Litteratur

På sidan 58 och följande i boken Lagen mot krig, som finns att ladda ner från sajten, behandlas den förbjudna företeelsen  Targeted killings – utomrättsligt dödande. Den framstående amerikanska professorn Mary Ellen O’Connell har nu skrivit i ämnet, ”Targeted Killings”, i en bok, Elgar Encyclopedia of Human Rights , som kommer att publiceras 2022. Artikeln finns redan nu att läsa här .

O’Connell klargör och bekräftar att targeted killings är en eufemism för mord. Och oavsett hur ofta till exempel USA, genom bland andra fredspristagaren och presidenten Barack Obama,  eller Israel ägnar sig åt detta mördande i fredstid och oavsett hur många folkrättsjurister från dessa länder som försöker rättfärdiga detta mördande, är FN-stadgans regler klara och tvingande. Vi rekommenderar därför ett studium av denna artikel samtidigt som man tar del av nämnda kapitel i boken. (Utgivarna)

[…] Unipolar fantasies of American hegemony such as those harbored by an influential claque of neoconservative and liberal interventionists continue to cloud the judgement of most of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Leading scholars, think tank fixtures and perennial political appointees have been chasing the illusion of a U.S.-led liberal international rules-based order since the 1990s. The self-serving delusions that the U.S. can and should act in the manner of a global policeman are viewed as ridiculous in the eyes of the rest of the world (with a few exceptions, including our proxies in the U.K., Poland, Australia and the Baltic states). […]

And quite unlike our own establishment, which cannot comprehend how NATO expansion actually undermines rather than enhances American and European security, De Gaulle had a sophisticated, nuanced understanding of alliance dynamics. He knew that alliances have drawbacks and understood the risks they posed. His opposition to NATO was based on his not unreasonable view that a) a conflict having nothing to do with France—for example, between the U.S. and China over Taiwan—would unnecessarily drag it into a war with China and b) it was unlikely in the extreme, despite promises and the best of intentions, that the U.S. would ever trade New York for Paris in a nuclear exchange with the Soviets. As he told Bohlen, “no one could expect the U.S. to risk its cities for the defense of Europe.”  Läs artikel

Läs även Mats Björkenfeldts  artikel om De Gaulle och Nato.

The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War
by Louis Menand.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

Let us dispose of the superlatives first: In terms of both style and substance, The Free World represents an achievement of the very highest order. A professor of English at Harvard who moonlights as a staff writer with the New Yorker, Louis Menand offers readers the best of both worlds. He writes with erudition and eloquence, insight and irony, punctuating the result with sharp observations and flashes of wit. “Many teenage boys wanted to be Elvis Presley,” Menand observes; “millions of teenage girls wanted to touch him. The latter helps to explain the former.” Indeed it did.

Were our own world genuinely free and also just, Menand’s book would win a bushel full of prizes. I hope it does. Given the world as it actually exists, however, it is likely to attract no more than a limited readership. Weighty in every sense of the word, The Free World is almost defiantly at odds with the fashions and predilections of the so-called Digital Age. Those accustomed to informing themselves by nervously poking through clickbait are unlikely to have the patience to read and absorb 700-plus pages of text supplemented by hundreds of detailed and instructive footnotes. But the loss will be theirs. Läs presentationen

U.S. involvement in the 1953 coup in Iran is not debatable, but there continues to be a fight over the extent of that involvement and how significant the U.S. and U.K. roles were.

According to a recent surge of revisionist accounts, the U.S. role was not that great, but hundreds of documents released by the U.S. government in 2017 have confirmed the standard view that the U.S. role was significant and indeed crucial to the toppling of the popular prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh.

The eminent historian of Iran, Ervand Abrahamian, has written a new book reviewing the information disclosed in these declassified documents from the government. In that book, “Oil Crisis in Iran: From Nationalism to Coup d’Etat,” Abrahamian explains that the documents show much more extensive U.S. involvement in Iranian domestic politics in the years leading up to the coup than had previously been acknowledged. […]

The standard story about the reason why the U.S. backed the coup was that Washington feared losing Iran to communism, and this interpretation has leaned heavily on the Cold War justifications that the relevant policymakers themselves offered. As Abrahamian shows, however, the focus of both the U.S. and U.K. governments in the years leading up to the coup was on preventing oil nationalization and stopping Iran from creating a precedent that they feared would then be applied elsewhere in the world. Läs artikel

Krig har sällan gett de resultat som eftersträvats, sammanfattar veterandiplomaten Örjan Berner sin bok om Krig eller fred. Han analyserar där tio centrala kriser (utom andra världskriget) under de senaste hundra åren.

