I recently wrote a post about the motivations for middle powers like Canada to join international coalitions for wars such as the recent war in Iraq. Now that we have seen Harper official justification for the war to Parliament, it is worth noting how …
Continue readingTag: Geopolitics and War
Progressive Proselytizing: Why Canada is going to war in Iraq: From Harper’s Mouth
I recently wrote a post about the motivations for middle powers like Canada to join international coalitions for wars such as the recent war in Iraq. Now that we have seen Harper official justification for the war to Parliament, it is worth noting how closely what I said tacked with
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Why Canada is going to war in Iraq: From Harper’s Mouth
I recently wrote a post about the motivations for middle powers like Canada to join international coalitions for wars such as the recent war in Iraq. Now that we have seen Harper official justification for the war to Parliament, it is worth noting how closely what I said tacked with
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Harper’s small but important lie on Iraq
Harper got caught in a lie important enough that the US Secretary of Defence’s office took the somewhat rare move of embarrassing Harper by telling everyone it was indeed a lie. Namely, as reported by Global News, Harper made something of a …
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Harper’s small but important lie on Iraq
Harper got caught in a lie important enough that the US Secretary of Defence’s office took the somewhat rare move of embarrassing Harper by telling everyone it was indeed a lie. Namely, as reported by Global News, Harper made something of a big show that the US was asking for Canadian
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Harper’s small but important lie on Iraq
Harper got caught in a lie important enough that the US Secretary of Defence’s office took the somewhat rare move of embarrassing Harper by telling everyone it was indeed a lie. Namely, as reported by Global News, Harper made something of a big show that the US was asking for Canadian
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Thoughts on Crimea
As the world prepares to accept the near inevitability of Crimea becoming part of Russia, the dominant feeling around the world is one best described as impotency. With the referendum coming in at 95% pro Russian, even if it skips over any official process and was boycotted by opposition groups,
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Syria – Is there nothing we can do?
In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, as the world collectively tried to parse the abhorrent barbarism and purposelessness that had occurred, a new foreign policy doctrine was proposed: liberal interventionism. It was a policy that advocated for military intervention by the powerful west in situations where the humanitarian crisis was
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Why Omar Khadr’s psychology does not matter
This post is a quick update to my previous post ‘Why Omar Khadr still matters‘ in response to a CBC article that contrasts the views of two psychologists who studied Khadr. As interesting as the article may be, everything I wrote previously about whether Canada should repatriate Khadr, whether his
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Why Omar Khadr still matters
A decade after a wounded Omar Khadr, a then fifteen year old Canadian citizen, decided to lob a fatal grenade in the middle of a firefight in Afghanistan, Ottawa is still dragging its feet on finally repatriating Khadr back to Canada from Guantanamo Bay where he is currently detained. Khadr’s
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Lessons from Iran for North Korea
North Korea became the biggest international story of last week when it decided to launch a satellite into space (ostensibly a weather satellite) that ultimately broke down shortly after being launched. This episode puts into peril the nascent moves towards genuine talks regarding food aid in exchange for abandoning nuclear
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: How the GOP should criticize Obama on Iran
Leaders of Brazil, Turkey & Iran As the Republicans continue to escalate their misguided criticism of Obama and his handling of the issue of a nuclear Iran, they desperately need a brief history lesson. I am not talking about a history lesson that extends back to the days of a
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The chances of an Israeli strike on Iran
As a large caveat, let me first say that I think it is very hard to come up with a reasonable estimate of the chances that Israel, or the US, decided to attack Iran within, say, a year. For the casual analyst like myself, we can read the statements from
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: A domestic foreign policy: Iran, Israel, and the US
Foreign policy is ostensibly something to do with other countries. However, when politicians talk about it they are largely doing so for their own domestic interests. Discussions of foreign policy are constantly evolving in the ideas, rhetoric, policies and details; the discussion of Iran today is very different than it
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The expanding War on Terror: their hypocrisy, and ours
It is hard to imagine how the timing could have created a more poignant juxtaposition. At the same time as the Obama administration triumphantly withdraws from Iraq, Congress is set to institute the legal codification of the largest expansion in the War on Terror yet, up to and including the
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Lessons from Uzbekistan
The Central Asian states such as Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan often don’t get too much attention in the west. However, the region is both important from a geostrategic perspective as well as having its tumultuous recent history providing many important insights for western policy in Asia and many other regions. Previously, I looked
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Lessons from Kyrgyzstan
A year before the Arab Spring, Kyrgyzstan experienced a populist uprising of its own complete with violent conflict, from both the state and between ethnicities, and resulted in a change of governance. The lessons that can be drawn from the recent history in Kyrgyzstan are useful in putting some of the Arab
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The myopic terrorism lens
One of the main failures of western understanding of the Middle East and South Asia, and the subsequent failures of actions taken by the west in these regions, stems from viewing these regions through the lens of terrorism. This terrorism-centric view…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: US, Israel and Canada’s response to Palestine’s UNESCO membership
When Palestine overwhelmingly got approved to be a member state in UNESCO, a long standing congressional trigger was activated which entirely defunds the US contribution to UNESCO (about a fifth of its total contributions). This comes on the back of f…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Externalizing the costs of war in Somalia
Perhaps the epitome of a war that externalizes costs out of sight of the average voter is one where the voter is unaware a war is even going on. Such is the case in Somalia, where most Americans might list Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya as wars the US is…
Continue reading