March 3: A week into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a week of mounting, unprecedented worldwide sanctions against Russia, the Russian president seems to be noticing that whatever currency and economic protection plan that was put in place, it isn’t working and the plan may need to change
Author: Strategic Demands Online
United Nations 6th Climate Assessment – Part 2

Dire climate news from tens of thousands of science studies… UN’s 6th Assessment in 3 parts: August 2021, ‘How the climate is changing’; February 2022, ‘What are the climate impacts? How can we adapt and act now to make a difference?’ Coming March 2022, ‘Solutions to slow impacts of climate change’
Another Perspective on Ukraine-Russia and What Comes Next
Perspective is essential in understanding causes of war — and roads to peace. Strategic Demands strives in our work to see security, and mutual security, with a realistic perspective. Here, Anatol Lieven, brings a “Responsible Statecraft” perspective…
War in the Ukraine

February 24, 2022: And so it starts with a Russian President speech, then tanks roll, planes attack, bombs fall, Russian troops move into Ukraine… diplomacy collapses, a campaign of war commences with a warning of “consequences you have never seen”
Nuclear Drills Today

The Russia-Ukraine Crisis… February 19, 2022… ‘Ratcheting Up’, tactical nukes in the field… Nuclear ‘Drills’ as Russian Forces Run ‘Firing Exercises’
Russian Gas & Europe: More than Meets the Eye

As world media has yet to capture the import of nuclear weapons issues during the Russia-Ukraine standoff, the world media has yet to capture climate-energy issues given the import of Russia’s gas to Europe
Bigger Picture Beyond the Ukraine Conflict

Ukraine reveals an expanded Great Game, a 21st century geostrategy, a GreatGameX. GreatGameX encompasses a greater Eurasian continent. GreatGameX geopolitics confront post WWII U.S. hegemony and recall a 19th/20th century struggle for control of Central and South Asia
Act Now to Expand the INF Agreement

With realpolitik in mind, Strategic Demands has proposed a ‘fix’ to the Ukraine crisis, a confrontation that publicly seems to be without resolution. We believe security is at the center of the dispute. We propose a mutual security that goes to a core threat of nuclear weapons and the need now for an expanded INF […]
Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, NATO, EU, US

Time to talk or time to move beyond negotiation and diplomacy? This week delivered another ratchet up of tensions along the Russian-Ukrainian border — and beyond. Germany foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, a leader of the Green Party in a newly installed coalition government, meets with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov
Democracy in the U.S. in Deep Danger

Think about the events of Jan. 6… We are in a battle for the soul of America. I will stand in this breach. I will defend this nation. And I’ll allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of democracy.
Nations Pledge to Avoid Nuclear War

The U.S. offers up a five-nation ‘Statement on Preventing Nuclear War and Avoiding Arms Races‘ … At the same time, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty meeting of nations has been delayed – again.
Saber Rattling by Russia, Ukraine, NATO and the US
It is ominous when a nation’s citizens are being told to prepare for war and prepare for the use of nuclear weapons. Any use of nukes will become a horrifying, cataclysmic chain event, devastating with lasting consequences. Yet, this is the moment we are now facing
Democracy ‘Backsliding’

To look at some 200 nations of the world and ask how democracy’s doing these days is to witness what’s being called ‘backsliding’. Signs of loss in democratic norms are global and the world wide web — the Internet with its social media storms — is pushing breakdowns. Democracy’s ‘backsliding’ & its breakdowns are all-too-real
Harrowing, Wrenching – U.S. Intel Agencies Point at Climate Change

Intelligence services agencies of the United States have a warning that’s now crept into officially expressed national security policy. Strategic Demands: “The U.S. security establishment’s far too long delayed admission of the clear and present danger of #ClimateChange is still far from the shift in national and global security policy demanded”
New German Coalition Government, New Positions on Nuclear Weapons

Recall that the German Green Party, out in front of some 100 Green parties internationally, led ‘ban the bomb’ opposition to nuclear weapons in Europe in the 1980s. The new German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, is a German Green Party leader. Green politics calls …
Glasgow Climate Summit Concludes with Pledges and Promises, but What About Action?
A mutual existential question and threat remains as the international climate summit, COP26, ends. Some 39,000 registered delegates now return to their some 200 countries. Will nations’ climate actions come close to making the climate changes necessary?
International Climate Summit Needs to Demand New Definitions of National Security

As Strategic Demands’ editor reflects on half a century of climate work, beginning with Rep. George E Brown-(D) East LA, key drafter of the first National Climate Act in 1978, the climate science message we advanced decades ago is now, at last, coming into the spotlight. But is it too late?