Early this morning I was woken by the hammering of wind and rain against my bedroom skylight. Living next to the sea on the southwest tip of the UK every autumn we are hit by a succession of Atlantic depressions that bring summer to an end. Most of them begin life as […]

On the 23rd of September, 2014, president of the Palestinian authority, Mahmoud Abbas, gave a speech at the UNGA (United Nations General Assembly). The speech caused an uproar mainly within Israeli politics, but also with Israel’s allies like the United States, because it accused Israel of “genocide”. The accusation of genocide […]

Rational means exercising reason and sound judgment. In international relations theory the rational actor model is that when making a decision the rational decision maker takes into account the foreign policy goals of the nation and determines which one takes priority over others. Then the decision maker weighs up the […]

As a Kofi Annan-sponsored ceasefire between the government and rebels in Syria teeters on the brink of collapse, it is as poignant as it is heart-rending to note the parallels between this tortured conflict and the violence in the Balkans twenty years ago. The United Nations, a bloated, out-of-touch political […]