THE WORLD

Image: Visual China Group (also known as VCG). Source: China Daily

China Not Interested In Any 'Cold War'

Viewpoint by Shen Dingli

The author is a professor at the Institute of International Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai. This article first appeared on China Daily on 4 December 2018.

SHANGHAI (IDN-INPS) – Of late, there has been talk of and concern over a possible "Cold War" between the United States and China. The argument goes that Beijing and Washington are competing to establish their respective versions of "political correctness" and global order.

And although the Sino-U.S. trade conflict has eased after U.S. President Donald Trump agreed at the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires on Saturday [December 1] to not impose additional tariffs on Chinese imports and President Xi Jinping said China will increase U.S. imports, Beijing still favours a multilateral approach to international trade based on rules and equality while Washington seems keen on pushing ahead its version of "fairness" and "reciprocity".

: Devinder Kumar; OPINION; 05 December 2018

Photo: The Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, one of the most holy sites in Sri Lanka reputed to contain an actual tooth of the Buddha on his 2nd visit to the Island over 2000 years ago. CC BY 2.0

Sri Lanka's Heroic Freedom Struggles of 1818 and 1848 – Part 1

By Dr. Palitha Kohona

The author is former Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, and former Foreign Secretary. The following is Part 1 of the text of his keynote address delivered at Sri Lanka's University of Peradeniya, Kandy, on 26 November 2018.

COLOMBO (IDN-INPS) – We look back on a heroic struggle that our ancestors waged 200 years ago against the mightiest empire that the world had known up to that time, to regain their freedom and that of a nation that had remained unbowed for over 2300 years.

Unfortunately, it was a heroic but unequal struggle with a much more powerful and vengeful colonial power, which had also through unscrupulous manipulation succeeded in splitting the Kandyan people in to factions suspicious of each other and diluted the centuries old bonds that bound the nation together.

: Dr. Palitha Kohona; THE WORLD; History; 05 December 2018

Photo: A general view of the NATO meeting on December 4, 2018. Credit: NATO.

U.S. INF Treaty Termination May Once Again Trigger Nuclear Arms Race

By Daryl G. Kimball and Kingston A. Reif

The following is the text of the analysis in Issue Brief (Volume 10, Issue 10, December 4, 2018) by the Arms Control Association (ACA). Daryl G. Kimball, is the executive director and Kingston A. Reif the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy of ACA. – The Editor

WASHINGTON; DC (IDN-INPS) – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared [on December 4] Russia in material breach of the landmark 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and announced that the United States plans to suspend U.S. obligations under the treaty in 60 days unless Russia returns to compliance.

In a new statement on the INF Treaty also released [on December 4], NATO foreign ministers collectively declared for the first time “that Russia has developed and fielded a missile system, the 9M729, which violates the INF Treaty". The ministers also stated: “It is now up to Russia to preserve the INF Treaty.”

: Arms Control Association; ARMAMENTS; Nuclear Weapons; 05 December 2018

Photo: Deputy Executive Secretary Giovanie Biha of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). Credit: Encomium Magazine.

Africa Should Focus on Young People – Say Experts

By Ronald Joshua

KIGALI (IDN) – Africa’s “easy decade” of accelerated economic growth is coming to an end, and only accelerated job creation and integration will ensure sustainable growth and development across the continent, Prof. Paul Collier, one of the world’s most influential development economists has warned.

A Professor of Economics and Public Policy in the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, Collier was delivering a keynote address at the African Economic Conference 2018, hosted by the African Development Bank, the Economic Commission for Africa and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Kigali, Rwanda.

: Ronald Joshua; THE WORLD; Africa; 04 December 2018

Photo: U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg signs The Kellogg Briand Pact (or Pact of Paris) for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy on August 27, 1928 at the ministry of foreign affairs in Paris. Background French Foreign Affairs Minister Aristide Briand. Credit: AFP/Getty Images.

Significant Progress in Ending All War

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – “We need jaw jaw not war war,” said Winston Churchill rather hypocritically. Still, he would be glad to see that the number of wars around the world has fallen dramatically since the end of the Second World War, despite the wars in Korea, Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Pakistan versus India, Central America, Cyprus, ex-Yugoslavia, Syria and now Yemen.

