The West

Ukraine’s fight is a fight for all of us and for democracy and security Gerry Hassan The National, 1 March 2022 There is only one story at the moment - the Russia invasion of the Ukraine and how we respond to it. This comes after years of Western misjudgement and appeasement of Putin and Russian aggression in Chechnya, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbass region of the Ukraine in 2014, leading to full-scale invasion last week. How often do we have to learn the same lessons? The need to stand

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Ukraine, the Crisis of the West and Britain’s Decline Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 26 January 2022 The situation in the Ukraine is a high-level international crisis. It has not come out of the blue but been slowly escalating for years; Putin’s long track record of threats and aggression towards neighbours of Russia have been well documented. Yet the West has been caught again and again off-guard and unsure of how to deal with Putin and Russia. It has been consistently divided and indecisive about how best to collectively respond and oppose Russian aggression. There is the war weariness of the

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The World Turned Upside Down: Life after 9/11 and the West’s War Machine Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 8 September 2021 Twenty years ago, the world changed dramatically on 11 September 2001 when al-Qaeda attacked the USA and overturned the post-Cold War assumptions of the West. Prior to this, in the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West believed in its in superiority with ‘the end of history’, ‘the clash of civilisations’, a belief in globalisation, progress and increasing prosperity. All were to be tested in the next two decades and found wanting. The aftermath of that dramatic

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The Afghan War and the Problem that is the West Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 18 August 2021 The Afghan War has ended in abject failure. A failure whose shape, consequences and brutality will only be fully clear as it is played out in the coming weeks, months and years. In response the UK Government has recalled Parliament to sit on Wednesday, confirming the impotence of the UK. Events on the ground have overtaken the US and UK authorities and other Western capitals. In places there appears a dereliction of duty with UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab caught AWOL on holiday

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