Articles and analysis

Slava Ukraine - How the lessons of the last decade have been ignored

Gen Phil Breedlove K72QS5c 400x400 The Chinese are said to value a calm, serene life. To curse them would be to wish them an "interesting life" or "May you live in interesting times." We are living in interesting times. I submit to you that this requires western leadership, General Phil Breedlove told the Berlin Security Conference in Novermber 2023

As we look back at the winter of 2013 and the spring of 2014 we have to ask ourselves - could we have made those times, and today's, "less interesting"?

My predecessor, SACEUR #16, Admiral Jim Staviridis commissioned an in-depth Ukraine study at the senior officer level. That decision was prescient. We continued the work of the commission right up until the Russian invasion of Crimea began.

On entering 2024

Originally published as "On entering 2009" at www.defenceviewpoints.co.uk

and as relevant now as then as we enter a General Election year

Defence Viewpoints rarely gives its own opinions - we are the canvas for our contributors. But reflecting in the run up to midnight on the year about to start. the news of the last 2008 fatality amongst British troops on operations in Afghanistan came through. Royal Marine Corporal Liam Elms was the 50th UK soldier to be killed in that country last year.

The two state solution for Israel and Palestine revisited - is there an alternative?

Israel download When the current war between Israel and Hamas ends, the problem that ignited it, and the previous wars between Israel and her neighbors since 1948, will remain, says Joseph E Fallon. How to secure both Palestinian national self-determination and Israeli national security?

A proposal on how to achieve both exists. It has existed since 1947. It is the two-state solution. It was the basis for the UN partition plan of 1947. It was the basis of The Oslo Accords (1993, 1995) between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. It was the central feature of the Saudi Peace Initiative, (2002, 2007) which "Arab leaders unanimously reapproved..."

With the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995, a two-state solution was accepted in principle by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).The PLO had legal authority to accept the two-state plan as it been recognized as the "representative of the Palestinian people" by the Arab League and the United Nations in 1974 and by Israel in 1993.

Articles and analysis

Slava Ukraine - How the lessons of the last decade have been ignored

On entering 2024

The two state solution for Israel and Palestine revisited - is there an alternative?

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