realism
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 24/05/2017
» The media mostly missed it (or chose to ignore it as a piece of meaningless rhetoric), but Donald Trump proclaimed a new doctrine in his speech to the assembled leaders of the Muslim world in Saudi Arabia on Sunday. It goes by the name of "Principled Realism", though it didn't offer much by way of either principles or realism. In practice, it mostly boiled down to a declaration of (proxy) war against Iran.
Preposterous times for four long years
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/05/2017
» All the talk of special prosecutors and the like will not bring the man to book. The soap opera will continue and no amount of dysfunction in the White House will make it stop until early 2019 at best. Even though a great deal of damage will have been done by then.
The North Korea crisis: Why now?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/05/2017
» Apart from Donald Trump's need for a dramatic foreign policy initiative, is there any good reason why we are having a crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons testing now?
Washington: The playbook is back
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/05/2017
» It was striking, in US media coverage of US President Donald Trump's first hundred days in office, that most observers noted with relief that his foreign policy has turned out to be less radical than they feared. In fact, it's not radical at all. He has already fired cruise missiles at a Middle Eastern country, a ritual that has been observed by every American president since Bill Clinton.
Trump took the bait in Syria attack
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 10/04/2017
» Donald Trump has spent a lot of time in the courts, so he must be familiar with the legal concept of "cui bono" -- "who benefits?" When a crime is committed, the likeliest culprit is the person who benefited from the deed. But he certainly did not apply that principle when deciding to attack a Syrian government airbase with 59 cruise missiles early Friday morning.
If Trump tries to 'solve' N Korea, his bluff might be called
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/04/2017
» Never mind the legalities of the situation. Never mind morality either. Just answer the pragmatic question: Is it ever a good idea to start a nuclear war? Because that's the notion that Donald Trump is actually playing with.
Trump and the maniac in Pyongyang
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 15/02/2017
» 'This guy, he's like a maniac, OK? He wiped out the uncle. He wiped out this one, that one. I mean, this guy doesn't play games. And we can't play games with him. Because he really does have missiles. And he really does have nukes."
Doomsday Clock gets the time all wrong
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/02/2017
» 'Without a proper sense of urgency, we will be eventually defeated, dominated and very likely destroyed," wrote former general Michael Flynn, President Trump's National Security Adviser, last year. "They are dead set on taking us over and drinking our blood."