Guest Contributor: Ghenadie Virtos 22nd March 2014 The latest developments in the Crimean peninsula – which saw Russian troops enter, take over essential infrastructure and military facilities, and formalise a territorial takeover in just a few weeks – provided a surreal ...
Read More »Guest Article: Crimea and the Hijacking of the Responsibility to Protect
Guest Contributors: Timothy Stafford and Laura Dzelzyte 18th March 2014 After more than a decade promoting nonintervention in the internal affairs of other countries, Russia has become the latest convert to the concept of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’, or R2P. The notion, ...
Read More »Letter from Moscow: Goodbye, Crimea
Last Thursday I took the metro to Belorusskaya, to get the Sheremetyevo airport train out of Moscow. Perhaps not for the last time in my life but probably the last for a while, at least. During the last six months I have met, befriended and drunk too much vodka with some warm, sensible and decent Russian people.
Read More »Robert Halfon MP: Western Intervention in Iraq saved a Nation from being Exterminated
Guest Contributor: Robert Halfon MP 20th January 2014 Robert recently visited Kurdistan in Northern Iraq with the All-Party Kurdistan Group. In this article he describes the three challenges facing the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). When people ask me if the Iraq ...
Read More »Guest Article: The Truth Behind Birth Defects in Iraq
Guest Contributor: Michael Shale 30th November 2013 The anti-depleted uranium movement sprung during the Balkan wars and has been central in anti-war outfits ever since. The anti-DU crowd capitalizes on public ignorance and fear about nuclear power to preach tales about depleted ...
Read More »Syria: No, we are not better off now
When will we learn that, where Islamism is involved, we have to get involved early and not late? We may well look back in years to come and ask ourselves why it was that we managed to lose on two fronts; not only that we let thousands of civilians be massacred, but also created the ideal conditions for a new generation of terrorists to boot.
Read More »The legal, political and moral Legitimacy of Intervention, both in Syria and Elsewhere
Humanitarian intervention has, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, been an issue that has dominated discourse in international law and diplomacy. Debate concerning the topic can be generally placed into two camps. In the first, the realist belief of the sacrosanctity of states’ sovereignty when it comes to dealing with their internal affairs, no reason but self defence should allow states to bear arms against one another
Read More »Guest Article: The Mutating Crisis in Somalia
Guest Contributor: Siiri Makela de Oliveira 5th September 2013 The nature of the crisis in Somalia is ever changing; Somalia experienced a civil war in the 1980s and state collapse, clan factionalism and warlordism in the 1990s. Over the last ten ...
Read More »Guest Article: The Full Force of International Law Should be Applied to the Assad Regime
Guest Contributor: Harry Langford 28th August 2013 It appears that intervention is now inevitable following confirmed reports that the Assad regime used chemical weapons as part of a widespread assault on an Eastern suburb of Damascus. I have previously explored ...
Read More »However History Will Judge the Iraq War, Liberal Interventionism is Back
Guest Contributor: Kenny Stevenson 28th August 2013 ‘Was the price too high?’ asked Kirsty Wark. ‘Of course the price is very, very high’, replied Tony, ‘but think of the price people paid before Saddam was removed’. Defiant as ever, Blair strolled ...
Read More »