Peace

Jan Oberg July 16, 2024 On July 11, 2024, after the NATO Washington Summit, Global Times in Beijing was so kind as to publish my comparative thoughts on the famous Five Principles on Peaceful Coexistence – just celebrated in Beijing – and five principles I have extracted from NATO’s concepts and policies. Quite a contrast! Here is how it begins: “The West showed virtually no interest in the recent celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in Beijing. These Five Principles, created by then China’s premier Zhou Enlai and Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru, are enshrined in the Chinese Constitution and aim to promote peaceful, nonviolent relations among nations. However, this is not the case with NATO, which marks its 75th anniversary on July 9-11. If officially it too had five principles, they would be: 1. offensive deterrence; 2. forward “defence”; 3. nuclear weapons and the...

Easter Island Rapa Nui “Best wishes for the Season,” we easily write and read these days. So let us reflect on religare, reconnect between that out there and that in here, in us, for globalizing truths. A few years ago, these unpublished lines for the Season were written in the Pacific, under a cloudless sky, with waves peaking, with white foam at the top. Rapa Nui, Easter Island was on the horizon, one of these places where the creation of humans looks about as old as God himself and human beings have not yet been able to pollute (deplete, yes!) everything.  Gratitude is seeping in, attaching itself to good emotions in body, mind and spirit. Happiness is the word, some kind of release. Sukha is the word in the Hindu-Buddhist tradition. Further out is nirvana, the dissolution at the end of the pilgrim’s journey. First published on Transcend Media Service,...

TFF Associate, Professor Chaiwat Satha-Anand has died at 69: Professor of nonviolence who opened path to peace in Thailand Noblest and kindest among – and for – humanity. TFF Associate since 1991 and a dear friend of Christina and me since before that, a great scholar of nonviolence, a mediator and a Muslim in the 94% Buddhist Thailand. We worked together for decades in IPRA, the International Peace Research Association, as teachers in Italy at IUPIP and throughout the decades at TFF, where we have published many of Chaiwat’s deeply insightful peace research analyses. His death is a great loss to true peace research, but his legacy will remain with all of us in this academic field. Years ago, Chaiwat invited me to a conference in Bangkok, but not only that. He told me that he thought I worked too hard and needed to relax a bit, so, consequently, he...

Photo © Jan Oberg 2024 July 5, 2024 Please find below a link to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s remarkable speech on the highly significant event for future world peace. TFF’s Jan Oberg was invited to attend the conference (and took the above photo from a long distance in the Great Hall of the People). When reading it, you’ll immediately notice that it is a comprehensive overview of why and how the world, in all its diversity, can shape a cooperative future for humankind that is also much more peaceful than the present. It illustrates that China’s foreign policy is based on long-term thinking and on unalterable principles. You’ll notice that there are no attacks on anyone; that President Xi talks about a global “us” and not a “we and them”; that there is a consistent philosophy about equality and win-win cooperation and that such cooperation – getting to know each...

July 4, 2024 “Each of us has had our own experience of the cascading failures of process, leadership, and decision-making that have characterized this Administration’s intransigent response to this continuing calamity. Taken together, these paint a picture of an overlapping and systemic set of problems in this Administration’s policy approach, and a series of warnings that have gone unheeded…” Read the entire – extraordinarily important – statement here. It is a significant example of civil disobedience and personal ethics. It all began with Josh Paul when he resigned from the State Department last year. See also the video below. This is the way to go. May thousands upon thousands feel inspired and resign, too – and not only in the U.S. but in all Western countries that facilitate and support the genocide in Gaza and the barbaric policies in the Middle East.

– as the principles were celebrated in Beijing. The other participants were Victor Gao Zhikai, Radhika Desai and John Pang. Here is the video, and we would love to hear your comments below. Here is the transcript of President Xi Jinping’s speech about those principles on June 28, 2024. TFF is one small but effective bridgebuilder between the West and China – where the US/NATO/EU seems solely concerned with bashing China. But we can afford neither a cold nor a warm war. We need all to solve humanity’s common problems. Please support our continued efforts here. Thanks.

