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Fresh from his triumphs in bringing peace to Northern Ireland or at least the pretense of peace for a few weeks or months former Maine Sen. George Mitchell, as head of the new U.S.-led commission formed after the abortive Sharm al Sheik meeting a couple of months ago, is trotting around the Middle East pretending … Continue reading “Israeli Wild Cards in the Peace Process”

STATES, NON-STATES, AND HISTORICAL METHOD Hendrik Spruyt’s The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton, 1994) is a very stimulating account of how modern states came to be and, perhaps more importantly, why competing forms of governance fell by the wayside. It is a sweeping book which attempts to theorize the political main drift from the … Continue reading “Competing Producers of Security: Round One”

In an AP article dated 21 November, Croatia’s president, Stipe Mesic, insisted that "ousting Slobodan Milosevic was not enough," and "urged Yugoslavia’s new leaders on Tuesday to hand him over to the U.N. war crimes tribunal and face up to their country’s role in the Balkan wars. Croatian President Stipe Mesic praised Yugoslavia’s democratization, which … Continue reading “If It’s Good Enough for Serbia’s Goose, Why Not for Croatia’s Gander?”

Given how odd and virtually unprecedented the Florida Follies are in a presidential election, any prediction should be guarded and qualified. But at this point – and the stock market seems to agree – it almost looks as if it is all over but the whining and Dubya will be the next president. Even though … Continue reading “Making Lemonade”

There has been a good deal of talk, during this post-election of our discontent, about sparing no effort to discern the will of the people, a process whereby the next president and the next administration will presumably be blessed with a shroud of legitimacy. It is astounding that this term can be used in the … Continue reading “The Will to Power”

The closeness of the U.S. presidential vote suggests strongly that the next president will have very little even resembling a mandate to conduct foreign affairs. That lack of a mandate might prove a blessing if it is used to reassess current commitments and announce prudent steps to reduce US vulnerability to violence and conflict in … Continue reading “A Peace Platform?”

CHALMERS JOHNSON AS SEEN IN THE ‘MIRROR’ One of the few benefits of wasting most of a day in airports is that one can at least catch up on the foreign press, while drinking bad coffee and eating overpriced food. Thus it was that I found an interesting interview with Chalmers Johnson in the German … Continue reading “Chalmers Johnson on an ‘Ersatz Roman Empire’”

What we are seeing in Florida rather closely resembles an organized crime war between two rival "families" who seek control over certain rackets. The soldiers have gone to the mattresses, moving away from their homes to be at the scene of the action, devoting full time to the war and all its tactical maneuvers and … Continue reading “To The Mattresses”

Watching last night the incredibly tight race for the White House inevitably lead me to recall another close presidential race: the one that took place in Yugoslavia just over a month ago. The outcome of that election and events that ensued in Belgrade are generally described as a “Democratic Revolution.” It was a “revolution,” albeit … Continue reading “Close Presidential Race: Cause for Revolution?”

Presidents, prime ministers and/or high public officials from Russia, China, Germany, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, the European Union, Turkey and Indonesia were almost as red-faced as the network anchors were (or should have been) over the shifting projections that seemed to give the U.S. presidential election to Bush and Gore and back to too-close-to-call … Continue reading “Undermining the Empire”