STRATEGIC ALERT Service

The Swiss Parliament’s battle against “Too Big to Fail” has entered a new phase. On June 14, the joint Investigative Committee on the bailout of Credit Suisse was established, with a broad mandate to investigate both whether the state of emergency invoked by the government was justified, and the circumstances leading to the bank’s distress, as well as to explore […]

Germany’s new National Security Strategy, presented in Berlin on June 15, targets Russia, as expected, as the main adversary: “Today’s Russia is the greatest threat to peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic area for the foreseeable future. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is a blatant breach of the United Nations Charter and the cooperative European security order… Russia directly […]

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen likes to assert, as she did on March 30, that “How China meets international obligation regarding human rights will be another test for how – and how much – we can cooperate with China”. But who decides what constitutes respect for or violation of human rights? An interesting question. And one that was […]

With the visits of a high-level peace delegation to Kyiv and St. Petersburg June 16-18, Africa has asserted its role in international diplomacy. It is historic in that it marks the first time African leaders have taken on a peace mission beyond the continent. Africa, of course, has been severely hit by the conflict in Ukraine, in terms of increased […]

EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen was in Latin America last week, in an attempt to lure leaders of the region away from China and Russia and closer to Brussels, with the promise of a trade agreement, provided strict obligations are agreed to. She began her trip in Brazil, where the issue of the war “in the heart of […]

In an interview given to Politico and published less than two weeks before his death on June 16, Daniel Ellsberg demonstrated that neither the cancer which took his life, nor his over five-decades battle against a corrupted military-intelligence establishment, could dim his commitment to peace and justice, nor his passion for truth. In the interview, Ellsberg accused the U.S. government […]

On June 12, NATO began the largest air exercise in its history (Air Defender 23), principally in the skies over Germany. A total of 250 aircraft, including 100 from the U.S., and over 10,000 service members from 25 countries will take part in the drills over a ten-day period. In addition to Germany, daily flight “excursions” are planned to Romania […]

An intense four-hour dialogue occurred at the June 10 Schiller Institute online conference dedicated to President John Kennedy’s vision of peace and international relations, and the urgent need to revive it today. The presentations by the group of speakers as well as those intervening in the Q&A reflected the powerful influence of the Kennedy legacy internationally, although it has been […]

A message to the Schiller Institute online event of June 10 was sent by Dr. Andrey Kortunov, Director-General of the Russian International Affairs Council, which we quote below. “It was sixty years ago, when John F. Kennedy made his historic speech about the challenge of nuclear weapons. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, this challenge was on the very top of […]

Military support will be provided to Ukraine “for as long as it takes”, is the mantra of the hard-core anti-Russian geopoliticians in Europe, but popular support for that view is rapidly eroding. A spectacular manifestation of that was the mass rally of a half million people against the current Polish government in Warsaw on June 4. In particular, the government’s […]