Not Cold War But Some Wise Western Leadership is the Need of the Hour

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – George Orwell, the author of “Animal Farm” and “1984”, was the first person to use the phrase “Cold War” in a 1945 newspaper article, written just after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

He argued that “the surface of the earth is being parceled off into three great empires, each self-contained and cut off from contact with the outer world, and each ruled, under one disguise or another, by a self-elected oligarchy. He counted the U.S. and Western Europe as one, the Soviet Union as the second and China as the third. He concluded that, “the atomic bomb is likeliest to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of prolonging indefinitely a peace that is no peace”.

Obama Must Say a Profound Sorry for Hiroshima

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – We were standing in Hiroshima looking at a stone wall. All there was to see was a shadow of a man. It had been etched into the wall at the moment of his obliteration by the blinding light of the first atomic bomb.

Olof Palme, prime minister of Sweden, stared hard at it. An hour later he gave a speech as head of the Independent Commission on Disarmament of which I was a member. “My fear”, he remarked, “is that mankind itself will end up as nothing more than a shadow on a wall.”

President Charles de Gaulle of France once observed, “After a nuclear war the two sides would have neither powers, nor laws, nor cities, nor cultures, nor cradles, nor tombs.”

What if, contrary to the received wisdom, it was shown that nuclear weapons played no role in the surrender of Japan at the end of World War 2, as has been their justification? Perhaps the terrible acts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are no worse, despite their two hundred thousand deaths, than many other scathing memories of war waged against mainly civilian populations. Then we would have to start a big rethink of the value of nuclear arsenals.

The Little-Known Dimension to the Holocaust

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – May 4 is Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Holocaust was committed by a nation whose church attendance was then high and whose creation of the most sublime sacred music ever written was etched deep into the minds of most people. Yet only the rare Catholic bishop and Protestant pastor spoke out against Hitler.

Today Germans admit the guilt of their nation. School children are taught every detail of the Holcaust’s evil- not least about Adolf Eichmann, the personification of Nazi extermination policy.

At the end of World War II, Adolf Eichmann, the chief organiser of the eradication of the Jews in the concentration camps went into hiding. Later he got himself, with the aid of sympathetic clergy, to Argentina.

For the next 10 years he worked in several odd jobs in the Buenos Aires area – from factory foreman, to junior water engineer and professional rabbit farmer.

How Lies Were Concocted Before the Iraq War

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – President Barack Obama has observed, “ISIL [Islamic State] is a direct outgrowth of Al Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion – which is an example of unintended consequences- which is why we should generally aim before we shoot”.

Many of us, looking at the horror of the Iraq war, waged by the U.S. and the UK against the regime of Saddam Hussein when 200,000 civilians died and a total of 800 billion U.S. dollars was spent on the campaign, need little to be persuaded that there was a Machiavellian plot to find an excuse to make war. Yet there are many in the circles of power in Washington who believe the U.S. should shoot on sight and to kill whenever danger is thought to have appeared- in Iraq, Syria, Libya and, before that, in Vietnam.

Buddhist Leader Urges ‘Universal Respect for Human Dignity’

TOKYO – In his annual peace proposal released on January 26, titled “Universal Respect for Human Dignity: The Great Path to Peace,” Daisaku Ikeda, president of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) Buddhist association, calls for intensified efforts to respond to the needs of humanity’s most vulnerable, including those displaced by conflict in Syria and elsewhere or by natural disasters.

Ikeda welcomes the adoption of the UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their ambitious aim of leaving no one behind. He applauds the fact that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development explicitly includes the protection of the dignity and fundamental human rights of displaced persons and international migrants.

He urges renewed focus on the protection of children uprooted by conflict and their educational needs, as well as further support to countries that have taken in large numbers of people fleeing armed conflict and persecution.

Kazakhstan Keen on Building a Joint Future for Asia and Europe

By Erlan IDRISSOV, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan*

From its first days as an independent country, Kazakhstan has been guided by the principle of “economy first and then politics”. Thanks to this principle and the leadership of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, our country has developed its economy very rapidly.

We are now determined to build on this success and, with the adoption of the “Kazakhstan – 2050” strategy, have set a goal of joining the list of the world’s 30 most developed countries. With this strategy and by strengthening cooperation and dialogue with our international partners, we intend to develop our domestic industries, gain modern experience, attract innovations, exchange technologies and develop investment cooperation.

G20’s Role in Development Cooperation as China Takes Over

By Thomas Fues & Maike Saltzmann*

BONN (INPS | GDI) – China took over the presidency of the group of the twenty leading industrial and emerging countries (G20) on December 1. In spite of its impressive economic success, the country continues to regard itself as a developing nation and its government intends to place particular emphasis on the interests of all developing countries.

Following up on China’s leadership, Germany can use its chair of the G20 in 2017 to promote implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Holding the Mirror for Obama’s Real Gun Policy

WASHINGTON (IDN) – President Barack Obama’s argument that a ban on gun sales to people on the no-fly list is disingenuous. The U.S. is the biggest seller of arms to people much worse than those on that list. Washington sells weapons to tyrants on the most abusive dictators list – which the State Department certifies repeatedly in its annual account of global human rights abusers.

Build a Dike Against the Middle-Easternization of Turkey

WASHINGTON (IDN | GMF) – Ongoing developments in EU-Turkey relations are as significant as they are worrying. In an exceptional summit in November, the EU committed itself to massive financial aid in exchange for Turkey bearing the brunt of a refugee crisis that has sent it over 2 million Syrians since 2011.

Despite the direct threat posed by the self-proclaimed Islamic State group (ISIS) after the Paris terrorist attacks, the summit’s focus was only partly on the transit of foreign terrorist fighters across the porous Turkish-Syrian border that Turkey has recently been working to block.

Paris and A Tale of Democracy and Climate

ROME (IDN) – In the space of just a few days, two fundamental lessons have come from Paris for the world about democracy and climate. The media have been dealing with them as separate issues, but they are, in fact, linked by the same problem that can no longer be ignored: democracy is on the wane. READ IN JAPANESE

While all media have reported the defeat of the Front National in the French administrative elections, and while few have made the old observation that to win a battle is not to win a war, there is no doubt that the FN is becoming a mainstream party.

In these elections, the traditional political system – the centre-right under former French president Nicolas Sarkozy and the socialists under current president François Hollande – again joined forces to keep the FN under Marine Le Pen out.

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