Christian:

People regularly wonder why peacekeeping has been abandoned in favour of more “robust” “stabilization” missions, also known as peacebuilding and peace enforcement.   For one thing, there are still plenty of traditional peacekeeping missions across the globe – they just don’t make headlines.   The recent deployment to southern Sudan is just one example.   The problem is that the nature of the beast has changed.   No longer are Western troops keeping two warring factions...

Christian:

In the aftermath of World War II, my grandfather found himself in the Russian zone of occupation.  He had found work as an administrative clerk in their village.  It was very easy to get along with him and so he was tasked as the liaison with the Russian military.  Liaising and persuading can take many forms... but with the Russians it usually involved copious amounts of libations.  During one such encounter, the conversation turned to apparent Russian improprieties in response...

Christian:

By now we've all heard repeatedly how China is using the Olympics to showcase itself to the world and how, after almost a century of turmoil, it's a way of showcasing the "modern" China.  The Chinese are fiercly proud of their country and it hosting the Olympics.  We can't really fault them for that: We'd all be if it we were the host country.  The difference in China is that for the Chinese, the Olympics are a way of picking up where they left off about a hundred years ago. ...

One of the curiosities about the way the United Nations estimates world population growth is that they consistently overestimate it some 25%.  While the UN pegs world population growth to top out at 11 billion in 2100, majority of demographic modellers, such as those at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis' Population Project, estimate world population to peak at 9.1 billion by 2071.  In other words, their estimate is lower and sooner.  Of course, the UN's...