Author: Dan Smith

Armed conflict and human health

/ Dan Smith / Leave a comment

When you consider the psychological and sociological impacts, people live with the imprint of violent conflict for decades after the fighting has stopped. That can be because you saw something horrible or experienced something utterly terrifying or perhaps because your chances of having a normal childhood have all been blown apart by the war.

More people are injured in armed conflict than are killed, and some injuries are life changing, involving amputations or severe damage to organs including the brain.

Beyond that, hospitals, food systems, and sanitation and sewage systems are destroyed. The general health of people suffers, so other infections take a toll, during the war and in its immediate aftermath. Indirect deaths after armed conflicts match or exceed the number of people who die directly.

Continue reading →

Evaluating President Trump’s Gaza peace plan

/ Dan Smith / 6 Comments

The fate of the peace plan for Gaza announced at the White House on Monday 29 September is not yet decided. Because Hamas accepted the hostage return part of the proposed deal, while seeking negotiation of other parts, US President Trump ordered Israel to stop bombing. It did not immediately do that though the Prime Minister’s office said it was preparing for “immediate implementation” of the first stage of the plan.

There has, of course, been considerable coverage of the plan in the news media. Some focusses on its prospects, including the impact of divisions within Hamas about it, along with the matter of whether Trump will impose a deadline for Hamas’ acceptance and how long it might be. There has been some coverage of gaps and uncertainties in the plan and plenty of advocates have been out there to disparage or support the plan. And there’s been quite some discussion about whether President Trump prevailed over Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in crafting the plan, or the other way round.

But, so far as I have seen, there has been little dispassionate coverage of whether it is actually a good plan, whether it will work. So this post is my clause-by-clause assessment of the Gaza peace plan.

Peace is a tricky business. An 1100 word document containing 20 points is not a treaty, is not legally binding, and is bound to contain a number of generalities and broad statements of intent. That leaves plenty of room for uncertainty to creep in. Nonetheless, it is a serious document and not the first one to address how to end the war in Gaza. It builds on the never-implemented January 2025 agreement, which itself built on the never-implemented May 2024 agreement. With those foundations, there ought to be some key issues on which there is clarity but there should also be some latitude for uncertainty, interpretation and further discussion.

In sum, not surprisingly, what comes out is mixed – some strengths, some weakness, some areas of clarity and some confusion.

Continue reading →

Five global hinge points

/ Dan Smith / Leave a comment

Among those sayings that encapsulate political wisdom but are either inaccurate or apocryphal (such as the ancient Chinese curse, ‘May you live in interesting times’ that is neither Chinese nor ancient, or the misinterpretation of the Chinese character for crisis as fusion of danger and opportunity), I have a soft spot for the one by Harold Macmillan. When asked either what he most feared or what was most troubling when he was UK Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, he may have replied, ‘Events, my dear boy, events.’

If he didn’t say it, he should have. The press of events is the bane of those trying to steer a strategic path in government. Today, it is particularly difficult because there are so many events consuming so much government oxygen while we face five major hinge points in global affairs that complicate everything.

Continue reading →

The nuclear challenge today and tomorrow

/ Dan Smith / 1 Comment

On 6 and 9 August this year, we will mark the 80th anniversaries of the two occasions on which nuclear weapons have ever been used in war – the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.* Humanity has perpetrated and experienced a great deal of harm in the past eight decades but nuclear weapons have not been used again. Despite today’s widespread and intensifying perception of nuclear risk, the nuclear taboo survives.

That does not mean the nuclear problem has been solved, of course. It is “an encouraging fact”, as the Nobel Peace Prize Committee put it when giving the 2024 award to the movement of Japanese nuclear survivors (the hibakusha), Nihon Hidankyo. But not more than that. And honouring the hibakusha in this way was also intended as a wake-up call to those many people who until recently regarded nucleapons as yesterday’s problem.

Continue reading →

Trump and the challenge of the non-singular systemic

/ Dan Smith / Leave a comment

Amid the cacophony of overblown claims both for and against, what is so bad about Trump? Or, put the other way round, what is so good about him? Or, to ask my question properly, why is he such a polarizing figure, so it seems that one group supports him and what he stands for in their eyes just exactly as much as another group loathes him? 

I think part of the answer, at least, may be what I am choosing to call the non-singular systemic.

Continue reading →

World order §8: A multiplex alternative: international cooperation in bite-sized pieces

/ Dan Smith / 2 Comments

It is all very well to argue, as I did in my two most recent posts, that far-reaching international cooperation is essential to solve critical world issues and, furthermore, that there are issues on which it is evidently possible. But that does not solve the problem – the world order is in shaky condition and there is no consensus on how to fix it. Now’s the time to have a stab at what to do when consensus is lacking.

Continue reading →

World order §7: Shared vulnerabilities demand cooperation

/ Dan Smith / Leave a comment

My previous post makes an argument that regular readers of this blog will find familiar: the challenge of ecological disruption including climate change crosses national boundaries and can only be tackled by international cooperation. It is not a problem that any single country, however rich, can solve alone. It is the superordinate challenge of our time and one part of the difficulty of rising to it is that, at the very time when we need a world order with strong institutions encouraging, facilitating and streamlining international cooperation, they are weakening. Deteriorating relations and increasing hostility between the great powers and their respective allies are undermining the ability of world order institutions to protect peace and security and get in the way of working productively on climate change and other issues. In the face of that, how can we do cooperation?

To the pessimism that might produce, I have a simple response. If international cooperation is necessary it has to be possible because the alternative is unacceptable. And if it is possible on the ecological crisis, I’m now going to argue, it’s possible in other areas as well.

This post is the next to last in a series on the shaky state of the world order. It is based on the introductory chapter to the recently released SIPRI Yearbook 2024.

Continue reading →

World order §6: Ecological disruption and cooperation

/ Dan Smith / 2 Comments

Researchers, commentators and policy-makers are increasingly aware of the negative effects of climate change for peace and security. Climate change undermines conditions for peace and security for all, while increased conflict, disputation, instability and disorder add to the difficulties of arriving at agreements to slow down global warming. When we think about peace and security and about world order, climate change – and, by extension, the full spectrum of ecological disruption – should be in the centre of our attention.

Continue reading →