Showing 1 - 9 of 9
Kingdom of Denmark vs the Shadow Fleet
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/10/2025
» Back in the 16th and 17th centuries, two-thirds of the Danish kingdom's income came from taxes paid by every ship passing through the Øresund ('The Sound') Strait, the only exit from the Baltic Sea. Each ship had to declare its cargo -- and if the Danes thought they were undervaluing it, Denmark had the right to buy it at the declared price.
Greenland, Ukraine and all that stuff
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 30/08/2025
» Last Wednesday, the Danish foreign minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, summoned the top US diplomat in Copenhagen to his office to complain that the United States is running a covert operation in Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of the Danish kingdom.
Three hours in Greenland and plenty of bluster
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/04/2025
» 'We need to wake up from a failed, 40-year consensus that said we could ignore the encroachment of powerful countries as they expand their ambitions," said US Vice-President JD Vance during his brief visit to the US military base at Pituffik in northern Greenland. (It was brief because the Greenland authorities wouldn't let Mr Vance go anywhere else.)
'Flooding the zone' will likely backfire
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/02/2025
» The planning for a hard-right takeover of the United States federal government was detailed and meticulous, and its execution by Elon Musk and his young Silicon Valley stormtroopers was ruthless and mostly successful. They did indeed "move fast and break things", notably in gaining illegal access to the Department of Treasury payments system by sheer intimidation.
Lets hope Trump takes sensible Greenland path
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/02/2025
» The Strait of Malacca is strategically important. It's the shortest shipping route between the Far East and the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. It handles a quarter of all internationally traded goods, and if anybody tried to block it there would be a war.
The slide back to war: Kagame and Trump
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 29/01/2025
» We seem to be drifting back into the world of "Might Makes Right". That would be a bad place to be.
Putin provides a shot in the arm for Nato
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 12/07/2023
» When Nato held its annual summit in Brussels two years ago, all 31 presidents and prime ministers of the alliance’s member states dutifully showed up, but their hearts weren’t really in it. France’s President Emmanuel Macron had publicly declared Nato “brain-dead” in 2019, and nobody could find a good reason to disagree.
Norway, oil and the issue of climate change
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/10/2021
» You can see why Saudi Arabia wants to go on pumping as much oil as it can. Oil exports account for 87% of the Saudi government budget and 42% of GDP. The Saudi population, now 35 million, is growing by two-thirds of a million a year, and the country already imports 80% of its food. They'd be starving in a few years if they stopped pumping.
Reopening our economies is a balancing act
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/04/2020
» Wuhan, the Chinese city where it all started, was locked down for 79 days before the restrictions on movement were finally lifted last week. A bit over-cautious, perhaps, but in China the coronavirus does really seem to be under control -- not totally eradicated, but controllable without extreme measures.