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Photo: Rocket artillery of the Lions of the East Army, a Free Syrian Army unit in southern Syria. CC BY 3.0

An End to Outside Intervention Will Help End War in Syria

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – 500,000 dead and counting. President Bashar al-Assad is going full blast at reducing the parts of his country still standing, but not under his control, to rubble.

Russia hangs on his tail, providing both planes and soldiers but seemingly unable to wag the dog. The US launches, along with Britain and France, a brief rocket attack. (Should we now after two such attacks call President Donald Trump “Rocket Man 2”?)

The attack is supposedly to draw the line on Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Perhaps he did do it, or possibly one of his local commanders took the initiative, but it is small beer compared with the horrors inflicted by conventional weapons day in day out.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 17 April 2018

Photo: The Press Union of Liberia President Charles Coffey, Sr. Credit: Front Page of Africa

Press Freedom Becoming Increasingly Vulnerable in Liberia

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK | MONROVIA (IDN) – Liberia’s new government under President George Weah is not having a honeymoon with the media though he has endeavoured to reassure journalists that they would have a "200 percent freedom of expression and press freedom under my government".

The one-time soccer star, who succeeded Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in the country's first peaceful change of power in seven decades in January 2018, is accused of allowing the press to be muzzled.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 17 April 2018

Photo: Nicaraguan Contra Rebels who were among the various U.S.-backed and funded right-wing rebel groups that were active from 1979 to the early 1990s in opposition to the socialist Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction government in Nicaragua. CC BY-SA 3.0

Back to the Past with Trump’s National Security Strategy – Part 2

Viewpoint by Michele Nobile*

This is the second of a four-part article looking at the approach to Russia and China in the national security strategy of the United States under the administration of President Donald Trump. The article is a follow-up to the five-part article by the same author on ‘US Foreign Policy and Trump's Contradictions’ published earlier by IDN. – The Editor.

ROME (IDN) – Obviously, it is not difficult to list the many cases in which the United States has worked against democratically-elected governments or supported dictatorships: during the Cold War, political liberalisation in peripheral or developing countries was subordinated to the "containment of communism" and limited by the risk that it would trigger processes of social and political mobilisation that would bring parties favourable to the Soviet Union or China to power. Practical Wilsonianism has been rather selective.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 17 April 2018

Photo: President Trump explaining a 'New National Security Strategy for a New Era' on December 18, 2017. Credit: whitehouse.gov

Back to the Past with Trump’s National Security Strategy – Part 1

Viewpoint by Michele Nobile*

This is the first of a four-part article looking at the approach to Russia and China in the national security strategy of the United States under the administration of President Donald Trump. The article is a follow-up to the five-part article by the same author on ‘US Foreign Policy and Trump's Contradictions’ published earlier by IDN. – The Editor.

ROME (IDN) – At the end of 2017, the administration of US President Donald Trump published its National Security Strategy (NSS), the report that the president of the United States is required to present annually to Congress. It is legitimate to ask what interest a document such as an NSS can have since it certainly contains no military action plans, not even in general terms.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 17 April 2018

Photo (left to right): Michiko Kodama, Assistant Secretary General of Nihon Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of A- & H- Bomb Sufferers' Organizations); Akira Kawasaki, Executive Committee Member, Peace Boat and an international steering committee member of ICAN; Terumi Tanaka, co-chairperson of Nihon Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of A- & H- Bomb Sufferers' Organizations); Haruko Moritaki, co-director of Hiroshima Alliance of Nuclear Weapons Abolition (HANWA). Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri | IDN-INPS

Pressure Mounts on Japan to Join the Nuclear Ban Treaty

By Katsuhiro Asagiri

TOKYO (IDN) – Japan is coming under pressure from within to sign and ratify the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty, which acknowledges the "unacceptable suffering" of the hibakusha – survivors of hitherto the first ever atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

122 member nations of the United Nations adopted what is formally known as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in July 2017.

Aging survivors – 81.41 on an average as of March 2017 – have deplored the Japanese government's decision to stay out of the TPNW for the reason that joining the Treaty could "result in the distance between nuclear weapons and non-nuclear weapons states being further widened."

: Katsuhiro Asagiri; ARMAMENTS; Nuclear Weapons; 16 April 2018

Photo: Ambassador Kairat Umarov, Kazakh Permanent Representative to the UN, addressing the Security Council. Credit: Kazinform

Air Strikes in Syria Perturb Host of Astana Peace Process

By Santo D. Banerjee

NEW YORK (IDN) – Kazakhstan, host to eight rounds of Syria peace talks in its capital city of Astana until December 2017, has warned against further military escalation in the wake of air strikes conducted by the United States, France and UK, adding that "whatever action taken under whatever good pretext can't and will not justify the military use of force."

Kazakhstan is the first Central Asian country to be elected to the Security Council as non-permanent member for a two-year period (2017-2018). It was also the first Central Asian state to chair the Council in January 2018.

: Santo D. Banerjee; UN INSIDER; 15 April 2018

Photo: A family flees an active conflict neighbourhood in eastern Ghouta, Syria, using a cart to carry their belongings. Credit: UNICEF/Amer Al Shami.

Experts Slam Syria, Slate Trump and Favour a UN Mechanism

By J C Suresh

WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN) – The Trump administration's latest missile strikes in response to Syrian chemical weapons use is not embedded within a broader U.S. strategy to deter further chemical weapons use, protect Syrian civilians caught in the horrible Syrian civil war, and bring a political resolution to the seven-year misery of the people of Syria, according to Tom Countryman and Daryl G. Kimball, Chair and Executive Director of the Arms Control Association (ACA).

They are "deeply concerned" that the U.S., UK, and French military operation was taken without specific authorization by the U.S. Congress, and with (apparently) little consultation with Congress.

: J C Suresh; THE WORLD; Middle East & North Africa; 14 April 2018

Photo: IMO's Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) during its 72nd session at the organization's headquarters in London. Credit: UNIMO.

UN Agency Adopts Climate Change Strategy for Shipping

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – More than 100 member states of the United Nations International Maritime Organization (IMO) have adopted an initial strategy to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from international shipping and, as a matter of urgency, phasing them out.

The plan adopted by IMO's Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) during its 72nd session at the organization's headquarters in London on April 13, includes a specific reference to "a pathway of CO2 emissions reduction consistent with the Paris Agreement temperature goals".

: J Nastranis; UN INSIDER; 14 April 2018

Photo: Back of a $1 million note, indicating what the money should instead be spent on. Design by Michael Green

Campaign For Moving 'Nuclear Weapons Money' to Boost Peace

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – While governments meet in New York for the first ever United Nations High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament from May 14-16, 2018 campaigners for 'zero nuclear weapons' will be busy counting one million specially designed notes each of $1 million value, adding up to $1 trillion.

The amount of one trillion dollars (with twelve zeros and even eighteen zeros in some countries) is being allocated over the next ten years to 'modernize' the nuclear arsenals of nine countries, which together possess around 15,000 nuclear weapons.

: J Nastranis; ARMAMENTS; Nuclear Weapons; 13 April 2018

Donors Spend Less on Refugees, More on Poorest Countries

By Rita Joshi

PARIS (IDN) – Foreign aid from 30 opulent nations, designated as "official donors", totalled USD 146.6 billion in 2017, signifying a small decrease of 0.6% from the previous year in real terms because they spent less money on refugees hosted by them. But countries most in need of aid received more funds.

Aid, formally labelled as Official Development Assistance (ODA), constitutes over two thirds of external finance for least-developed countries. The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is pushing for ODA to be better used as a lever to generate private investment and domestic tax revenue in poor countries to help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.