It is Easter again, among the holiest of holidays on the Christian calendar. And this year the two Easters coincide, that of the Western Churches, Catholic and Protestant that is, with that of the Eastern Churches, Orthodox and more. It is also the Jewish Passover, which this year culminates, like the two Easters, on Sunday,…
The anniversary of the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas and other militant Palestinian factions on southern Israel from Gaza finds the Middle East in a state of generalized warfare, which threatens to spill over globally. The horrendous murders and hostage taking of the initial event were followed by massive killing and destruction, first in…
On the second anniversary of the war on Ukraine, young Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Serbians gathered in the central Republic Square in Belgrade and having lit candles for all the victims of the war on Ukraine, engaged in a protest march to the confluence of the Sava river into the Danube at the plateau under…
Armistice Day is approaching, 11 November, the day that guns fell silent marking the end of the First World War in 1918. As we know, that was not the end of all wars, as much as the millions who suffered from it might have hoped. Wars did not even end after World War II and…
For the first time in history, a nuclear power plant has become a military objective during a war. While previous military operations at the Iraqi Osirak reactor (1981), the Iranian Bushehr plant (1987) and the Slovenian Krško plant (1991) were somewhat ad hoc, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant continues to be contested between the parties…
Unprecedented challenge reveals a weakness in Russia’s centralized power structure The recent coup attempt in Russia, led by the Wagner Group, has shaken the country’s political landscape and led analysts to question the stability of President Vladimir Putin’s regime. The armed rebels’ incursion into Russian territory and their march on Moscow directly challenged Putin’s authority…
When in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Francis Fukuyama evangelized “the end of history,” he did it in the context of a widely held belief that the collapse of Communism and the victory of Liberal Democracy was a major milestone in human evolution. Beyond the end of the Cold War, this was supposed to…
Lately, I came across a very interesting article “The Roots of Russia”, written exactly sixty years ago by Dr. Lev Dobriansky (1918-2008), a renowned Professor of Economics at Georgetown University and former US Ambassador to The Bahamas[1]. Dobriansky’s article was re-published in January 1964, in An Cosantóir (The Defender), The Irish Defence Journal, courtesy of…
In the West, there are two different competing narratives about the war in Ukraine. The prevailing narrative is that it is a struggle between the “bad guys” and “good guys”. For many, Russia led by dictator Putin represents imperialism and is alone responsible for this unprovoked war, whereas Ukraine represents freedom and democracy as well…
