Author: M Barbu

The U.N. Refugee Convention Is Under Pressure—and Showing Its Age

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Refugee Convention, one of the signal moral advances in human history. Negotiated in the wake of World War II and initially limited to Europe, the treaty established the first binding legal protections for individuals forced to flee their countries. These rights and responsibilities, which were made universal in the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1967, remain a cornerstone of the global humanitarian regime. The convention is, however, showing its age. Many governments are failing to fulfil their legal obligations under it, and the convention does little to address the plight of internally displaced persons as well as those driven from their nations by more complex dynamics, including criminal violence and climate change.

A Prison Attack and the Death of its Leader: Weighing Up the Islamic State’s Trajectory in Syria

Abstract: On January 20, 2022, the Islamic State launched a complex assault on Hasakah’s Ghwayran prison, a place in which thousands of its fighters had been held since the ‘defeat’ of its territorial caliphate in March 2019. The attack was the first time that the group had directly targeted a major detention facility in Syria since losing its last significant territorial toehold in Syria, notwithstanding the consistent calls for prison breaks that have been uttered by its leaders during the last three years.

Trends in Iranian External Assassination, Surveillance, and Abduction Plots

Abstract: Over the past 40-plus years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has targeted dissidents, Western opponents, Israelis, and Jews in assassination plots, abduction plots, and surveillance operations that facilitate both. Iran has carried out such external operations around the world, in countries with both strong and weak law enforcement agencies, border crossings, and intelligence services. It has done so consistently over the years, including at times and in places where carrying out such operations could undermine key Iranian diplomatic efforts, such as negotiations over the country’s nuclear program. This study, based on a dataset of 98 Iranian plots from 1979 through 2021, maps out key trends in Iranian external operations plotting.

China Has More to Lose Than to Gain by Supporting Russia on Ukraine

Countries around the world are watching intensely to see if Russia will further escalate its ongoing standoff with Ukraine, after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree Monday recognizing the independence of the breakaway Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and subsequently deployed Russian troops to both to carry out what he referred to as a “peacekeeping mission.”

Putin’s War in Ukraine Will Not Stay in Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine this morning ends several months of doubt and debate over the purpose of Moscow’s military buildup at the two countries’ border. Washington’s repeated warnings of an imminent military operation proved not to be the hysteria that Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed them as. In the end, Putin’s manufactured crisis was not an attempt at coercive diplomacy, or if it was, it was a failed one.

WWII Redux: The Endpoint of U.S. Policy, from Ukraine to Taiwan

The Threatened Peoples of East Asia and Europe Can Stop the U.S. Drive to Restore its Global Domination.

“This is not going to be a war of Ukraine and Russia. This is going to be a European war, a full-fledged war.” So spoke Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky just days after berating the U.S. for beating the drums of war.

Russia Publishes Draft Decree On ‘Public Policy To Preserve And Strengthen Traditional Spiritual And Moral Values’ To Counter ‘Destructive Ideology’ – i.e. Progressive Liberalism

In January 2022, a draft of a document, titled “The Fundamentals Of Public Policy To Preserve And Strengthen Traditional Russian Spiritual And Moral Values,” was published on the Federal Portal of the Drafts of Regulations for public discussion. Once confirmed by presidential decree, it will become law.

Ukrainian Crisis: The Russian Point Of View

Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared the beginning of a military operation in Ukraine. The military operation comes after the recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR). In an urgent address on February 24, Putin said that following a request from the “authorities” of Donetsk and Lugansk for assistance, Russia “will seek demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine” and will “press for bringing to justice those who have committed numerous bloody crimes against peaceful civilians, including Russian citizens.”

War in Europe: Responding to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

In a chilling act of aggression, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a military assault on Ukraine in the early hours of 24 February. That Western leaders had warned of this possibility for weeks did little to cushion the shock. President Putin announced what he characterised as a “special military operation” to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine, and made a barely coded threat of nuclear strikes upon any outside power that might come to its aid. Residents of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and cities throughout the country woke to explosions as Russian bombs and missiles fell on military facilities and infrastructure. The bombardment follows a months-long build-up of as many as 200,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s borders, to the north, west and south. Ground forces that then entered Ukraine indicate that Russia has embarked upon not only an air campaign aimed at toppling Ukraine’s government but a full-scale invasion. The human toll could be catastrophic.