Category: Foreign policy

  • Sanctions

    I definitely don’t like the way women are treated in Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. And I most emphatically do not approve of putting dissidents in prison, either. And as for torture… no! no! no! (If you tortured me to force me to endorse torture, I would probably give in, but those who love me,…

  • A word on Ukrainian history

    The events immediately preceding Russia’s entry into Ukraine have been the subject of furious debate (not in my country, true enough, where any scepticism regarding the dominant narrative is fiercely cancelled.) I think those events have been made sufficiently clear, by now, for us to understand what happened and why it happened. What has not…

  • Military escalation

    On 2 February less than a handful of Norwegian dailies briefly reported the signing of an agreement between the USA and the Norwegian government, according to which Norway grants the USA 8 new military bases, in addition to the four granted in 2021. All the dailies used the same wording, including the non-word “omforent”, which…

  • A conversation

    I recommend a conversation between 3 analysts about some objectives underlying the wars in Palestine and Ukraine. 1) John Mearsheimer is a prominent political scientist best known internationally for his theory of offensive realism, which describes the interaction between great powers as being primarily driven by the rational desire to achieve or maintain regional hegemony.…

  • Mary had a little lamb

    I used to love The Guardian. You could find discussions about just about anything there, views right left and centre, philosophical musings, analyses of books, films and even a magnificent series in which Andras Schiff presented each and every one of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. It was a site that continued where school education left off,…

  • This is not the time to make babies

    The Norwegian bellicose foreign minister Huitfelt has just been exposed in what appears to be a case of serious corruption. Her husband made some strikingly lucrative investments after she became a Cabinet member. I have seen no proof that decisions she has made as a foreign minister has contributed to their joint wealth. Yet, there…

  • John Mearsheimer

    Mr. Mearsheimer, who is a prominent expert on international relations, cf. Britannica, has been relatively uncommunicative since 2022, after the war he had warned about ever since 2014, started. Maybe he did not want to tell us “I told you so”. Or was his case perhaps one of not being allowed to tell us? Like…

  • Quoting Kissinger

    To be an enemy of the United States is dangerous. To be a friend of the United States is fatal” Henry Kissinger Indeed. In the wake of the Ukraine debacle, many of us are beginning to understand the statement. Here in Europe, all states, including Ukraine, are seeing an unprecedented rise in the cost of…

  • Five minutes of foreign policy

    What’s going on in Niger? I wonder. My next thought is: How strange the press is! Today, I’ve checked AP, Reuters and Al Jazeera – these are the most common sources that feed local papers in the West about situations in places to which a news outlet may not be able to send its own…

  • Rødt

    Rødt is the name of a Norwegian left-wing political party. It is the only political party that still advocates leaving NATO. The party maintains that NATO is not a defence alliance, but an alliance of nations vindicating US global hegemony. The party avers that NATO not so much solves as creates problems. It is the…