What should the United States do with the United Nations?
The United Nations cannot be disciplined just by cutting budgets, and there is (marginally) more to be lost by withdrawing than by staying in. While... Read More
The sociology of the United Nations
To change the dysfunctional sociology of the United Nations, a freedom of information statute is required. There is seldom good reason to keep the operations... Read More
Is a Ukrainian peace agreement possible?
The trigger events for a peace agreement for Ukraine may look rather different from those conventionally found in the armoury of the peacekeeper. The main... Read More
Insuring against war – the role of the United Nations in the modern world
The UN requires a root and branch change in the way it hires, trains, promotes and retains its staff. The organisation must redefine its purpose,... Read More
Are the sustainable development goals useful?
One should recognise the Sustainable Development Goals as a political tool for the international community to better achieve the goals of development economics using a... Read More
Israel and the Palestinian conflict – lessons from the peacekeeper’s toolbox
State-building in Gaza is essential, but it has a Catch-22 quality: there can be non state-building with Hamas but (for as long as they are... Read More
July 2018 Review
TransConflict is pleased to present a selection of articles published during July, plus updates from the Global Coalition for Conflict Transformation.
Detente redux – the USA, Russia and China in the modern world
The rationale for détente with Russia and China, then as now, derives from a change in American foreign policy philosophy. The drive to pursue a... Read More
Human rights in the United Nations system
The scale of the crisis in the UN human rights architecture is confirmed when the world’s biggest donor, and one of the world’s principal advocates... Read More
A modern theory of international relations
The contemporary set of international institutions with which the globe is currently burdened, having developed into voluminous bureaucratic monstrosities over decades, have lost such a... Read More
How to denuclearise a country
What makes a good deal, when seeking to denuclearise a country? The most important considerations to keep in mind are that neither the process of... Read More
What now for the two Koreas?
All that resolution of the dispute on the Korean peninsula required was courage. The road to reunification will be rocky. There may be plenty of... Read More
Europe and the Trump Presidency
The UN is widely regarded as an embarrassment and even a disgrace. International law is honoured in the breach. Unless and until the international system... Read More
The future of the United Nations Development system
There remain many flaws in the UN Development System, arising from the bureaucratic waste typical in any multilateral agency. But because there is no money... Read More
Recasting the Levant
The approach in the Levant should be to hold and manage territory using international military force, deterring further escalations, for the indefinite future until informal... Read More
Restraining Persia
There can be no new Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Iran is too much of an enigma. We do now know exactly what we are... Read More
Social media and modern politics
In the age of mass social media, we must all become intellectuals or we shall be quite at loss as a race. Progress from barbarism... Read More
June 2018 Review
TransConflict is pleased to present a selection of articles published during June, plus updates from the Global Coalition for Conflict Transformation.
International cooperation on intellectual property
The World Intellectual Property Organization was a brilliant idea, undoubtedly designed by a highly astute international intellectual property lawyer. Where it went wrong was in... Read More
The politics of identity
Identity politics is liable to rear its head during extended periods of recession or flat growth, because voters lose faith in ideological or even technocratic... Read More
Can the United Nations do peacekeeping?
The United Nations needs to be more dynamic. It has only limited resources. Once the UN can do no more in a crisis, it should... Read More
The international civil service
We have reached a crisis point, wherein the status quo is unsustainable. Member states who make budgetary contributions to the United Nations disproportionate to their... Read More
April 2018 Review
TransConflict is pleased to present a selection of articles published during April, plus updates from the Global Coalition for Conflict Transformation.
An introduction to financing the United Nations
The United Nations must be held to the same standards as other organizations of its size. These are legal, accounting, regulatory and transparency standards. It... Read More
Cómo detener un conflicto civil (I)
El desafío inmediato es que tenemos una crisis de proporciones potencialmente graves. Catalunya podría convertirse en otra Irlanda del Norte. Esto podría pasar en cualquier... Read More