Compared with centuries past this has been a remarkable era, yet one not often acknowledged.

Interstate wars, apart from India versus Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Yemen, have vanished off the map. The wars that remain are civil wars. The democracies do not go to war with each other, as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher long ago observed.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 04 December 2018

Photo: Seyni Nafo (left), spokesman of the African delegation to the COP24, with Amina J. Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary-General, at a meeting in 2016. Credit: World Bank

Africa Seeks Commitments to Fight Climate Threat at COP24

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – Seyni Nafo, spokesman of the African delegation at the UN Climate Change Conference COP24 taking place in Katowice in southern Poland from December 2-14 is not one to mince words about the serious climate threat now facing the African continent.

"We are the most vulnerable, we are the least responsible but we will suffer the most," the Malian-born Nafo summed up in an interview with Germany’s international broadcaster DW. The African continent is already experiencing the effects of climate change. In many places drought, torrential rainfall or flooding are regular occurrences.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 04 December 2018

Photo: Global Citizens help fulfill Mandela’s Vision of ending extreme poverty by taking 5.6M Actions. Credit: Global Citizen

Muggings Mar Mandela Centenary Concert in South Africa

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK | JOHANNESBURG (IDN) – A massive turnout of die-hard fans of superstars Beyonce and her husband Jay-Z filled every available square inch of the Johannesburg FNB stadium for the closing night of the Global Citizen Festival organized to honor the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nelson Mandela and raise $1 billion to address poverty, food security, global health and other social issues.

Beyonce and Jay-Z were the headline act for the sold-out closing affair that featured a 90-minute performance with the popular superstars that included a rendition of her 2008 single “Halo” accompanied by a South African choir.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 04 December 2018

Photo: The 35th plenary session of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly in Brussels from June18-20, 2018, in the presence of MEPs and their counterparts from the national parliaments of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. Credit: multimedia.europarl.europa.eu

Towards an Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States

By Reinhard Jacobsen

BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – As negotiators inch towards updating the most comprehensive but 20-year old partnership agreement between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States, they have a broad array of issues on their plate.

These include the name change to the 'Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACP)', ensuring the consistency of participation in parliamentary assemblies, establishment of the ACP Information Centre for South-South and Triangular Cooperation, and enhancing ACP's financial stability.

: Reinhard Jacobsen; GLOBAL GOVERNANCE; ACP Group of States; 03 December 2018

Photo: King Mohammed VI of Morocco. Source: The Moroccan Times

A Moment of Reckoning for Decentralisation in Morocco

Viewpoint by Yossef Ben-Meir

Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir is a sociologist and Founder President of the High Atlas Foundation, based in Marrakech, Morocco, working to establish livelihood advancement projects – all of which are identified and managed by local communities, in partnership with the public, private and civil sectors.

MARRAKECH (IDN) – Morocco’s parliament is currently deciding the nation’s Decentralisation Charter. Since its working draft is not currently made public, we can only hope that every parliamentarian realises that the human development course of the nation and the relationships between public, civil and private institutions depend upon the creation of a meaningful charter.

: Africa & ME Editor; OPINION; 01 December 2018

Photo: Protest against U.S. involvement in the military intervention in Yemen, New York City, 2017. CC BY 2.0

U.S. Senate Vote on Yemen Rebukes Trump and Saudis

Viewpoint by Mark Weisbrot

This article was published by The Guardian on November 30, 2018. Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and the president of Just Foreign Policy. He is also the author of “Failed: What the ‘Experts’ Got Wrong About the Global Economy” (2015, Oxford University Press). You can subscribe to his columns here.

WASHINGTON (IDN-INPS) – It was a resounding defeat for the White House and Republican Senate leadership: by a 63-37 majority, the Senate voted on November 28 to advance legislation that would give President Trump 30 days to get the US military out of Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war in Yemen, unless he could get congressional authorization for US military intervention. Which he almost certainly could not.