Category: GLOBAL ISSUES

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – During the Cold War barely a week went by without some reportage or debate on nuclear weapons. Not today. Yet most of the nuclear weapons around then are still around.

It would be alright if they were left to quietly rust in their silos. But they are not. When in 2010 President Barack Obama made a deal with Russian President Dimitri Medvedev to cut their respective arsenals of strategic missiles by one-third the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress, as the price for its ratification of the deal, decreed that Obama and future presidents be made to spend a trillion dollars on updating and modernizing America’s massive arsenal.

Now that chicken is coming home to roost – and a few other chickens too.

President Barack Obama’s unexpected legacy is that he has presided over an America that has been at war longer than any previous president. Moreover, of recent presidents, apart from Bill Clinton, he has cut the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpile at the slowest rate.

Analysis by Jamshed Baruah

GENEVA (IDN) – The powerful message of a joint statement by diverse faith groups, calling for abolition of nuclear weapons, has been strongly backed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s reaction to President Barack Obama’s decision to visit Hiroshima on May 27.

Obama would be the first sitting U.S. President to visit the Japanese city during the G-7 economic summit that was annihilated by the first ever atomic bomb, dropped by the United States on August 6, 1945. It was followed by the second bomb that devastated Nagasaki three days later, killing a total of more than 200,000 people.

Ban “very much welcomes” Obama’s decision to visit Hiroshima, UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. “For the secretary-general, one of the enduring lessons of Hiroshima is the need to abolish nuclear weapons once and for all,” he added.

“We would hope that the visit is again a global message on the need for nuclear disarmament, which is something that the Secretary-General is calling for,” the Spokesman said.

Viewpoint by Kevin Martin*

WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN-INPS) – President Barack Obama plans to be the first sitting U.S. President to visit Hiroshima during the G-7 economic summit May 26-27 in Japan. Hiroshima is an impressively rebuilt, thriving city of a million people. The city was obliterated by the first atomic bomb, dropped by the United States on August 6, 1945, followed by the second bomb that devastated Nagasaki three days later, killing a total of more than 200,000 people.

Remarkably, many Hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors, are still alive today, though they often suffer from various radiation-caused illnesses or other physical ailments 71 years after the bombs were dropped.

Eighty-three-year-old Shigeko Sasamori was a young girl when the “fire bomb” (the words “atomic bomb” were not yet known) exploded a mile from where she stood. In the unimaginable chaos that engulfed the city after its devastation, Shigeko and her family were relatively fortunate, as their collapsed house barely missed crushing her mother to death, and after a period of severe disorientation and separation, Shigeko was reunited with her parents.

Analysis by Ramesh Jaura

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – Concerted efforts for entry into force of the treaty banning all nuclear tests and ushering in a world free of nuclear weapons are gathering momentum at the United Nations and other international fora.

Within days of Japan and Kazakhstan issuing a joint statement on “achieving the early entry into force” of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban-Treaty (CTBT), the Las Vergas Review-Journal reported that the U.S. is “inching closer to the day when full-scale nuclear weapons tests are banned forever”.

Earlier U.S. President Barack Obama wrote in his opinion article for the Washington Post: “The security of the world demands that nations — including the United States – ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and conclude a new treaty to end the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons once and for all.”

Analysis by Jayantha Dhanapala*

KANDY, Sri Lanka (IDN) – In the practice of general medicine a placebo is defined as a medicine or a procedure prescribed for the psychological benefit for the patient – to humour or placate rather than for any physiological or therapeutic effect. U.S. President Barack Obama’s rhetoric in Prague in April 2009 gave the world a tantalizing vision of a nuclear weapon free world: “The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War …. I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Since then we have had the anti-climax of four Nuclear Security Summits and repeated warnings about nuclear terrorism but no meaningful nuclear disarmament.

Pocketing his prematurely awarded Nobel Peace Prize, the U.S. President has reverted to being the conventional leader of the greatest military-industrial complex in the world spending approximately US $ 610 billion annually of the global military expenditure of US $ 1.8 trillion and a staggering US $ 355 billion over the next ten years on nuclear weapon modernization.

By J Natranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – The international community must pursue broader measures of prevention in the context of the UN Global Counter Terrorism Strategy, in particular by addressing the conditions conducive to terrorism, especially preventing violent extremism, stopping the flow of foreign fighters, blocking terrorist financing, and working to promote human rights and sustainable development, according to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Reacting to the outcome of the Nuclear Security Summit that concluded on April 1 in Washington, D.C. Ban’s Spokesperson said: “The Secretary-General welcomes the outcome of the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit. He wholeheartedly endorses the Communiqué adopted by the participating States as well as the Action Plan in support of the United Nations. These will help to ensure that the gains made through this process will be sustained in the future.”