By Collin McDowell

NEW YORK (UNODA) — In the months before States across the world convene for a conference to advance the elimination and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, a number of next-generation experts delivered practical and actionable proposals to achieve a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons. [2021-05-30]

Viewpoint by Ramesh Thakur*

The article was first published in International Politics and Society Journal. on May 20, 2021, by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung's Brussels office.

CANBERRA (IDN | IPS-Joural.EU) — A ‘no first use’ (NFU) policy is an official commitment by a nuclear-armed state that it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons against any adversary under any contingency. By making such a declaration, the state confirms its use of nuclear weapons will be restricted solely to retaliation and only against a nuclear attack. Consequently, these weapons will never be used for preventive, pre-emptive or coercive (nuclear blackmail) purposes. [2021-05-23]

Viewpoint by Daryl G. Kimball

The writer is the executive director of Arms Control Association and publisher of Arms Control Today since 2001. The following is the text of Mr Kimball's Foreword to 2021 Joint Media Project Report of the Non-Profit International Press Syndicate Group with IDN as flagship agency in partnership with Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

WASHINGTON, DC (IDN) — An informed and mobilized public is essential to human survival in the nuclear age—and effective and independent journalism is essential to revealing the hard truths, the consequences, and the choices that nuclear weapons pose for all of us. [2021-05-12]  JAPANESE 

By Robert Johnson

BRUSSELS (IDN) — “What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” French President Emmanuel Macron declared in a blunt interview with The Economist in November 2019. Europe stands on “the edge of a precipice”, he said, and needs to start thinking of itself strategically as a geopolitical power; otherwise, we will “no longer be in control of our destiny.” [2021-05-12 | 03] CHINESE | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF |  RUSSIAN

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) — It was the Americans who helped the long-ago-deposed Shah of Iran start Iran’s nuclear power research. He wanted a bomb. The Americans seemed insouciant about where this might lead.

After the revolution, the research was bequeathed from the wrong pair of hands to another wrong pair of hands—the revolutionaries who overthrew the Shah in 1979. [2021-05-11]