Category Archives: War Notes

Gwynne Dyer: Three Wars — Any Victories?

Wars have stolen our attention from a looming climate catastrophe

We’re still in the game, with a slim chance of holding global warming below a catastrophic level through the rest of the century, Gwynne Dyer writes.

By Gwynne Dyer –
Tuesday, October 31, 2023

You would think that all human energies would be focused on avoiding a potential climate calamity, including those of Russians, Ukrainians, Israelis and Palestinians. Especially the Israelis and Palestinians, whose disputed homeland would become uninhabitable by the end of the century in most “runaway” scenarios,

With practically all the media bandwidth for non-local news taken up by two tribal territorial struggles that would not have seemed out of place in the 15th century AD — or indeed the 15 century BC — you may have missed the latest release from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

That would be a pity, because it’s a lot more important than Gaza and Donetsk. The IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook is the best one-stop guide to where we are now in the attempt to keep global warming below a disastrous level.

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Gwynne Dyer: Ukraine: A Breakthrough In Slow Motion

Gwynne Dyer: Ukrainian Breakthrough? It’s a Slog.

It’s nothing like the great breakthroughs of the mid-twentieth century wars, when combined air and ground forces would tear a hole in the enemy line, the tanks would pour through, and the front would roll back several hundred kilometres before it stabilised again.

By Gwynne Dyer, in Opinion · 26 Sep 2023 ·

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NATO from “Brain-Dead” to Bigger & Back On A Roll?

Gwynne Dyer — July 10, 2023

When NATO held its annual summit in Brussels two years ago, all 31 presidents and prime ministers of the alliance’s member states dutifully showed up, but their hearts weren’t really in it. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, had publicly declared NATO “brain dead” in 2019, and nobody could find a good reason to disagree.

This week the annual meeting is in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania (July 11-12), and the cast of characters has not changed all that much, but everything else has. This is an alliance transformed, with a clear enemy, specific goals and a real sense of purpose — all thanks to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his foolish invasion of Ukraine.

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James Risen

The Intercept:

PRIGOZHIN TOLD THE TRUTH ABOUT PUTIN’S WAR IN UKRAINE

Yevgeny Prigozhin is a disinformation artist whose failed rebellion was marked by a burst of radical honesty.

ONE OF THE most subversive things that Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin did during his brief rebellion last weekend was to tell the truth.

Prigozhin is a pathological liar, a professional disinformation artist who was indicted in the United States in connection with the internet troll farm he ran, which was at the forefront of Russian efforts to intervene in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help Donald Trump win.

But as the mercenary boss began his mutiny in late June, he experienced a brief and surprising bout of honesty when he launched into an online tirade against what he said were the lies used by Moscow to justify the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. His comments were so candid and off-message for a Russian leader that it seemed as if someone had mistakenly handed him a speech meant for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
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What Just Happened In Russia? Gwynne Dyer’s Analysis

Russia: what just happened?

OPINION

Up until late afternoon Moscow time on Saturday, Russia was in a state of acute crisis, with Yevgeny Prigozhin pulling his Wagner army of mercenary soldiers out of Ukraine and sending some of them racing up the highway towards Moscow instead. Their task was to force Russia’s military leadership to quit for corruption and incompetence.

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