Global Outlook

On 25 February, the government of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea (PNG) declared a State of Emergency in the Atolls Constituency of the region. On 28 February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest climate science report. While the state of emergency in Bougainville was hardly noticed internationally, the release of the IPCC report drew comprehensive international attention

Russian president Vladimir Putin overnight ordered the defence minister and the chief of the military to put nuclear deterrent forces in a “special regime of combat duty”, possibly referring to readying tactical nuclear forces. This could of course be a bluff, but Putin has demonstrated on numerous occasions he has a cavalier disrespect for human life and for the planet, and that he is willing to take extreme risks to achieve his strategic goals.

As a peace researcher for over 40 years, it appals me that in 2022 we are trying to make sense of an outmoded 20th century invasion aimed at changing borders and seizing sovereignty. This war is the most blatant act of cross border aggression that I have seen since the Second World War and a major contravention of the UN Charter.

There are two competing narratives about Russia’s push into Ukraine. One holds that President Vladimir Putin has adopted Hitler’s playbook over Sudetenland and failing to check his aggression will fall into the trap of the appeasement at Munich in 1938. The alternative holds that Putin is executing the NATO playbook in Kosovo in 1999.

Climate change pressures are pushing people from their homes and exacerbating tensions over control of valuable but shrinking natural resources like land, water and minerals, says new report

Lord Ismay, NATO’s first secretary general, memorably described its mission as being ‘to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down’. With the end of the Cold War, instead of disbanding, NATO became a military alliance in search of a new enemy and mission to justify its existence.