Articles by Robin Edward Poulton

We found 32 results.


Gaza Destroyed, Aid Workers Murdered: A Deliberate Israeli Strategy?
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Apr 2024

8 Apr 2024 – The missile attack on WCK was a war crime; a crime against humanity and part of a genocidal Likud plan to eliminate Gazans from the Mediterranean coastline that they have occupied for a thousand years.

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Israeli Army War Crime against Aid Workers Could Have Killed Me
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Apr 2024

2 Apr 2024 – Delivering aid is a dangerous business. Before the tragic assassination of the seven World Central Kitchen staff, a lot of aid workers have died while on mission.  If I were younger, I might well have been in Gaza on that mission.

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Journalist Assassination: Are Israeli Defense Forces Out of Control?
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 May 2022

18 May 2022 – Israeli Soldier Kills Al Jazeera Journalist on 11 May 2022

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This Ukraine Crisis Was a George W. Bush Mistake
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Feb 2022

George W. Bush and his neo-con administration made an awful lot of foreign policy blunders. This Ukrainian crisis is just the latest of many mistakes.

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Ukrainian Sovereignty Means Not Joining NATO
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Feb 2022

1 Feb 2022 – Taking international law seriously requires looking at the world in a particular way. And this view of the world is very different from the view presented to Americans by their foreign policy establishment.

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(Français) Pour Trouver la Paix au Mali, Il Faudra Ecouter
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Aug 2021

La gouvernance démocratique ne signifie pas voter: elle signifie une vraie participation du peuple, donc la consultation et l’écoute. Injurier et crier n’avane personne et rien. Ecouter permet de comprendre. Voici deux livres qui vont aider les Maliens à s’écouter.

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Peace by Piece: Harnessing Peace, Conflict and Dialogue
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Jul 2021

Peace by Piece: Harnessing Peace, Conflict and Dialogue, by Uduak-Abasi Akpabio, Amazon, Jun 2021 – Making peace is tough in a world where vast sums of money fuel the makers and users of weapons. Violence enriches the suppliers of ammunition. Arms and automobile manufacturers, petroleum corporations and security companies all get rich from war. Other people’s misery and deaths make weapon corporations rich.

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Remembering My Friend General Hendrik Van Der Graaf, Famous UN Peacemaker Who Died on 10 Mar 2021
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 May 2021

UNIDIR’s General Henny Invented “Weapons-for-Development” – He was a leader in UN and EU peace and disarmament, particularly in reducing the proliferation and illicit trafficking of small arms and light weapons.

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Afghanistan 2022: Peace without Reconciliation Will Be a Salvaging Operation for Biden
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Apr 2021

19 Apr2021 – What can President Biden’s team and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken salvage from the promised withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan? American dreams of ‘democracy’ produced the Afghan nightmare President Biden wants to terminate in September 2021. Can he replace the nightmare with something that resembles peace, based on realism?

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Adam Thiam’s Death Reminds Us How Europe Harms Africa
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Mar 2021

25 Mar 2021 – Mali’s greatest journalist and political analyst, Adam Thiam, has died of COVID. I mourn a friend whom I greatly admired.

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An Open Letter to President Biden
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Jan 2021

One of my sad conclusions: the U.S.A’s foreign policy has been a major cause of war in the world since 2001, a source of poverty and misery, a manufacturer of refugees and of terrorists. As an expert on the origins of terrorism, I know that the U.S.A. is a major supporter of terrorism and terrorist organizations.

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The Correct Response to Fascism Is Not Compromise: QAnon and Hate Speech Need to Be Dealt with Head-On
Robin Edward Poulton - TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Jan 2021

11 Jan 2021 – After the invasion of – and temporary suspension of – Congress, what is the correct response? As a peace maker, you might think I would opt for compromise, but that is not my position. A surgeon faced with a cancerous tumor does not wait until the tumor gets bigger: he cuts it out as soon as possible, and radiates the surrounding area to ensure the cancer does not grow back. QAnon is a cancer in the American body politic, and it needs to be treated like the Fascist Cancer it has become.

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Robert Fisk of The Independent Has Died and Journalism Is Poorer
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Nov 2020

Most of the borders of the modern Middle East were created by the British, French and Americans after WWI, by splitting up the Ottoman Empire. How many people discussing politics and elections in the pubs of US or UK understand that vital fact?

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Peace Proved to Be Possible, Even after Thirty Years of Cambodian Civil War
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Nov 2020

As proponents of Peace Journalism in a world of wars and conflicts, a conflict resolution and disarmament success story is a precious commodity. Cambodia at the turn of the Millennium provided such a story.

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The UN Institute for Disarmament Research-UNIDIR Is 40 Years Old
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Nov 2020

Happy Birthday UNIDIR! Yes, it is 40 years since French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing created it. Disarmament does not just happen! It requires a great deal of hard work and patience as you persuade armed rebels or armed governments to give up their arms, to immobilize them or even destroy them.

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UK Massive Syria Propaganda
Robin Edward Poulton – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Oct 2020

20 Oct 2020 – Dear Antonio, it was satisfying to read Ben Norton’s exposé of the NATO propaganda machine in Syria. How right he is! A recent analysis posted on TMS of press reports in Swiss and Austrian media, showed that 80% come from AP, AFP or Reuters: our ‘free’ press is not free of bias. Thank you to TMS for keeping us all informed about the truth, while Western media supply NATO’s ‘alternative facts’ to the general public.

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Lebanon: A Proposal
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Aug 2020

14 Aug 2020 – Lebanon today is like Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge: the solution for Cambodia was to abandon everything and to start over. During 1993–following the Paris Peace Accord–the United Nations took over Cambodia and ran the country for one year.

