Global Outlook

Time is ripe for initiatives to reduce global military spending. Global military expenditures are at record levels. The current pandemic is a stark reminder of the financial resources needed to prevent and meet future crises.

The return to power of the Pakistan-orchestrated Taliban has dashed any prospect for the transformation of Afghanistan into a stable, secure and peaceful state in the foreseeable future. The Taliban’s newly formed interim cabinet leaves no room for a majority of the Afghan people and the international community to legitimise it as politically and ethically acceptable. Afghanistan is now potentially positioned as a pariah state.

The disaster of a twenty-year Afghanistan policy is complete. The West is facing the broken pieces of its policies and the future of Afghanistan, with the Taliban in power, is uncertain. The situation is so complex that it is difficult to find convincing answers to the many open questions.

Even before the pandemic, social media was creating a “techtonic shift” in human relations by acting as a vehicle for organising violence, amplifying disinformation and xenophobic conspiracies, and polarising public discourse.

On the 71st anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for the first time, a global treaty is in force outlawing the bomb. Last month, I completed and dispatched to the publisher an edited book on the nuclear ban treaty (or the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, as it’s officially called) with contributions from many familiar people in academia, think tanks, foreign ministries and civil society.

President Moon’s Korea Peace Initiative has faced mixed results and daunting challenges, but there are no better options.