Category: OPINION

By H. M. G. S. Palihakkara

HMGS Palihakkara is Sri Lanka’s former Permanent Representative to the UN and a former Foreign Secretary at the Sri Lanka Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

COLOMBO (IDN) – Commentators may have a rich diversity of views about costs and benefits of the American footprint on world affairs. That apart, there is no denying that America remained the major role player in the global scene in its many dimensions – strategic, security, economic, technological and more.

Rightly or wrongly, the American outreach and influence over global affairs has been so complex and overarching, any attempt to define it, let alone analyze and assess it, on a brief time frame, would indeed be a very ambitious enterprise even when conditions are normal in Washington DC. Anyone having TV access will know that conditions are far from normal these days in that powerful Capital. This naturally renders any quick-fire, balanced assessment of the U.S. global role in the current context, an even more complicated proposition.

PARIS (IDN | SWAN) – The world is becoming “more violent, and violence is occurring in surprising places,” says a recent report by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Some 3.34 billion people, or almost half of the world’s population, have been affected by violence over the past 15 years, according to the report. But many regions have also known violence for decades, if not centuries, and the arts have particularly borne witness to the issue.

In the Caribbean, writers and other artists are known for portraying societal violence in their work, and this depiction is now increasingly the subject of scholarly research.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – So what does President Donald Trump think about NATO? Twice during his campaign he rubbished it publically, saying it was “obsolete”. Yet early February when he met the UK’s prime minister, Therese May, it was all hunky dory. He told her he supported NATO 100%.

There are some – a few – influential people who have argued that NATO is indeed obsolete. One of these was William Pfaff, the late, much esteemed, columnist for the International Herald Tribune. Another is Paul Hockenos who set out his views in a seminal article in World Policy Journal. Their words fell on deaf ears.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – In a press conference on January 27 President Donald Trump said he believed in the worth of torture but then added most surprisingly that using it wasn’t going to be his decision. It would be decided by the Secretary of Defence, General James Mattis, who, as Trump said, is against torture.

Three years ago the US Senate Intelligence Committee published a summary of a thorough report on the recent American use of torture. Its chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein, said the 6,000-page report is “one of the most significant oversight efforts in the history of the US”.

By Jim Lobe* | Reproduced courtesy of LobeLog

WASHINGTON, DC (IDN | LobeLog) – The most frightening commentary I’ve read in the run-up to the inauguration—and there have been many—appeared in a column identifying the four people whose foreign policy ideas were likely to be most influential with the then-president-elect. It was written by The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin and entitled “Inside Trump’s Shadow National Security Council.”

Those four people, according to Rogin, are chief strategist Stephen Bannon, who “has been working on the long-term strategic vision that will shape the Trump administration’s overall foreign policy approach;” chief of staff Reince Priebus; Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and his national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.).

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The great flaw in ex-president Barack Obama’s record was his policy towards Russia. Going against everything he had said and written about before he became president, one action after another antagonised the Russians.

His early proclamation that he wanted Georgia and Ukraine in NATO, his de facto coalition of convenience for a crucial couple of days with the anti-democratic, anti-Russian, neo-fascist, demonstrators in Ukraine, the further expansion of NATO, despite an earlier promise not to, made by President H.W. Bush, to the Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, and his inability to cooperate with the Russians and Iranians over Syria.

Excerpts From Speech at World Economic Forum

Following are detailed excerpts from Chinese President Xi Jinping’s historic 45-minute speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 18, 2017 in which he calls for a world free of all nuclear weapons, and a global governance system based on equality among countries. The full text appeared on https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2017

Xi’s mission apparently is to make China great by following the advice of Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese author of the legendary Art of War: “Superior strategies avoid conflict. They overcome hurdles without attacking these and quickly appropriate what is foreign to them. They are totally open towards everything under the heavens.”

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – When President Barack Obama leaves office will the world be better or worse than eight years ago? Taking the big picture, so often obscured by the wars and uprisings that dominate the front page, more often than not he has resisted the foreign-policy establishment, most importantly in Syria, which makes a fetish of “credibility”.

Obama has argued that “dropping bombs on someone to prove that you are willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force”.

By Kalinga Seneviratne

BANGKOK (IDN) – Donald Trump calls the so-called ‘liberal media’ the “bad guys” and since he was elected President two months ago – in fact even before that with the Brexit vote in June 2016 – the “Liberals” in the West have been chest-beating complaining about misleading social media messages to unfairness of the electoral systems as their preferred candidates or platforms are defeated by grassroots voter revolts.

It is interesting that the ‘liberal’ media has made such a big issue of Trump having lost the popular vote but winning the Presidency, without looking at how the so-called Westminster system of democracy, which many former British colonies have inherited, often reflects such results as it is grounded on an electorate based first-past-the-post system not dissimilar to the U.S. Electoral College system.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – President Barack Obama steps down at the age of 55. He will probably live, given his healthy lifestyle, until he’s over 90. So what on earth is he going to do for the next 40 years? Run for King of England? He would probably win, as he is much more popular in Europe than he ever was at home.

Realistically we don’t know and right now probably he doesn’t. But of one thing we can be sure of as he writes his second autobiography in his very special prose he will be critically re-evaluating every decision and policy change he made. This is an honest man if on a few occasions he failed to be. And we, the jury, try to be, if sometimes we fail too.