The official referendum for Iraqi Kurdistan is soon. The referendum which is designed to sense the will of Iraqi Kurds about independence from Iraq and starting a Kurdish state among Iran, Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Theoretically, this might seem possible since Kurds already enjoy an autonomous rule in northern Iraq, they have their own president…

The reasons to vote for right-wing AfD are the problems, not the AfD itself.
On one hand, the elections to the Bundestag on September 24 2017 in Germany were somewhat boring. The programmes of the parties in charge and designated parties, CDU and SPD, look similar. Too gibberish and far from facts were the appearances of Martin Schulz…

Beijing will soon launch a yuan-denominated crude oil futures market that may eclipse the hitherto dominant dollar-based Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) exchanges. In an additional challenge to the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency, the new “petro-yuan” will be convertible into physical gold at the Shanghai and Hong Kong gold…

Pugwash sends its warmest congratulations to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) on the announcement that it has been awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, in recognition of their work “to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a…

In 1947, several months before official claiming of Indian Independence, Soviet Union became the very first nation acknowledged New India. In 1971 Moscow and Delhi signed Treaty on Peace, Friendship and Cooperation which was resumed in 1993 due to Soviet Union collapse and complemented in 2000 by Declaration on Strategic Partnership, stressing special…

Сlimate change is one of the main global problems of our times. The scale and frequency of ecological disasters has been only increasing, all the while disrupting the environment of numerous places on Earth. Under such conditions people often have to cross national borders to find a safer place to live. In the international practice it is common to…

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed on 27 September that the verified destruction of those chemical weapons possessed by the Russian Federation has been completed. Pugwash welcomes this important achievement and congratulates the Russian Federation and the OPCW for their efforts, as well as the many countries and…

China’s ambitious global geo-political objective has raised concern among American strategists, which China attempts to Isolate America at the global level. The claim has become more evident during the G20 summit when China curbed president Trump effort to pass a joint declaration in order to condemn North Korea’s recent ICBM test.
Newly, the…

Distinguished Guests, Fellow Pugwashites, Ladies & Gentlemen, It is the 60th anniversary year of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Almost two years have passed since we last met in a major Pugwash Conference. In my Presidential Address at every conference it has been customary for me to survey the contemporary global scene…

Although US and Iranian diplomatic strategy compartmentalized the Iran nuclear negotiations in order to reduce the risk of failure on this priority issue, these governments’ regional disputes were inevitably going to return to the fore and threaten the sustainability of the nuclear agreement. President Trump’s reported intention to find Iran in…

The conference included 32 participants from 20 countries who presented papers on a broad range of subjects: measuring disarmament progress; interplay between disarmament and non-proliferation objectives; future of deterrence; impact of emerging technologies; assessment of regional challenges in North-East Asia, South Asia and the Middle-East, and…

Imagine a swarm of rubber-band catapulted armed mini-drones flying in large formations over a battlefield? Now, ponder the fact that each drone was modified, armed and operationalized from off-the-shelf models worth less than $200 each. The future of aerial warfare has landed. China recently demonstrated this new reality when state-owned China…