security

Background and CV Dr Pascal Lottaz joined TFF as an Associate in May 2025. Very short bio Dr. Pascal Lottaz is an Associate Professor at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Law and Hakubi Center (Japan). He researches neutrality in international relations and directs the network neutralitystudies.com. Short bio Dr. Pascal Lottaz is an Associate Professor at Kyoto University, where he investigates neutrality in international relations and directs the research network neutralitystudies.com. He received his MA and PhD from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) and previously researched and taught at Waseda University and Temple University (Japan Campus). His recent books include Sweden, Japan, and the Long Second World War (Routledge, 2022), Neutral Beyond the Cold: Neutral States and the Post-Cold War International System (Lexington Books, 2022), and Notions of Neutralities (Lexington Books, 2019). He also wrote articles on “Neutrality Studies” for Oxford Encyclopedia and “The Politics and Diplomacy of Neutrality”...

Sustainable peace is not merely the absence of war but the presence of development, justice and harmony The three authors were published today by China Watch & China Daily’s English edition. It will also be published in Chinese and thereby reach a very large audience. The article also represents the first cooperative effort between Guangdong Institute for International Strategies and TFF. Li Xing who is a Yunshan leading scholar and a distinguished professor at Guangdong Institute for International Strategies, and professor of international relations at Aalborg University, Denmark. Jan Oberg is a former professor and co-founder and director of the independent Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, Sweden. Li Qing is professor and executive president at the Guangdong Institute for International Strategies. The authors contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. Now head over to China Daily > >

A major publishing event in the field of security studies A unique and very thorough 11-part analysis of the US National Security Strategy from October 2022. Christman began publishing it at the beginning of May 2023. If you want to know what the United States is up to in terms of its ‘national security’ and what the costs and risks will likely be – to itself and to the world – this is where you begin. Kristin Christman’s eleven articles were originally published by Countercurrents. Note that they were not published by a leading American magazine or the weekend edition of a large daily; they were not in any mainstream media in the US or Europe. And we know why. TFF is proud to follow up and give her genuinely independent and tremendously knowledgeable research a further boost. All her texts are also published on Christman’s YouTube Channel. The links to the following ten...

TFF Associate Since the end of the Cold War and increasingly in recent years, US officials followed as usual by their European allies, have coined a new phrase which they use instead of international law, namely ‘rules-based international order’ (RBO). Leiden Journal of International Law has published an online book (published by Cambridge University Press) that explores the ramifications of this new term. It asks: “What is this creature, the ‘rules-based international order’, that American political leaders have increasingly invoked since the end of the Cold War instead of international law? Is it a harmless synonym for international law, as suggested by European leaders? Or is it something else, a system meant to replace international law which has governed the behaviour of states for over 500 years?” It argues that the RBO is the United States’ alternative to international law, an order that encapsulates international law as interpreted by the...

Without being a NATO member, Sweden enters into an extremely far-reaching agreement with the United States, which completely undermines the country’s ability to conduct an independent security policy. Decisions are made without debate and behind the backs of the Swedish people. The official threat perception is fake: Russia will not attack the island of Gotland, but Russian missiles will now quite naturally be aimed at Sweden and be the first to be fired – if! Sweden might as well shut down the Ministry of Defence and let the Pentagon and State do the rest. Sweden has just signed a so-called defence agreement with the US. It gives the US access to no less than 17 military bases all over Sweden – and it does not exclude nuclear weapons on Swedish soil. It is now absolutely certain to be dragged immediately into a US war – the country that has fought...

A collection of relevant articles brought to you by The Transnational Foundation. When will the investigative reports come, if not after one year? The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines had neither a photogenic character nor a death toll comparable with 9/11, 2001. It also did not provoke a German or Russian response in the vicinity of the totally out-of-proportion US Global War on Terror that has cost millions of innocent lives. That said, one could hypothesise that, as a destructive event and over time, this gigantic infrastructure destruction will have consequences for the international order as comprehensive as 9/11. Be this as it may, we’ve all noticed how this unique destruction disappeared very quickly from the media and has also not been mentioned in, say, statements from NATO, G7, G 20 or the EU. The world has also not heard anything from any formal investigation, and an investigation could...

Aloha is a cultural foundation of Hawaii, an expression of kindness, inclusiveness, comforting attitude, and loving relationship. This is how you can build security and peace on that interesting concept. Pōkā Laenui September 21, 2023 – UN Day of Peace Here is a national security system for the Hawaiian nation to replace the current U.S. military system which now exist in Hawaii, a plan for not merely a military force for armed combat, but a total system of national security including addressing the effects on climate change including the harsher weather which brings in multiple hurricanes in one season, dry seasons which make us susceptible to wild fires, rising ocean levels, hunger in our streets, homelessness, etc. This is a proposal to take place as we move to an independent nation free of U.S. colonialism. More to learn about the author and about Hawaii and some videos If you think...

Be a Peace Warrior – The Online Participatory Peace Project in English and German Dr Norbert Stute & Rachael Mellor September 4, 2023 Better World Info is a unique platform for peace, offering important resources and reliable information on the most pressing peace issues.We invite peace activists who enjoy research and content creation to contact us and contribute to this ever-growing, high-quality Peace Directory making a difference. While military budgets are skyrocketing, peacebuilding remains a grossly underfunded sideline. Global military spending increased for the eighth consecutive year in 2022, reaching a staggering $2.2 trillion. More 28 wars and armed conflicts are currently active, deadly, and unrelenting. “The world is over-armed, and peace is under-funded,” said Ban Ki-moon, former UN Secretary-General. Advancing peace efforts effectively is a collaborative journey. Our common goals for peace require the active participation and shared support of activists, organisations, journalists, scientists, politicians, and philanthropists. The power...

A video conversation with Chas Freeman August 10, 2023 Chas Freeman is a legend of US diplomacy – since he served as interpreter for Kissinger and Nixon during their visit to China in 1972. He is also an academic and prolific writer and commentator. An intellectual that offers so much more than anybody serving as an ambassador in today’s NATO countries. You will find his homepage here with much about him and his thoughts. Although a staunch American, he is not the type Western mainstream media would turn to since he has the ‘wrong’ views on several essentially important things. I’ve also come to appreciate Neutrality Studies’ YouTube Channel. Browse it when you are anyhow there, but – first – listen carefully to this conversation that starts out with Henry Kissinger’s visit to China and moves on to very important aspects of Taiwan and beyond. Jan Oberg, Editor

South China Morning Post, June 6, 2023 July 27, 2023 The high-tech corporations and social media – like Apple, Google, Facebook, and others – have served the governments of US/NATO/EU world to erode everything we used to call privacy, integrity and freedom. That spells, of course, the end of democracy, too. Here is a short video that gives you the essentials – also how hesitant so-called democracies are to delimit what is legal and what is not. At the same time, they are very good at blaming ‘autocratic’ states for spying on us all from the outside – thereby legitimising their own illegal policies. Jan ObergEditor

Ben Freeman, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft June 5, 2023 Executive Summary (excerpts) “Think tanks in the United States are a go–to resource for media outlets seeking expert opinions on pressing public policy issues. But think tanks often have entrenched stances; a growing body of research has shown that their funders can influence their analysis and commentary. This influence can include censorship — both self-censorship and more direct censoring of work unfavorable to a funder — and outright pay–for–research agreements with funders. The result is an environment where the interests of the most generous funders can dominate think tank policy debates. One such debate concerns the appropriate level of U.S. military involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine… The analysis offers a number of key findings.  First, of the 27 think tanks whose donors could be identified, 21 received funding from the defense sector (77 percent). Unfortunately, because donor disclosure...