By Natalia Abril Bonilla and Lisa van den Hoven* AMSTERDAM | 12 May 2025 (IDN) — In 2025, it feels like we are in a period of declining optimism. As the recent World Economic Forum Global Risks Report set out, state-based armed conflict, extreme weather events, ‘fake news’ and falling trust – together with deepening […]
Peace and Disarmament Education: A Strategy to Prevent Dystopia
By Ramesh Jaura This article was first published on https://rjaura.substack.com/ BERLIN | 12 May 2025 (IDN) — Fancy people around the world singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” — of a world where there is “nothing to kill or die for” and “all the people living in peace…sharing all the world…as one”! Envision people beating their “swords into […]
India vs Pakistan, Two Nuclear Powers, in a Potentially Explosive Confrontation
By Thalif Deen* NEW YORK | 9 May 2025 (IDN) — Will the rising military tension between two of the world’s heavily-armed nuclear powers –India and Pakistan—lead to a full-scale war? The guessing game is on. The two South Asian countries have long remained locked in a bitter confrontation, mostly over the disputed territory of […]
Military Conflicts and Civil Wars Trigger Rise in Arms Spending Worldwide
By Thalif Deen STOCKHOLM | 30 April 2025 (IDN) — As the long-drawn-out conflicts in Ukraine, beginning February 2014 and Gaza, since October 2023, continue with no signs of a resolution, there is one significant fall-out: the rise in military spending worldwide. The ongoing conflicts also include civil wars in Syria, Sudan, Myanmar and the […]
Emerging Risks to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Test Ban Regime
By Leonam dos Santos Guimarães* RIO DE JANEIRO | 24 April 2025 (IDN) — Since 2020, the international nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear test ban regime has encountered unprecedented and systemic challenges. The resurgence of geopolitical rivalries, the modernization and expansion of nuclear arsenals, and the erosion of long-standing arms control commitments have brought nuclear weapons […]
Can Britain and France Take on America’s Role in Defending Europe Against Russian Aggression?
By Paul van Hooft* THE HAGUE, Netherlands | 28 March 2025 (IDN) — European doubts about deterrence predate the current US administration. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and its growing reliance on nuclear coercion to ward off Nato support, brought the importance of nuclear weapons to the foreground again for the first time since the […]
Iran Calls Trump’s Proposed Negotiation A “Deceptive Tactic”
By Abdul Rahman DHAKA, Bangladesh | 16 March 2025 (IDN) — Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei said on March 12 that the US offer to talk with Iran is not credible. He claimed since the Trump administration is neither ready to address Iranian concerns nor willing to lift its illegal unilateral sanctions to […]
New Report Warns of Increasing Nuclear Dangers
By Alice Slater* NEW YORK | 5 March 2025 (IDN) — Once again the ‘Gloomsday’ Machine is reporting the awful news about the growing nuclear threats, the widening nuclear proliferation, and ongoing modernization and development of new weapons most recently in the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor which defines itself as “a research project managed by Norwegian […]
From A National Initiative to A Non-Discriminatory Concept of NWFZs
Follow-Up On a Cold War Era Lesson By Enkhsaikhan Jargalsaikhan The writer is Chairman of Blue Banner NGO, Former Mongolian Permanent Representative to the United Nations. NEW YORK | 4 March 2025 (IDN) — During the Cold war years Mongolia has learned a bitter lesson of the implications of hosting military bases of a nuclear-weapon […]
UN Undertakes Yet Another Attempt to Ban the Bomb
By Ramesh Jaura BERLIN | 4 March 2025 (IDN) — The West’s preoccupation with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago on 24 February and the spectre of a nuclear clash has put out of sight the urgent menace of 2,100 nuclear warheads nine states — Russia, United States, China, France, United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, […]