Rasselas Flambeau of Peace, Democracy, and Human Rights

Alemayehu Fentaw†
A good place to start a constructive critique is to look at the logical foundation of the Foreign Affairs and National Security Policy and Strategy (FANSPS) of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) and subject it to the tests of consistency, coherence, and soundness. The FANSPS is premised on the proposition that “security policy is a matter of ensuring national survival. The alpha and omega of security is the ensuring of national survival. Other national security… Continue

Alemayehu Fentaw†

Somalia has long been anarchic, hitting rock bottom claiming #1 in The Fund for Peace’s most recent Failed States Index. It had no functioning central government in the past 19 years, albeit 14 attempts to reconstitute state authority had been made since 1991, when the former Cold War dictator Mohammad Siad Barre was ousted after 22 years in power. All such efforts were doomed to fail. Whether or not the latest effort is going to succeed is a matter that will remain to be seen… Continue

Last November, immediately following the US elections, the Salzburg Global Seminar held Session 458, “The US and the World: New Strategies of Engagement.”

The session was held in partnership with the Financial Times, and included a wide variety of experts and specialists from the US, Europe, East and South Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.

At its conclusion we produced a “Roadmap for Re-engagement: The World’s Advice to the New Administration.” One of the main components of this Roadma… Continue

Alemayehu W. Fentaw(LLB, MA)


Revocation of the pardon granted to Ms. Birtukan Mideksa has been a subject of bitter debate recently between those who admonish it as unlawful and retrograde, on the one hand and those who approve of it as not only lawful, but also as a measure that advances the causes of justice and rule of law, on the other. The government news agency, quoting the Ministry of Justice said the pardon had been revoked since she had denied requesting her pardon. Of course, Ms. Birt… Continue

Alemayehu Fentaw

The Nondelegation Principle

The doctrine of nondelegation is explicit or implicit in all written constitutions that impose a structural separation of powers. It is usually applied in questions of constitutionally improper delegations of legislative powers to the executive. In 1690, John Locke (1632-1704), one of the most influential political philosophers of the modern period, wrote that legislators “can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws and place it in… Continue