Han gör det mästerligt – såväl språk och faktapresentationer som analyser och slutsatser gör läsningen fängslande.

Örjan Berner haren mycket bred diplomatisk erfarenhet. Han upplevde kulturrevolutionen i Kina, stagnationen och sedan som ambassadör Gorbatjovs glasnost i Sovjetunionen. Han har arbetat med FN och verkat som ambassadör i bl a Indien, Tyskland och Paris.

Han gör sin framställning levande genom att dra nytta av sina minnen och erfarenheter. Samtidigt visar han upp en imponerande beläsenhet i viktig litteratur.

De tio kriser och krig som Örjan Berner valt att fördjupa sig i är av olika karaktär. Där finns förstås det sena 1900-talets värsta kris, Kubakrisen 1962, Storbritanniens och Frankrikes Suezkrig 1956, Sovjets angrepp på Afghanistan 1979 och västmakternas Libyenkrig 2011. Men också den för de flesta ganska okända men mycket allvarliga gränskrisen Sovjet-Kina 1969. Vinterkriget, Sovjets angrepp på Finland 1939, behandlas med inlevelse. Läs presentationen

I takt med at spændingerne mellem USA og Sovjetunionen spidsede til efter 2. verdenskrig, blev Danmark klemt mellem de to supermagters koldkrigsambitioner.

Fem års tysk besættelse var slut, og Danmark var opsat på at gøre brug af landets position på verdensscenen og den videnskabelige suverænitet over Grønland, der under den kolde krig var af høj strategisk betydning for de to supermagter USA og Sovjetunionen.

Hele historien om tophemmelige, diplomatiske stridigheder, militære operationer, forskning og forkludrede mediecoverups bliver skildret i en ny bog ’Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice’. Läs bokpresentationen

The United States needs to make a major overhaul of its alliances and partnerships in the world, and it needs to rethink which of its existing commitments truly protect the vital interests of the United States.

In light of the devastating effects of the pandemic on the country, including the loss of more than 600,000 people, we cannot afford the conventional understanding of national security that has prevailed up till now. Above all, we have to shed the self-congratulatory and self-justifying notion of American exceptionalism that has so warped our thinking about our foreign policy.

These are just some of the provocative ideas that Quincy Institute President Andrew Bacevich proposes in his new book After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed. […]

One of the big changes that Bacevich proposes is to end U.S. involvement in NATO. “NATO has become an exercise in nostalgia,” as it tries to guard against threats that no longer exist while it is incapable of addressing contemporary problems that do not have a military solution. Our European allies have the means to provide for their own defense, but for decades the U.S. has actively discouraged them from building up their own security institutions for fear of undermining NATO. There is growing recognition on both sides of the Atlantic that the current arrangement makes no sense and European states need to assume more responsibility for their own defense. Continued U.S. membership in NATO is not only unnecessary, but it actually impedes European states’ efforts to develop their own capabilities. In short, “U.S. security guarantees to Europe have today become redundant,” and therefore Bacevich proposes that the U.S. should announce its intention to withdraw “within the next decade.” Läs artikel

Den lange krigen kaller Micheline Egge Grung tida som har gått fra den kalde krigens slutt for omtrent 30 år siden, til i dag.

Statsviteren ved Høgskolen i Innlandet er aktuell med antologien Stortinget og den lange krigen, 1991–2021, redigert sammen med Tormod Heier, forskningsleder på Stabsskolen ved Forsvarets høyskole og professor II ved HINN. Boka har bidrag fra jurister og statsvitere med kompetanse innen forfatningsrettslige, folkerettslige og utenrikspolitiske spørsmål.

– Norge har vært involvert i en lang rekke kriger fra avslutningen av den kalde krigen helt til i dag, mer eller mindre som én sammenhengende krig. Derav Den lange krigen, sier Grung.

I boka viser forfatterne at beslutningene om å sende norske kvinner og menn i krig, stort sett har vært tatt utenfor Stortingets plenumssamlinger. Våre folkevalgte har heller ikke ført et særlig aktivt tilsyn med Norges involvering i disse krigene. Läs bokpresentationen

The U.S. presents itself as the builder and enforcer of an international order defined by the rules and institutions created in the wake of WWII. While the U.S. frequently violates those rules, international law still constrains how the U.S. has operated in the world. Even when pursuing regime change, the U.S. has felt constrained by the principle of nonintervention to conceal its role in toppling foreign governments when there is no legal excuse readily available. That is the core argument of Michael Poznansky’s “In the Shadow of International Law: Secrecy and Regime Change in the Postwar World.” Läs artikel