Is the triumph march to ever-increasing personal power of Donald Trump starting to be affected, even slowed down, by clear and present headwinds, after soon one year in the White House, in his second presidential term? That is the question. Could it be…
Författararkiv: Michael Sahlin
Trump’s Gaza plan: The troublesome step from Phase 1 to Phase 2
It took a long, long time for the stakeholders of the management of the Israel-Hamas war to arrive at a much, much needed ceasefire, a sine qua non for both desperately needed humanitarian assistance to the suffering civilian Palestinians, and for the …
Gaza after 2 years of destruction: On the verge of peace, but what kind of peace?
2 years after Hamas initialed its brutal surprise attack, October 7 2023, and Israel launched its retaliation campaign with many names, the world is holding its breath in anticipation of “final” negotiations being held on the tip of the Sinai peninsula…
The UNGA turns 80 – A last chance (or sigh) for effective multilateralism?
This week almost all world leaders will, again, gather in New York for the annual UN General Assembly, a remarkable manifestation of multilateralism. Among the absent friends is Mahmud Abbas and some 80 Palestinian representatives, for – contrary to th…
Om krig, fred och eldupphör i vår tid, Trumptid
Kring de geopolitiska och militärstrategiska hoten och utmaningarna kretsar mina tankar för dagen denna dag. ”Time is out of joint” (ur led är tiden), sade redan Hamlet, påstod Shakespeare. Och låt mig, som illustration i nuläget, erinra om vad som ske…
Partition as peace model, last resort? History and prospects
Partition, sometimes peaceful, sometimes not, may be universally feared as a way out of persistent territorial conflicts, except in rare cases (Sudan, Ethiopia) where partition was instead finally facilitated by the international community, but amongst…
Enough! When and how, and at what cost and with what consequences, will Israel’s war in Gaza end?
Will the Gaza war end – to quote T.S.Eliot- with a bang or a whimper? This obviously cannot be answered unless we undertake the intellectual burden of defining what “bang” and “whimper” might mean, when we try to understand what is at stake in the curr…
Ukraina, Gaza, Sudan: The damned illusive ceasefire continues to haunt Donald Trump
What does it say about conflict and warfare in our time that it is so hard, in spite of often desperate humanitarian needs, to arrive at a ceasefire – or truce, or armistice or cessation of hostilities, denominations and legal ideas have varied over ti…
NATO Summit while winds of war are blowing with gale force
At the time of writing, US president Donald Trump, who left the G7 summit early and hastily – and who won the presidency largely with pledges to be a dealmaker and a peacemaker with the stated aim to end current wars quickly and to not start any new on…
Comparing India-Pakistan with Israel-Iran: The noble art of escalation management
It could be useful to initiate an exercise in comparison when, at the time of writing, the world is anticipating with anxiety what Pakistan will do now as retaliation for the recent Indian air attacks against targets on Pakistani-held territory, and he…
AI-mått på den katastrofala utvecklingen i Gaza
”What are the measurements of suffering inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza since Oct 7 2023, deaths, wounded, starved, sickness, etc?” Undertecknad ställde, på förekommen anledning (se nedan om det nya israeliska beslutetet), denna fråga till AI – som k…
Bibi summoned by Trump: What next, war or peace?
At the time of writing, it is not known what to expect from the April 7 meeting at the White House between Donald Trump and “friend” Benjamin Netanyahu, but we do know that Trump’s summons signaled urgency, so much so that Netanyahu had to fly directly…
“Peace in our time” – Understanding Trump’s means and ends over Ukraine
It is not easy to follow and to understand what the strange and scary events in recent weeks across the Atlantic have been really about, other than that Donald Trump is so keen to make peace in the Russia-Ukraine war since February 2022 – as pledged th…
Hur illa skadad är den transatlantiska länken? – Tankar om det otänkbara efter Londontoppmötet
Detta skrivs söndag kväll (2 mars), efter dagens euro-kanadensiska toppmöte i London och kvällens TV-begivenheter, först en expertpanels svar på frågor från en oroad svensk allmänhet och därefter ett Agenda med ledande företrädare för riksdagspartierna…
Erdogan’s Turkey in search of its place in Trump world
“Turkiye is standing at the threshold of a new, transformative era. We will rise, and our place in the world will be strengthened”. These bold words were uttered by Turkish president (ruler since 2003) Recep Tayiip Erdogan when he introduced his party’…
Trump and the fragile ceasefires in Lebanon and Gaza
President Trump’s most recent remark regarding the tension-loaded Middle East – that a sizeable part of Gaza’s 2.4 million Palestinian inhabitants should be “cleaned out” of the war torn strip and moved to Egypt and/or Jordan, “temporarily or…long term…
Mellanöstern-crecsendo inför maktskiftet i Vita huset
Så här dagarna inför slutet på Biden-administrationen, inför Trump-tillträdet på måndag, handlar den internationella diplomatin mycket – mest – om ett Gaza-avtals slutliga vara eller icke vara. I skrivande stund, onsdagen 15/1 konstateras att eldupphör…
Mellanöstern-crecsendo inför maktskiftet i Vita huset
Så här dagarna inför slutet på Biden-administrationen, inför Trump-tillträdet på måndag, handlar den internationella diplomatin mycket – mest – om ett Gaza-avtals slutliga vara eller icke vara. I skrivande stund, onsdagen 15/1 konstateras att eldupphör…
The Syrian revolution, Phase 2: Irael and Turkey seizes the opportunity
Perhaps it can be debated whether “revolution” is a useful description of recent days’ astonishing events in crisis-ridden Syria, after all these years of devastating warfare, but regardless of label it is clear to everyone that rarely in the history o…
The bumpy road to ceasefire – Lessons from Lebanon and Gaza, and Sudan, and for Ukraine
Happy news from Lebanon, for its battered people and for regional peace; finally an agreement on ceasefire, or truce, or cessation of hostilities, names vary. Some will sigh with relief merely at having survived, and more than a million Lebanese will n…