Category: Foreign policy

  • Defence of self or of hegemony

    Have you heard of “perception management”? Simply put, it means persuasion on the basis not of facts but of lies (or suppression of facts). During the 1980s, Reagan decided to “kick the Vietnam syndrome“, a condition from which the US public was suffering, sick to the heart of the horror and shame of the Vietnam…

  • Libya again

    Why, you may be asking, am I writing about Libya when everybody else is writing about Iraq? And that brings me straight to the rather surreal aspect of this ignominious war, which some countries, not least my own, waged against a country that was, from the 1990s on, one where even you or I might…

  • Look back in horror –Libya 2011

    In 2011, NATO bombed Libya to Kingdom Come. Blasting a well-functioning country off the map was not – I repeat, NOT – in compliance with UN Security Council resolution 1973 (Incidentally, no less than five countries, including Germany, abstained from voting on that occasion). The said resolution authorised action to “protect” civilians. …. take all…

  • Pipe me a Tune

    For a year now I’ve been wondering why the Norwegian authorities are so rabid about the Ukraine war. I mean, their faces don’t turn scarlet when they talk about the de facto genocide of the Palestinian people, the torture going on in Egyptian prisons or the suppression of women in Saudi Arabia. But Russia, now,…

  • In short

    The Doomsday Clock Not really much to add to that. Congratulations, Mr Stoltenberg, you’ve really made your presence felt.

  • Lady Liberty Abroad

    Source: https://thrandur.com/

  • Addendum to “Exclave”

    The Norwegian foreign ministry has decided to block transport of supplies to the Russian settlement Barentsburg on Svalbard, or Spitzbergen, as the island is also called. The Russian foreign ministry has threatened retaliatory action. This is in essence very much the same situation as the one in Kaliningrad. The 400 people living in Polar conditions…

  • Exclave

    I’ve learnt a new word this week. Actually, the difference between an enclave and an exclave still isn’t clear to me, nor do I think it is all that important. (See definitions and examples in Wikipedia as at 27 June 2022). Oddly, the Wikipedia article doesn’t mention the exclave Gibraltar. I wonder why. Kaliningrad is…

  • Winners and losers

    Now that the costs of this war are starting to stand out from all the dust and smoke, we are hearing a lot of semantic exercising. I quote N.Y. Times today: “Mr. Scholz, who has been criticized for not supplying more arms, faster, to Ukraine, says that Russia must not win — but has never…

  • International relations

    The expression “international relations” can be the name of a field of study or research. It can also refer – unsurprisingly – to “international relations”. I see that experts of “international relations” tend to be qualified as either “realist” or “liberal”. You will have to do your own research, but I have done mine and…