| 24 July 2010
In recent times, OSCE has become a paradox: the Organization has in fact consolidated its tendency to slide toward irrelevance at the precise time when its aims have proved to be the most current. The strategies of the main players within the OSCE have failed to infuse new effectiveness in the organization.
The United States, during the Bush Administration, consolidated the trend to favour the use of the Organization as an instrument for democratic transition in the Euro-Asian region and for the U.S. policy of democratization in connection with the events of September 200l. Despite providing 70% of the Organization’s budget, and accounting for the vast majority of its participating states, the EU has had little influence in the dynamics of the OSCE, decided mainly by bilateral agreements between the USA and Russia. The latter in particular, sees the Vienna-based Organization as an instrument of Western interests and has moved from an appreciation of its role in the nineties, to its current skepticism.
| 14 July 2010
I. The Challenge and Objective of ‘Zero Nuclear Weapons’
The calamity of nuclear bombs and their destructive power was illustrated in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks that caused 200,000 deaths on impact and several hundred thousands of radiation related illnesses and cancers over the years. In the post cold war era, an intentional nuclear war between the USA and Russia seems remote. However, a regional nuclear war and the likelihood of nuclear terrorism and the use of a bomb in a suitcase are increasingly possible. Per expert reports, a regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan, can cause one billion deaths as a direct result of the conflict and its associated environmental damage to food chain and human and animal habitats which are not only limited to the region in question, but cover a much wider geographical area.
Economically, even with no wars, the costs of preparing for war are costing every one of us and particularly the needy of the world, wastage of necessities and loss of opportunities. Per a SIPRI annual report, the 2007 global military expenditures stood at $1.3 trillion, equivalent to almost $200 per person per year.
| 04 July 2010
During the last months, a strengthening in European public dialogue, an intense cultivation of views and recommendations in reference to the future of security in Europe and East Mediterranean have emerged. In most European countries this pubic dialogue is in progress something of course that does not occur in Greece and Cyprus all though– due to Turkish threat – it should be just the opposite. : Athens and Nicosia had to have undertaken initiatives, both diplomatic and political, to their active participation in associated matters with the new framework under formation (or, new architecture as called otherwise) for common European security in the world of tomorrow.
The US, Britain and countries of Eastern Europe integrated in NATO, also form a first block expressing old, Atlantic order and trend, as to collective security. Although President OBAMA attempts a certain review of American security strategy, calling all nuclear forces of the planet to common management of nuclear arsenals, despite the fact that the US seem to accept, even slowly, that the world walks to more multipolarity, their understanding for European collective security seems to remain static and paternalistic. This was shown in many crises: in Georgia (2008); in the last land operation of Israel in Gaza, which, the government of Prague back then, characterized as “defensive” in its EU presidency statements (that is on account of the all other European partners).
| 10 May 2010
However, nobody can deny that George Bush senior promised, on the West’s part, that NATO would not take advantage of the situation by expanding eastwards. The European citizens, in particular, and the world citizens at large, naturally nurtured high expectations that the Cold War was approaching its end and that the demise of the East-West confrontation which troubled the old continent since the end of the catastrophic Second World War would soon be an accomplished fact.