World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

The Ukrainian Parliament has voted an amnesty bill for protesters on the condition that they leave the government buildings they have occupied.  The bill passed with government support, but no opposition members voted for it, arguing that it was a blackmail bill.  Indeed, the protesters have voted to continue occupying buildings until the government falls.  It does appear, however, that the government has decided that a more conciliatory approach is necessary.  Forbearance by a threatened government does not typically last very long.

Niall Ferguson is a controversial writer, and he has stirred up quite a hornet’s nest in a recent essay arguing that Britain should not have opposed Germany in the First World War.  There will be much written in this, the hundred year anniversary, of World War I.   Ferguson argued a strong realist position in the essay when he asserted that defending Belgium’s neutrality was not in Britain’s national interest in 1914.  Given the heroic sacrifices of the British people in that war, it is unlikely that many will look kindly upon an assertion that the war was a mistake.