Sam Vaknin's Articles in Commentary

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  • A Taxonomy of Political Conflict in Central and Eastern Europe
    Transition is a messy affair even in the best of times and the 1990s in Central and Eastern European (CEE) history have been by far the worst in the last 50 or so years.
  • The Inversion of Colonial Roles
    The traditional mercantilist roles of colonizer and colonies were inverted over the last few decades.
  • Intellectuals in Conflict Zones: The Balkans
    Ljubomir Danailov Frcksoki ("Frcko" to his friends) is by far Macedonia's most prominent public intellectual.
  • Secession, National Sovereignty, and Territorial Integrity
    Traditionally, the international community has been reluctant to treat civil strife the same way it does international armed conflict.
  • Kosovars and other Albanians - Why Great Albania is a Myth
    Sali Berisha - a former President of Albania - talks ominously about an "Albanian Federation".
  • Passive-aggressive Bureaucracies
    Passive-aggressiveness has a lot in common with pathological narcissism: the destructive envy, the recurrent attempts to buttress grandiose fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience, the lack of impulse control, the deficient ability to empathize, and the sense of entitlement, often incommensurate with its real-life achievements.
  • Macedonia's Report Card - 10 Things that Could Go Wrong
    Under the tutelage of the Gruevski government, Macedonia made great strides in a surprisingly short period of time.
  • Macedonia's Titanic Waltz
    Clearly, Macedonians feel that they are guests in their destinations and as such hold themselves to a higher standard. But this is merely scratching the surface.
  • The Role of Politicians
    In truth, the politician has a single and exclusive role: to get re-elected. His primary responsibility is to his party and its members. He owes them patronage: jobs, sinecures, guaranteed income or cash flow, access to the public purse, and the intoxicating wielding of power.
  • How Acts of Terror Lead to Tyranny and Dictatorships
    US President George Bush declared a War on Terror. Within less than 18 months, the United states suspended basic judicial, civil, and human rights and embarked on a prolonged series of deliberate violations of both its own Constitution and various international treaties.
  • Happy Birthday, Macedonia!
    Macedonia is undergoing a worrisome change of character. If not reversed, these malignant processes will backfire and Macedonia's hopes will be cruelly dashed.
  • Exclusionary Ideas of Progress
    The fact is that, at least since the 1920s, the very existence of Mankind is being recurrently threatened by exclusionary ideas of progress.
  • The Poor Nation's Defense Mechanisms
    To avoid confronting such unpalatable truths and to fend off a tormenting self-image, the citizenry of these places developed a host of psychological defense mechanisms.
  • The Rule of Law, Discrimination, and Morality
    Why did these law-abiding citizens turn a blind eye towards the murder and mayhem that they had witnessed daily in the enclosure literally on their doorstep?
  • Globalization - Liberalism's Disastrous Gamble
    From Venezuela to Thailand, democratic regimes are being toppled by authoritarian substitutes: the military, charismatic left-wingers, or mere populists. Even in the USA, the bastion of constitutional rule, civil and human rights are being alarmingly eroded (though not without precedent in wartime).
  • The Exclusionary Conscience
    The self-identity of most nation-states is exclusionary and oppositional
  • America the Narcissist
    The majority of worldwide respondents to the last two global Pew enter surveys (in 2002 and 2006) regarded the United States as the greatest menace to world peace.
  • Why Are Politicians Corrupt?
    Most politicians bend the laws of the land and steal money or solicit bribes because they need the funds to support networks of patronage. Others do it in order to reward their nearest and dearest or to maintain a lavish lifestyle when their political lives are over.
  • The New Politics
    Politics, in all its forms, is bankrupt.
  • The Caveman and the Alien
    When Chancellor Kohl's party and Edith Cresson are suspected of gross corruption - these are labelled "aberrations" in an otherwise honest West. When NASA in collaboration with its UK counterpart blow a 130 million US dollars spacecraft to smithereens having confused the metric system for its pound/feet archaic predecessor - people nod their head in disapproval: "accidents happen".
  • The Honorary Academic
    Mira Markovic is an "Honorary Academic" of the Russian Academy of Science. It cost a lot of money to obtain this title and the Serb multi-billionnaire Karic was only too glad to cough it up.
  • Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
    Izetbegovic, the late nominal president of the nominal Bosnian state, the darling of the gullible western media, denied that he and his cronies and his cronies' cronies stole 40% of all civilian aid targeted at Bosnia - a minor matter of 1 billion US dollars and change, in less than 4 years.
  • The Madman and the Iraqi War
    It is the war of the sated against the famished, the obese against the emaciated, the affluent against the impoverished, the democracies against tyranny, perhaps Christianity against Islam and definitely the West against the Orient. It is the ultimate metaphor, replete with "mass destruction", "collateral damage", and the "will of the international community".
  • Containing the United States
    European intellectuals yearned for the mutually exclusive: an America contained and a regime-changed Iraq. The Chinese are more pragmatic - though, bound by what is left of their Marxism, they still ascribe American behavior to the irreconcilable contradictions inherent in capitalism.
  • The Clash of Islam and Liberalism
    Islam is not merely a religion. It is also - and perhaps, foremost - a state ideology. It is all-pervasive and missionary. It permeates every aspect of social cooperation and culture. It is an organizing principle, a narrative, a philosophy, a value system, and a vade mecum. In this it resembles Confucianism and, to some extent, Hinduism.
  • The Semi-failed State
    A failed state is a country whose government has no control and cannot exercise a monopoly on the legitimate use of force over a substantial part of its territory or citizenry.
  • The Democratic Ideal and New Colonialism
    "Democracy" is not the rule of the people. It is government by periodically vetted representatives of the people.
  • Anarchism for a Post-modern Age
    Politics, in all its forms, has failed. The notion that we can safely and successfully hand over the management of our daily lives and the setting of priorities to a political class or elite is thoroughly discredited.
  • Knowledge and Power
    "Knowledge is Power" goes the old German adage. But power, as any schoolboy knows, always has negative and positive sides to it.
  • Add Me to the List, Mr. Blair
    The terrorists are winning. Gradually but perceptibly, the USA and the United Kingdom (UK) are shedding their liberal democratic veneer, axing their traditions, reinterpreting their constitution (USA) and case law (UK) and, thus, becoming police states.

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