Gwynne Dyer

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born,” wrote Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci in 1929. “Now is the time of monsters.” Gramsci’s remark is being ...

Last week a despairing reader asked me if the solution to the ‘Middle East Problem’ might be to throw money at it: just buy the Palestinians out. Offer every Palestinian ...

“Just like this year, last year the heat wave extended from parts of India to Bangladesh and Myanmar, and all the way to Thailand. This year it went further east, ...

“Without extinction, there would likely be insufficient ecological ‘space’ available for new species.” What? Is this person saying that extinction is a good thing? But what about the scarlet-throated goat-botherer? ...

Extreme nationalism always looks foolish or even deranged to those who have not caught the virus, but in India it’s now official. In January, India’s Ministry of Defence ...

Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s ‘Supreme Leader’, is embarrassed and humiliated by the complete failure of his drone and missile attack on Israel, but does US President Joe Biden have the ...

History is mostly a matter of dates, and the key date is always that of the last conquest. All previous conquests are then magically forgiven and forgotten. This observation is ...

What should you do when your government assures you that everything is under control and says there is no need to buy generators, stock up on food and withdraw money ...

There are plenty of crazies in Russian politics who make bizarre claims about their country’s victim status (“the evil West made us do it”) and issue blood-curdling but implausible ...

There are three incipient famines in the world today, and politics is at the root of all of them. That’s not unusual, actually: famines are almost always political events. ...

It may seem that the violence and chaos that have gripped Haiti are finally being addressed. The unelected acting president nobody wanted, Ariel Henry, has resigned. An international police force ...

There are enough people to go around: eight billion now, compared to two billion less than a hundred years ago. Fifty-one million in South Korea, compared to only twelve million ...

Neutrality used to be a European thing, but it is now in steep decline. If it were an animal, we’d have to declare it an endangered species. For hundreds ...

“I refuse to quit. I feel no need to kiss the ring,” said Nikki Haley defiantly. She was talking about Donald Trump’s ring, of course, because she is predicted ...

Vladimir Putin’s regime had been assassinating Chechen warlords, defectors from the Russian intelligence services and sundry wayward oligarchs for years, but its first political murder was the hit on ...

IT did not end well for Karolina Shiino, the young woman who won the title of Miss Japan two weeks ago. She has just handed her crown back after a ...

In the immediate aftermath of the massacre of 1,140 Israeli civilians by Hamas terrorists last October, US President Joe Biden went to Israel and gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu some ...

‘Fascism is on the march everywhere!’ shrieked the headline on a recent think-piece by my least favourite foreign affairs commentator (who must remain nameless because I don’t want to ...

Not all that long ago, attacking another country’s territory was still seen as a big deal. It was, in legal terms, an ‘act of war’, liable to have unpleasant ...

Harold Macmillan, British prime minister about half a century ago, was once asked what was the greatest challenge for a political leader. “Events, dear boy, events,” he replied. The same ...

The two sides have had their day in court – one day each, actually. The seventeen judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have now retired to consider what interim ...

Israel is withdrawing some troops from Gaza, because the reservists who were called up for the fighting amount to 10-15 per cent of the country’s workforce and the economy ...

On Sunday, the last of 12,000 United Nations peacekeeping troops left Mali, ordered out by the military regime that seized power after two successive coups in 2020 and 2021. They leave behind them 310 ...

This year (2023) has probably been the hottest in the past 10,000 years – but everybody agrees that 2024 will be even hotter. That’s because we are now entering El Niño, the ...