One or two readers may recall that, back in June, I created a bit of a rumpus with a whimsical post on items from the Putnam County News and Recorder, an...
Richard Gowan
Richard Gowan coordinates the International Security Institutions program at the Center on International Cooperation, New York University. He is also the UN Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and an associate of the Foreign Policy Center (London).
Why people ARE reading your think-tank’s latest report
In April, I posted about a fine if suitably hard-to-find academic article on why most policy literature goes unread. Now, a post by Dan Drezner draws my...
Chad: triple word score!
Seasoned readers may recall that I got quite worked up about events in Chad a few weeks back when (depending on who you believe) Irish EU peacekeepers either...
Texan political advertising at its best 2: 1960s nostalgia edition
Yesterday, I offered up Texan senator John Cornyn's macho cowboy re-election video as "Texan political advertising at its best". But the enjoyably off-beat...
A nuclear error
At the start of the month, I tried to write a wry and whimsical post about signs of scarcity in Putnam County, a beautiful bit of hill country north of New...
Texan political advertising at its best
Here's a really very moving campaign ad for Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, or "Big John". It's almost enough to make me forgive Clooney's "Waging...
Chadian lessons in peacekeeping, part 3: humanitarians are irritating but wars are worse
The sense of chaos surrounding the EU Force in Chad grows by the day. After rebel groups praised an Irish contingent's refusal to get involved in fighting and...
“The Uses of American Power”: 2008 = 1977
Doing some Google "research" this morning, I dug up this 1977 Foreign Affairs piece by Stanley Hoffmann on "The Uses of American Power". You wouldn't need to...
Chadian lessons in peacekeeping, part 2: even the neutral have enemies
Yesterday I recorded that Chadian rebels had congratulated Irish EU troops on their "courageous" and "neutral" (i.e. defensive) response to a firefight in the...
Chadian rebels ? Irish neutralism
On Saturday, just after Ireland tipped the EU into crisis by rejecting the Lisbon Treaty, Irish forces serving with the EU in Chad found themselves caught in...
Kosovo: born on the 15th of June
Kosovo continues to limp, hop and stumble towards statehood. Today, the UN hands over some policing and justice duties to the EU, in a deal hammered out by...
Scarcity in small town America
I was recently hiking in Putnam County, NY, a charming slice of hill country on the Hudson made famous by a musical about a Spelling Bee. I picked up the...
Europeans who care about Iraq: slightly more voices in the wilderness than before
On Saturday Bernard Kouchner showed why he's Europe's Coolest Foreign Minister by swooping into Nasiriya, Iraq, just after a shoot-out to offer reconstruction...
EU offers Harriet Harman chance to prod Silvio Berlusconi
As Alex notes in the post immediately below, new social networking technologies can be forces for good or evil. I'll leave you to decide which category the...
A not-so-happy Peacekeeper’s Day
For those readers wondering why I posted the new George Clooney "Waging Peace" video immediately below, it's Peacekeeper's Day. But although this is sixtieth...
60 years of keeping the peace
Kosovo: no longer the new North Ireland, more like Iraq
Since time immemorial, or at least the 1970s, British soldiers have liked to point out that they can "do" counter-insurgency thanks to their Northern Irish...
Serbia selects sanity…
...or so suggest the exit polls after today's national elections - see why here.
Total financial meltdown: you wouldn’t credit it
From a piece on the credit crunch in the current London Review of Books, the sort of opening that you find yourself reading more than once... Last November, I...
The UN’s dreadful May: Cassandra reports back
Exactly how bad has the first half of this month been for the UN? Where does one start? You could choose Burma, where the international organization's ability...
More from Global Dashboard
Learning From the Lockdown to Build Back Better
This article is part of our Local Week series, a collection of articles focusing on the challenges facing communities as they confront the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. You can find the other articles in the series on our Local Week page. During the...
Typologies of Change
The Next Wave: COVID-19’s Hunger Crisis
This article is part of our Local Week series, a collection of articles focusing on the challenges facing communities as they confront the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. You can find the other articles in the series on our Local Week page. There is a lot...