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Viewpoint by Nandi Jasentuliyana
The writer is a former Deputy Director-General, United Nations.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA (IDN) — Sri Lanka is experiencing a severe foreign exchange and debt crisis resulting in a shortage of food, fuel, power, and every other commodity to be purchased at exorbitant prices that the suffering masses cannot afford, forcing them to the streets protesting against the governing authorities.
Viewpoint by Katrina vanden Heuvel
NEW YORK (IDN) — The Russian invasion of Ukraine “is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine,” State Department spokesman Ned Price recently declared. “There are principles that are at stake here … Each and every country has a sovereign right to determine its own foreign policy, has a sovereign right to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances, its partnerships and what orientation it wishes to direct its gaze.”
A message from Members of the Leadership Council of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Members of the SDSN Community*
NEW YORK — The war in Ukraine threatens not only sustainable development, but the survival of humanity. We call on all nations, operating in accordance with the UN Charter, to put diplomacy to the service of humanity by ending the war through negotiations before the war ends all of us.
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — In 2017 the office of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) released a report which for the first time explicitly named US military forces in the field and CIA operatives in secret prisons as possible war crimes culprits for their alleged use of torture and rape. Because the American soldiers were based in Afghanistan, which is an ICC member, the ICC in theory has broad jurisdiction over crimes committed by combatants on Afghan soil.
This article was issued by the Toda Peace Institute and is being republished with their permission.
Viewpoint by Ramesh Thakur
CANBERRA, Australia (IDN) — Resorting to what President Barack Obama called the Washington Playbook of militarised response to a foreign policy crisis, Arta Moeini writes, the ruling elites in the West collude with the mainstream media in a Manichean framing that ‘redirects a natural reaction of sympathy felt by all into a moral outrage that insists on certain retaliation’.
This article was originally published by CommonDreams.org under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Viewpoint by Robert Freeman
LIVERMORE, CA USA (IDN) — Russia's assault on Ukraine is an unambiguously bad thing. But it didn't happen in a vacuum. In order to solve the problem, we have to first understand the context in which it occurred, and the part that the U.S. played in its happening.
[The U.S.] can attain that end with two simple moves: declare that Ukraine will not be admitted into NATO; and remove its offensive nuclear missiles from Russia's borders.
This article was issued by the Indian Punchline.
Viewpoint by M. K. Bhadrakumar*
NEW DELHI (IDN) — The phone call to the Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on April 6 by Israel’s alternate Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid adds to the tectonic shifts in the geopolitics of the Middle East of late. Lapid reached out to China within ten days of the visit by the US Secretary of State to Israel.
Viewpoint by Kalinga Seneviratne *
SYDNEY (IDN) — Civil unrest spreading across Sri Lanka in the past few weeks resembles the beginnings of the Arab Spring uprising by youth frustrated with corrupt political systems which left the Middle East in utter chaos, and the youth at the mercy of human traffickers and European governments.
Viewpoint by Sergio Duarte
The writer is Ambassador, former United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affair, and President of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.
NEW YORK (IDN) — Roughly three decades have gone by since the publication of Francis Fukuyama’s essay “The End of History?”. The interrogation mark makes clear that the social scientist and philosopher was not announcing an end to contradiction and conflict among nations. He was mainly asking whether Western liberal democracy could be considered as the final stage of human sociocultural evolution and the final form of governance that would endure.
This article was issued by the Wall Street International and is being republished with their permission.
Viewpoint by Franz Baumann
NEW YORK (IDN) — Wars teach about geography. In mid-February, the autocorrect on my phone did not recognize, and few people in Western Europe or America could have located on a map Mariupol, Charkiv, Bucha, Kherson, Chernihiv or Irpin. Now we know, tutored by the shocking images of Putin’s 'spetz operatsiya’.
IDN-InDepthNews offers news analyses, features, reports and viewpoints that impact the world and its peoples. It has been online since 2009. Its network spans countries around the world.