Ariel Rusila's Conflicts [Ex-BalkanPerspective]

A fter recent failure to reach agreement on treaty for international arms trade the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote article ”The world is over-armed and peace is under-funded” (August 28, 2012). The main idea is in his article headline and article contents lot of good intentions and initiatives for peace development too. However I would like to bring up only one hard fact mentioned there. And here it is: Last year, global military spending reportedly exceeded $1.7 trillion – more than $4.6 billion a day, which alone is almost twice the UN’s budget for an entire year. The fact above describes that Military-Industrial-Complex (MIC) – especially in U.S. - still rules the world. Global military industrial consumption represents a few percent of GDP and is still rising. U.S. share of the cake is about 40%. The international community still is willing to invest hundreds of times more to the war than peace. MIC is a concept commonly used to refer to policy relationsh...

O utside interventions to inner conflicts are part of daily news stream today. Where, when and how to intervene are the core of discussions. However from my point of view more weight should put to day after planning. In Balkans there is still frozen conflicts; Iraq, Afghanistan and many conflicts in Africa are most recent or still ongoing theatres, Syria and many more are coming soon on the table.  Recent trend in international politics seems to be different separatist movements around the globe. Kosovo’s unilateral proclamation of independence from Serbia February 2008 played a key role in these developments, which already has been seen in Bolivia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia and probably many more waiting to spark. This trend has big potential to expand, because it is estimated that there is about five thousand ethnic groups on globe. The situation puts pressure to develop the effectiveness of future – if not even existing - civil crisis management operations. T...