• OPINION

  Peace is returning to Ukraine

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/09/2015

  » The current ceasefire in the war in eastern Ukraine, the so-called Minsk-2 agreement, was signed last February, but they never actually ceased firing. At least a thousand more people have been killed in the fighting since then, and on one night last month (Aug 14) the monitors of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe recorded 175 separate ceasefire violations.

• OPINION

  After Erdogan's win, Turkey inches closer to civil war

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/11/2015

  » "You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time...", begins Abraham Lincoln's aphorism about democracy -- but in a multi-party democratic system, that is usually enough. In a parliamentary system like Turkey's, 49% of the popular vote gives you a comfortable majority of seats, and so Recep Tayyib Erdogan will rule Turkey for another four years. If the country lasts that long.

• OPINION

  Retaliation would fulfil the terrorists' strategy

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/11/2015

  » As always when there is a major terrorist attack on the West, the right question to ask after the slaughter in Paris is: what were the strategic aims behind it? This requires getting your head around the concept that terrorists have rational strategies, but once you have done that the motives behind the attacks are easy to figure out. It also becomes clear that the motives have changed.

• OPINION

  Why Turkey shot down the Russian plane in a heartbeat

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 27/11/2015

  » The key fact is that the Russian plane, by Turkey's own admission, was in Turkish airspace for precisely seventeen seconds. That's a little less time than it takes to read this paragraph aloud. The Turks shot it down anyway -- and their allies publicly backed them, as loyal allies must.

• OPINION

  The lethal nature of gene drives

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 24/12/2015

  » Most powerful new technologies are double-edged. Cars are a vast improvement on horses as a means of transportation, but they also kill more than three thousand people a day and they are a major source of pollution.

• OPINION

  The triumph and tragedy of Egypt

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 15/02/2016

  » Exactly five years after Egypt's democratic revolution triumphed, the country is once more ruled by a military office. General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi seized power in July 2013, and he is even nastier than his predecessors.

• OPINION

  Syria's chance for 'peace and stability'

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/03/2016

  » So far the Russian plan for a ceasefire in Syria is working remarkably well. The truce that came into effect on Saturday had been observed with only minor violations on all the relevant fronts, and the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Syria, Yacoub el-Hillo, called it "the best opportunity that the Syrian people have had over the last five years for lasting peace and stability".

• OPINION

  Russia's Syria mission 'accomplished' 

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/03/2016

  » He wasn't standing on an aircraft carrier with a banner saying "Mission Accomplished" behind him, but Russia's President Vladimir Putin was a lot more credible than former US president George W Bush when he declared his country's military intervention in the Middle East a success. And most of the Russian forces in Syria are going home after only five months, not the eight years that American troops stayed in Iraq.

• OPINION

  Russia was right about Syria conflict

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/05/2016

  » 'The Russians had a more realistic analysis of the situation than practically anybody else," said Lakhdar Brahimi, the former UN Special Envoy to Syria. "Everyone should have listened to the Russians a little bit more than they did."

• OPINION

  Face-off looms over South China Sea

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 07/07/2016

  » Next Tuesday, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea will issue its ruling on China's claim to practically all of the South China Sea. And already the main military contenders are moving more forces into the region.

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