Trade, Trust, and the Return of Strategic Memory By Ramesh Jaura This article first appeared on https://rjaura.substack.com BERLIN | 4 February 2025 (IDN) — When India and the European Union finally inked their long-anticipated Free Trade Agreement on January 27, 2026, the fanfare barely masked the unease that had driven both sides to the table. […]
One More Step Towards Nuclear Obliteration?
By Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden | 3 February 2026 (IDN) — Nuclear arms control is close to collapse. On Wednesday, February 4, the so-called New START Treaty, signed in 2011 by the United States and Russia, expires. It capped long-range strategic nuclear warheads at roughly 1,500 each—a dramatic reduction from Cold War levels. Even so, today’s […]
U.S. Dual-Edged Approach of Military Posturing and Diplomatic Signals to Tehran
By Syafruddin Arsyad* JAKARTA | 28 January 2026 (IDN) — As United States naval forces assemble in the Gulf while Washington simultaneously signals openness to dialogue with Tehran, the U.S. appears to be pursuing a carefully calibrated—but inherently risky—strategy. By pairing visible military pressure with diplomatic outreach, Washington seeks to coerce Iran into concessions without […]
India Between Power Blocs
Indo-Europe and BRICS 2026 crucial to New Delhi ‘Multi-Alignment’ By Ramesh Jaura This article was first published on https://rjaura.substack.com BERLIN | 23 January 2026 (WorldView) — For close to eight decades since World War II, world trade has been based, though imperfectly, on the premise that rules matter. This was from the General Agreement on […]
How the EU’s Initiated Crackdown on Human Smuggling Will Impact Migration Systems for the Better or the Worse.
BRUSSELS. Belgium | 21 January 2026 (IDN) — “We Europeans, decide who comes to Europe and crosses our borders, and under what circumstances, and not the smugglers and traffickers” was the message in European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen’s speech, kicking off the Global Alliance to Counter Migrant Smuggling conference on 10 December in […]
Human–Elephant Conflict: What Sri Lanka Can Learn from Africa
By Sydney Marcus Silva* NEW JERSEY, USA | 16 January 2026 (IDN) — Human–Elephant Conflict (HEC) has emerged as one of the most serious environmental and social challenges of our time. Across Asia and Africa, rapidly expanding human populations, shrinking forests, and intensifying climate stress are forcing people and elephants into dangerous confrontations. The results […]
Americans Love Watching TV Wars
By James E. Jennings* ATLANTA, USA | 7 January 2026 (IDN) — On January 3, key figures of the American government lined up in front of TV cameras at Florida’s Mar-a-Lago White House and bragged about the latest American whiz-bang overseas war—this time against Venezuela—which included violating the U.S. Constitution, breaking a host of international […]
A Global Piracy For All To See
By Alon Ben-Meir NEW YORK | 7 January 2026 (IDN) — Trump’s actions in Venezuela are morally calamitous, showing a perilous disregard for human dignity and the rights of ordinary Venezuelans to be free from external forces. Although Maduro is a corrupt autocrat who has often ruled by decree, no country has the right to […]
2025 Exposed A Myth: The ‘American Dream’ Is A Debt Trap
By Kalinga Seneviratne* BANGKOK, Thailand | 5 January 2026 (IDN) — The US President Donald Trump’s Tariff War on the rest of the world in 2025 should go down in history as the year when the ‘American Dream” unraveled as a Debt Trap. In 2008, the so-called subprime lending crisis gave a hint of it, […]
Cyclone Ditwah Exposed Sri Lanka’s Real Housing Crisis
A Land-Use and Population Capacity Analysis By Sydney Marcus Silva NEW JERSEY, USA | 31 December 2025 (IDN) — Sri Lanka’s recurring housing crises, increasingly intensified by climate-related disasters, reflect long-standing structural failures in land-use planning rather than absolute land scarcity. This article examines the relationship between environmental constraints, historical land transformation, and contemporary settlement […]