Jeffrey Sachs June 23, 2024 For goodness’ sake, negotiate! For the fifth time since 2008, Russia has proposed to negotiate with the U.S. over security arrangements, this time in proposals made by President Vladimir Putin on June 14, 2024. Four previous times, the U.S. rejected the offer of negotiations in favour of a neocon strategy to weaken or dismember Russia through war and covert operations. The U.S. neocon tactics have failed disastrously, devastating Ukraine in the process, and endangering the whole world. After all the warmongering, it’s time for Biden to open negotiations for peace with Russia. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. grand strategy has been to weaken Russia. As early as 1992, then Defence Secretary Richard Cheney opined that following the 1991 demise of the Soviet Union, Russia too should be dismembered. Zbigniew Brzezinski opined in 1997 that Russia should be divided into three loosely confederated entities in...

  – A communication is submitted today to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), setting forth in detail, through facts and evidence, that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the current president of the European Commission, Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen, a national of Germany, is complicit in a number of violations of international humanitarian law, amounting to crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC, committed by the Israeli armed forces (IDF) against Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), including the Gaza Strip. This communication, endorsed by various human rights groups and prominent academics and experts in international criminal law, calls the Prosecutor to initiate investigations on the basis of the information provided against Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen. The communication documents in detail the fact that Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen personally is criminally responsible and liable for punishment for some...

Jan Oberg May 16, 2024 This is a column from May 5, 2024, in The China Daily Chinese and Western ways of thinking are complementary not mutually exclusive We learn about other cultures mostly through the media and through books, films, travels and personal encounters. All news reports are micro glimpses of a time and place. This challenges us in at least two ways: how do we get a more accurate and holistic perspective of the world, and how can we learn to understand each other across cultural diversity. One way to understand societies is to look for similarities and differences in the ways people think. Or, what is in their general attitude to “others” — are they perceived as a danger, potential friends, “barbaric”, or as someone to be curious about, explore and learn from? Next, do the citizens think in terms of either/or, or both/and? Exclusivity or inclusivity?...

The world famous Swedish-based flagship institute stopped doing peace research long ago. To be honest, it ought to change its name. Below is a proposal. Jan Oberg April 23, 2024 When NATO turned 75, the director of SIPRI – formally, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – Dan Smith wrote this diplomatic wishy-washy essay about the alliance with program director Barbara Kunz who has a past in the US at the German Marshall Fund and in the German Federal Foreign Office’s policy planning unit as an external expert. The authors discuss the ‘security dilemma,’ deterrence, perceptions, and defence but do not address why NATO can be seen as co-responsible for the present, extremely serious security situation in Europe. Or, if you will, how it is a fiasco in terms of its self-perception as a defensive peace-making alliance. They do not address NATO’s homepage’s incredibly low intellectual level, which is filled with...

Suzie Halewood April 15, 2024 “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime”Ernest Hemingway, 1946 This tax year, the so-called Ministry of Defence will be given £69BN of taxpayers’ money, to effectively subsidise the arms industry and fund more wars of aggression while offering little or nothing in the way of defence. A further £116BN of taxpayers’ money will go to the banks, interest on money that never existed for wars that are not only unnecessary and illegal, but which neither benefit the UK taxpayer, nor those who have lost life and limb in any one of the smorgasbord of conflicts the UK has instigated since WWII. Originally published on Off-Guardian on April 12, 2024 War was outlawed in 1928 by the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War. Known as Kellogg-Briand Pact, the treaty was signed by sixty-three nations, including Britain &...

Jan Oberg April 8, 2024 This 7-minute video was shot by The China Academy in January 2024, posted on Wave Media on YouTube and then picked up by Taiwan’s CTi News and the Chinese Global Times magazine. This means a very large audience. Here is the link to see the many comments it created. I’m simply trying, in the shortest possible manner, to summarise what is happening these years from a macrohistorical perspective. If you think this way of thinking is interesting, why not reward TFF for bringing you fresh, different perspectives and always with a touch of a better future and a more peaceful world? It’s fast, simple and safe. Just hit this Big Red Button