Showing 1 - 10 of 122
Somaliland: Mixed motivations
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/01/2026
» Last week Israel was the first country in the world to establish diplomatic relations with Somaliland. Not Somalia, a wreck of a country on the East African coast that has been mired in civil war for the past thirty-five years, but Somaliland, a different country just north of there that has been peaceful, relatively prosperous and even democratic for all those years.
Reckless decision
News, Postbag, Published on 27/12/2025
» Re: "Talks fail to secure truce", (BP, Dec 23).
The air war: plywood and Styrofoam
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/09/2025
» 'Nato is responding with unity and strength," said British defence secretary John Healey. "If you've got drones that are putting Polish lives at risk, then Nato will take them out. There's no firm confirmation on intent, but in the end that's not the point. It's still reckless. It's still dangerous."
Over in Canada, PM Trudeau bites the dust
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/01/2025
» Donald Trump excels in every field, including surrealism. Leonard Cohen sang "First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin!", but it's completely outclassed by Mr Trump's "First we take Greenland, then we take Canada!" And he's going to take the Panama Canal too!
Beware of rogue presidents (this time in Korea)
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 07/01/2025
» Turning yourself from a democratically elected president into a dictator is a tricky operation, and most people who try it fail. It's called a "self-coup", from the Spanish auto-golpe, and to try it without first gaining the support of the armed forces is sheer lunacy. Yet, from time to time, an elected president tries to do exactly that.
No place on earth is worse off than Sudan
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/11/2024
» There are wars in the world worse than those in Ukraine and Gaza. The war in Sudan is insanely cruel and stupid, but you hardly hear anything about it. Why not? Because, like me, other journalists hate writing about it and avoid doing so if they can.
Being protectionist and world leader isn't possible
News, Andreas Kluth, Published on 31/05/2024
» President Joe Biden likes to call the United States "the indispensable nation". By that, he means that America is the only power simultaneously mighty and benevolent enough to preserve whatever is left of a liberal order -- one in which rules and multilateral institutions govern, among other things, a system of relatively free international finance and trade.
In Russia, the really dangerous ones are sane
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 08/04/2024
» There are plenty of crazies in Russian politics who make bizarre claims about their country's victim status ("the evil West made us do it") and issue blood-curdling but implausible threats about using nuclear weapons on their enemies. But the really dangerous ones are quite sane.
Artificial intelligence for dummies
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/11/2023
» I'm sorry that I didn't get my article on artificial intelligence in last week during the "AI Safety Summit" at Bletchley Park, the historic Second World War decoding centre in England. I got distracted by some other stuff that was happening in the Middle East.
The presidential poll isn't perfect. Vote anyway
News, Karishma Vaswani, Published on 31/08/2023
» Predictability is the name of the game in Singapore's elections. The ruling People's Action Party (PAP) and its candidates always win handsomely. And while their margin of success is the envy of political parties and politicians the world over, for the PAP every single point counts. It is a sign of just how satisfied Singapore's 3.5 million or so citizens are with the ruling party. And a signal of whether longevity and legitimacy amount to the same thing.