Conflicts Forum

By Mark Perry, Bitterlemons, June 12, 2008
The prime minister of His Majesty’s Government, the rotund Lord North–reputed (falsely) to be the bastard son of George III–once sniffed to his cabinet that if it were not for the interference of France, the American colonists would surely return to the loving arms of their mother country. He […]

By Mark Perry, Bitter Lemons, February 21, 2008
While it may be difficult to remember, George W. Bush was once considered a debater who could match wits with the likes of Al Gore and John Kerry. This judgment was the result, at least in part, of Bush’s uncanny ability to transform claims that he was stupid […]

A Conflicts Forum Monograph by Alastair Crooke, and an Interview with Ambassador Chester Crocker, February, 2008
In 2006, the United States Institute of Peace generously provided a grant to Conflicts Forum to conduct a research study on “Disarmament vs. Demilitarization” in the context of the current Lebanese political environment. The goal of the study is to […]

By Mark Perry, Bitter Lemons, January 17, 2008
“Good fences make good neighbors,” the American poet Robert Frost once wrote, and he oughta know. The failed farmer turned schoolteacher was a professional Puritan who spent his lifetime not hugging people, though he is now described as one of America’s “most beloved poets”. That is to say: […]

On security in Gaza, Palestinian democracy, the National Unity Government, and the kidnapping of Alan Johnston
The following is an edited and annotated transcript of a discussion between Hamas’s representative in Lebanon, Usamah Hamdan 1, the British Member of Parliament, Rt Hon Michael Ancram QC 2, the Director of London’s Global Strategy Forum, Jonathan Lehrle 3, […]

By Mark Perry, Conflicts Forum, July 6, 2007
Thursday, July 5, 2007 was a fairly typical day for the world. In Iraq, two American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb, while the U.S. military reported killing an al-Qaeda member in a military raid west of Baghdad. Seventeen people were killed in Dora — a neighborhood […]