Category Archives: Conflict History

Conflict in practices: lessons from world history

Walls versus Windmills

Posted on February 7, 2020 by

So fitting: “When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.” Chinese Proverb 当变革之风吹来时，有些人盖了墙，有些人盖了风车

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Colonel John Boyd’s (1927-97) The OODA Loop

Posted on January 28, 2020 by

Thanks to our correspondent Kakatoa for pointing out the link between Double Loop Learning and the OODA Loop of Colonel Boyd: here is the latter: from Wikipedia: The OODA loop has become an important concept in litigation, business, law enforcement … Continue reading →

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How Not to Negotiate Trade Deals Post Brexit

Posted on January 28, 2020 by

Lifted from the UK Guardian comments this morning. Says it all really. And I post this for conflict and negotiation interest rather than a specifically Brexit point though despite my old friend Bill Ury teaching the British Cabinet Interest Based … Continue reading →

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Beating Trump in 2020 as Per Deng Xiaoping

Posted on January 27, 2020 by

So roughly to answer a friend’s question how is Trump to be beaten? Assuming the election is close, which in Electoral College terms is likely, then it will be decided by a few hundred thousand voters in Wisc, Michigan, Penn. … Continue reading →

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s (1906-1945) Prescient Comments

Posted on January 27, 2020 by

While awaiting execution in April 1945,  member of the German Resistance to Hitler and religious thinker and Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer recorded a number of his thoughts in a work we now know as Letters and Papers from Prison. One of … Continue reading →

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Clown’s Red Nose

Posted on January 27, 2020 by

The former Norwegian army peace keeper and mine clearer, who had served all over the Middle East, in Afghanistan and the Sudan conflicts, I had dinner with on Saturday told some amazing stories. One of them was that in the … Continue reading →

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Aristotle on Inequality

Posted on December 5, 2019 by

“The best constitution is one controlled by a numerous middle class which stands between the rich and the poor. For those who possess the goods of fortune in moderation find it “easiest to obey the rule of reason” (Politics IV.11.1295b4–6). … Continue reading →

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Albert Camus Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

Posted on December 1, 2019 by

Time again for this 1957 speech: Especially this: “Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from … Continue reading →

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Some Good News

Posted on December 1, 2019 by

Some good news: insecticide treated mosquito nets distributed for free by aid programs saved 450 million lives from Malaria in the period 2000-15 according to Nature as cited in “Good Economics for Hard Times by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo”: … Continue reading →

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Unsettling Precedents for Today’s World: Martin Wolf

Posted on December 1, 2019 by

Deep piece from Martin Wolf in the Financial Times. I doubt the Dems get this any better than the GOP, sadly: “Unsettling precedents for today’s world Events evoke not the 1930s but the period before the first world war MARTIN … Continue reading →

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