Ariel Rusila's Conflicts [Ex-BalkanPerspective]

I sraeli PM Netanyahu decided elections to be held in 22nd January 2013, in advance of the November 2013 deadline. The immediate cause for early elections might be his troubles to agree budget cuts with his coalition colleagues. The key issue in Israeli politics during last decades has been the Israeli-Palestinian peace process but this time differ; socioeconomic questions rises to top of agenda. While the Israeli economy is slowing the ruling coalition has proposed budget cuts and already some social protests occurred summer of 2011. Other issues are the Iranian thread and PM Netanyahu's leadership skills to copy with it, tensions between secular and religious Jews in Israel especially related to military service and a debate about how to break the deadlock in the Palestinian issue which has close link to worsened relationship between U.S and Israel. Israeli Elections 2013 Factbox 34 parties are competing in the upcoming Israeli national election that will ...

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...

T he Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a relatively new international security and human rights norm to address international community's failure to prevent and stop genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.  When and where to intervene has came more and more actual question during last decades in western foreign policy.  The wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have been claimed to be justified attacks in name of humanitarian intervention or recently due the R2P norm. On the other hand there is questions why the same nor has not been applied in Syria, Somalia, Burma, Sudan etc.  Official high-flown statements are normally dealing R2P issue from perspective of humanitarian need or to build a democratic state in intervention region. In my opinion an opposite approach is more dominating on the ground – approach where intervention logic is traced from needs and motivations of intervener not from those in mission theatr...

"After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home." ( Barack Obama ) “ They are coming already in coffins.” ( Ari Rusila ) US President Obama finally announced his new counter-insurgency (aka "Coin") strategy in Afghanistan – which continues mostly the strategy of his predecessor Mr. Bush. Generals and influential - if not decisive – military-industrial complex got what they want and once again USA is seeking military solution to mainly political problem. I am interested to see if the selected strategy can be implemented, against or for whom it is planed, what is the role of Europe in this game and whether there would be maybe better alternatives available. President Obama justified sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan at a cost of $30 billion a year. US mission is seize the initiative against a resurgent Taliban while building the capacity of Afghan forces so that American and NATO forces can gradually hand off security responsibilities to the Afgha...