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By Caroline Mwanga with SDSN News
NEW YORK (IDN) – The 2019 US Cities Sustainable Development Report by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s United States Network (SDSN USA) finds that there will be significant work to do across the board if the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 (SDGs) are to be achieved by 2030. This is the SDSN’s third city-level report ranking 105 US cities on progress towards realizing SDGs.
Viewpoint by Kelsey Davenport
The author is director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association. This article is being reproduced from the Association’s Website.
WASHINGTON, DC (IDN| INPS) – U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un met at the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea June 30 and agreed to restart negotiations on denuclearization and peacebuilding in the region. Trump was in South Korea for talks with President Moon Jae-in and had planned to visit the DMZ, but his invitation to Kim to meet at the border was publicly announced in a last-minute tweet June 28.
Viewpoint by Abdul Bari Nijrabi and R. Maxwell Bone*
WASHINGTON, DC | KABUL (IDN) – The U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pomepo made an unannounced visit to Kabul on June 25, 2019 During his nearly eight hours in the Afghan capital, the top diplomat of the United States met with senior government officials along with representatives of the Afghan opposition and civil society. This was Pompeo’s second visit to the South Asian country since he was sworn in as Donald Trump’s Secretary of State at the end of April 2018.
By Daryl G. Kimball
This analysis by Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association (ACA) first appeared on June 28, 2019 in ArmsControl.org
WASHINGTON, DC (IDN-INPS) – Last year, President Donald Trump told reporters that he wanted to work with Russian President Vladimir Putin “to discuss the arms race, which is getting out of control.”
Unfortunately, Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, stiff-armed a proposal supported by the Defense and State departments to engage in strategic stability talks with Moscow. Bolton also persuaded Trump, without a viable plan B, to terminate the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in response to alleged Russian violations of the treaty.
By Stéphanie Fillion, Passblue
MONTREAL (IDN) - “I am pro-life, I believe that all human life is sacred, and that human life begins at conception,” Andrew Bremberg told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently. Asked if rape victims should have access to abortion, he replied, “I don’t believe that abortion is a moral solution to any problem.”
Nominated by President Trump to be the United States ambassador to the United Nations office in Geneva, Bremberg is a policy adviser at the White House with no experience in international affairs.
By Kalinga Seneviratne
SINGAPORE (IDN) – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cancelled a scheduled visit to Sri Lanka on June 27 as part of his 'Indo-Pacific' tour citing “unavoidable scheduling conflicts”, according to the United States Embassy in Colombo. But they might more precisely have said, the visit was dropped “due to unavoidable opposition to U.S. moves” in Sri Lanka.
In recent years, Sri Lanka has been wooed both by China and the U.S. due to its location in the Indian Ocean that carries some 70 percent of global maritime trade. After recent bomb blasts in the island, Sri Lankans are increasingly getting worried that the U.S.-China rivalry would engulf their island which will not be to its benefit.
By Kelsey Davenport
The following article by Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, was published on their website.
WASHINGTON, DC (IDN-INPS) – Tensions over the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal with Iran continue to rise after the Trump administration accused Tehran of violating one of its commitments under the agreement, but Iran’s decision to install additional advanced centrifuges appears to fall into a gray area not covered by the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power
LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – When I was in Moscow three weeks ago, I was briefing myself for an interview with the Soviet Union’s last president, Mikhail Gorbachev. As it happened, he had to cancel it as he went into hospital for tests.
One of the American academics I always read is Gordon Hahn, an ex-fellow of the highly regarded Centre for Strategic and International Studies. He wrote that American policy towards Russia is a runaway train without rails, driven by a troubling confluence of hubristic ideological influences and bureaucratized sectorial interests.
Viewpoint by Kishore Mahbubani
The writer is a Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the author of ‘Has the West Lost It?’ This analysis first appeared in EastAsiaForum on June 5, 2019 with the heading ‘A ‘yellow peril’ revival fuelling Western fears of China’s rise’.
SINGAPORE (IDN-INPS) – Do we arrive at geopolitical judgements from only cool, hard-headed, rational analysis? If emotions influence our judgements, are these conscious emotions or do they operate at the level of our subterranean subconscious? Any honest answer to these questions would admit that non-rational factors always play a role.
Viewpoint by Dominick A. DellaSala, William J. Ripple and Franz Baumann
This article was first published in San Francisco Examiner on May 29, 2019. While Dominick A. DellaSala, Ph.D., is chief scientist for the Geos Institute in Ashland, William J. Ripple, Ph.D., is a distinguished professor of ecology at Oregon State University and the initiator of the Alliance of World Scientists. Franz Baumann, Ph.D., is a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and a visiting research professor at New York University. – The Editor