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Civil Society Is the Second Pillar of West African Nation States
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. | Virginia Commonwealth University - TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 May 2020

Experience from many African nations – as well as America, Asia and Europe – provides compelling evidence that civil society plays a fundamental role in social progress and in promoting peace and democratic governance. Civil society has organised democratic governance in West African for millennia, and not simply since colonial rule began. Our political science research shows how civil society has been and remains critical to the evolution of West African Nation States – nearly all of which are recent post-colonial creations – and that a Five Pillar conception of the Nation State conforms more closely to West African realities than the traditional Western concept of Executive + Legislative + Judiciary.

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An Offer and an Appeal to You…
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. - TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Mar 2020

We all have interesting and varied sources of information and analysis. One of the most exciting and insightful that I use and enjoy is TRANSCEND Media Service, founded by Professor Johann Galtung, the “Father of Peace Studies” and leader of a multi-national group of distinguished academics and activists working for peace in all its forms. The articles analyse world affairs from a multitude of different approaches. I would like to offer this information source to you and your students. A University Education should challenge students to seek out ideas and to discover new sources. TMS does some of this preparatory work for your students: they can find many unexpected analyses and varying points of view in a single website.
— Robin Edward Poulton ChONM, ChROSC, UNSM, MBIM, MA (Hons St A), MSc (Oxon), PhD (Paris)

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(Français) Paroles sur les Crises au Mali et les Limites de la Démocratie
Dr Robin Edward Poulton – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Dec 2019

Expériences et Analyses Pour Favoriser la Paix – Le Mali est victime d’un Choc des Corporations – Extrait Du Livre

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The French Army Has Killed Hamadoun Kouffa, the Malian Robin Hood
Robin Edward Poulton – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Feb 2019

How might the Malian government find a way to negotiate with his successors, to avoid genocide or civil war?

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Dangers and Adventures in United Nations Peace Making
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Jun 2017

For TRANSCEND members to read and to encourage them to share their own experience of risk management.

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Will Trump’s America Make the World Safer or More Dangerous?
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph. D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Mar 2017

Donald Trump’s speech to the U.S. Congress on Wednesday February 28th certainly had a different tone from his usual, irascible midnight tweets. Some of the speech sounded quite similar to speeches given by previous presidents. Some of it was even boring (which is rare for Trump: he may be a horrible misogynist, but he is seldom boring).

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Taliban Butchers Are Pashtun Cowards
Robin Edward Poulton – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Dec 2014

If you sit of an evening beside a fire in the Pashtun heartlands, you will hear tales of bravery, honour and generosity. You will hear stories about how the Pashtuns were never defeated by Alexander the Great nor by Genghis Khan nor by the British Empire nor by the Soviet or American imperial armies. If you remind the Taliban about surats from the Holy Koran that tell Muslims never to kill another Muslim, how will your brave Pashtun slaughterer-of-children reply?

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In Praise of Buffer States
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Dec 2014

Buffer states keep armies apart and allow important countries to trade in peace.

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NATO Makes War – NATO Is Not an Alliance for Peace
Robin Edward Poulton – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Sep 2014

NATO’s summit in Wales (September 4-5, 2014) was BAD NEWS for peace makers, and bad for all world citizens. Are the NATO Nuts going to invade Ukraine? Do they want to create a new European war? Dangerous rhetoric and dangerous ideas lead to dangerous actions.

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Chemical Weapons in Syria Provide an Opportunity for Making Peace
Robin Edward Poulton, PhD – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Sep 2013

If Syria pulls back from the chemical red line and accepts some form of sanction, then the Wahabists and Jihadists and Iraqi Sunnis should pull back across the frontiers and accept some form of sanction. It is unclear why NATO forces are supporting extremist Sunni Al-Qaeda look-alikes in Syria, while fighting them in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and recently in Mali.

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Bill Keller Has Completely Misread Syria’s Red Lines
Robin Edward Poulton PhD – The New York Times, 20 May 2013

What makes Bill Keller or John McCain or any other gung-ho armchair warrior in Washington think that an Al Qaeda-related Sunni regime in Damascus led by Al-Nusra or by the militant Muslim Brotherhood would be good for America, or Lebanon, or Israel?

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War or Peace in the Sahara?
Robin Edward Poulton – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Nov 2012

What Mali needs now is international partners that are ready to study the lessons of the 1990s, and to devise radical actions based on decentralized Malian models that have already been successful.

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Why Is NATO Supporting This Syrian War?
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Oct 2012

No one has been able – or willing – to explain to me why the US administration and its NATO allies are supporting the Sunni destruction of Syria. The people we decry as ‘Terrorists’ and ‘Al Qaeda’ are in fact the very same Sunni Muslim Extremists – supported by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States – whom we are apparently funding and arming in Syria. Why?

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Remembering Talal Hamseh, Murdered by Wahabbists in Damascus
Robin Edward Poulton – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 May 2012

On April 27 Talal was parking his car when a Syrian terrorist shot him through the head. He was a kind young man, my daughter’s friend. This murder has been proudly displayed on the murderers’ website, a ‘rebel’ trying to overthrow the Syrian regime. Why would we support Sunni Wahabbist terrorists murdering other Muslims, Christians and Alawites?

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Understanding Political Reality in Syria
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jun 2011

In his OpEd of June 3rd entitled The Depravity Factor, David Brooks writes emotionally about a murdered 13-year-old Syrian boy called Hamza Ali al-Khateeb. The descriptions and internet photographs of Hamza’s tortured body are horrible, but Brooks draws from this story a set of political conclusions that are unjustified by anything we know about Syria or the region we vaguely think of as the ‘Middle East’.

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