International

India-Russia ties get a makeover

by M. K. Bhadrakumar,* India

(11 January 2024) The visit by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar to Russia on December 24–29 presented an extraordinary spectacle reminiscent of the halcyon days of Indo-Soviet relations.

There was an unnameable ecstasy in Jaishankar’s words on Russian soil. He even took a walk on the Red Square in the middle of Russian winter. But the minister is anything but a sentimental diplomat, who can handle emotions not necessarily as encumbrance but turning them instead into great optics.

The West agonises over an ‘atrocity upsurge’ while backing Israel’s genocide in Gaza

The problem isn’t ‘global inaction’. It’s intense US and UK support

by Jonathan Cook,* Israel

(21 December 2023) How do politicians, diplomats, the media and even the human rights community keep us politically ignorant, docile and passive – a collective mindset that prevents us from challenging their power as well as the status quo they benefit from?

Northern Gaza Strip turned into a desert of rubble

Diplomacy falters. Severe destruction

by Karin Leukefeld,* Germany/Syria

(14 December 2023) Benjamin Netanyahu needs three things from the USA: “Ammunition, ammunition, ammunition”. This is how the Israeli daily newspaper “Israel Hayoum” quoted statements made by the Israeli Prime Minister in a meeting with government representatives.

A Framework for Peace in Israel and Palestine

by Jeffrey D. Sachs,* USA

(7 December 2023) It is urgent to free the hostages in Gaza; stop the bloodshed in Israel and Palestine; establish lasting security for both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples; achieve the aspiration of the Palestinian people for a sovereign state; and establish a process of true sustainable development in the “Eastern Mediterranean – Middle East” (EMME) region. This can be set in motion by immediately welcoming Palestine as a UN member state.

How the chance was lost for a Peace settlement of the Ukraine war

The West wanted to continue the war instead

A detailed reconstruction by General (ret.) Harald Kujat* and Professor Hajo Funke**

Preliminary remark

by Michael von der Schulenburg***

This is a detailed reconstruction of the Ukrainian-Russian peace negotiations in March 2022 and the associated mediation attempts by the then Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, supported by President Erdogan and former German Chancellor Schröder.

It was drawn up by retired General H. Kujat and Professor Emeritus H. Funke, two of the initiators of the recently presented peace plan for Ukraine. And it is also in connection with their peace plan that this reconstruction is so extremely important.

US embarks on proxy war against Iran

by M. K. Bhadrakumar,* India

(30 November 2023) A massive US naval deployment in a wide arc of the so-called Greater Middle East is under way – stretching from Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean, into the Red Sea and the Bab el Mandeb and into the Gulf of Aden and all the way into the Gulf of Oman. This deterrent display may transform as large scale offensive operations and aims to rework the geopolitical alignments and bring them back to the traditional grooves of intra-regional rivalries in the Gulf region.