A new (19th) Shangri-La Dialogue was held in Singapore on June 10-12 to discuss regional security issues. It was initiated and co-organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, which is rightly seen as one of the world’s most respected “think tanks” specializing in research on a wide range of issues summarized by the Institute’s...
Since the creation of the US Federal Reserve over a century ago, every major financial market collapse has been deliberately triggered for political motives by the central bank. The situation is no different today, as clearly the US Fed is acting with its interest rate weapon to crash what is the greatest speculative financial bubble in human history, a bubb...
Geopolitics is written all over Saudi religious soft power efforts. Nowhere more so than when it comes to Israel and Jews because of the growing importance of security cooperation with the Jewish state and the influence of the Israeli lobby in the United States, the kingdom’s most important yet problematic security partner. In the latest move, Saudi Arabia e...
Whilst a few other things have been going on in the world, Pakistan has been going through political turmoil which shows little sign of abating soon. This has been little noticed however, because Pakistan has dropped off the radar, and yet more instability there is hardly news. Prime Minister Imran Khan, the playboy sportsman turned statesman who is Pakist...
If Stepan Bandera was an agent of the Gestapo and left only the memory (positive for some) of the massacres and tortures he organized, Dmytro Dontsov was - and still is - the reference thinker of Ukrainian nationalists. It is he who invented Ukrainian racialism and imagined the fanaticism of Ukrainian nationalists as a...
The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum has been configured for years now as absolutely essential to understand the evolving dynamics and the trials and tribulations of Eurasia integration. St. Petersburg in 2022 is even more crucial as it directly connects to three simultaneous developments I had previously outlined, in no particular order: First,...
Some knowledgeable people, apparently including the Pope, are beginning to suspect that there may be more going on in the world than just the war in the Ukraine. They say that World War 3 has already started and things will get worse from now on. This can be difficult to determine while we are participating in the unfolding events and do not have the benefit...
Poland and Ukraine have a complex history of massacres on both sides. However, for eight years, they have been united against Russia. After having considered annexing a Russian territory if Moscow loses the war, Warsaw would like to annex a Ukrainian territory, if Kiev loses. President Andrzej Duda has reportedly received guarantees from his counterpart Volo...
The laundry list of pitfalls for China includes the fallout of the Ukraine war, strained US relations with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Turkish opposition to Finnish and Swedish NATO membership, the threat of a renewed Turkish anti-Kurdish incursion into northern Syria, and the fate of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 in...
Reality has a way of catching up to us. Sometimes it comes via a sudden shock -Sputnik or Tet. Sometimes it creeps up incrementally - as in Ukraine with each thousand round Russian artillery barrage and the steady rise of the ruble now 25% higher than at the onset of the crisis. Dim the lights, the party’s almost over. But that is not the end of the affair. ...
As evidenced by information coming from Afghanistan, the situation and socio-economic position in the country is deteriorating. Every second Afghan resident is now suffering from hunger, and in the near future the food situation in the country may worsen further, Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev said on May 27 during the fourth...
The “collective West” and many NATO countries have finally begun to receive objective information on the goals and results of Russia’s special military operation to denazify Ukraine. Instead of openly Russophobic coverage of these events by representatives of the current military-political elite of the EU and NATO and, above all, the United States, the true ...
With The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism, Michael Hudson, one of the world’s leading independent economists, has given us arguably the ultimate handbook on where we’re at, who’s in charge, and whether we can bypass them. Let’s jump straight into the fray. Hudson begins with an analysis of the “take the money an...
The war in Ukraine is interpreted very differently depending on whether one is Western or Russian. Each person’s previous experience conditions their interpretation of words and events. In fact, no one reacts to the same things and seeks the same information as the others. In the end, the two camps no longer have the same perception of reality. This successi...
Internal divisions in NATO are not a new phenomenon, with tensions between Türkiye, due to its ties with Moscow, and the US and the rest of NATO being its primary manifestation. Türkiye’s recent objections to NATO’s expansion by including two Nordic states of Sweden and Finland reveals, yet again, that the organisation is far from a house united internally. ...
US and European acquiescence in Türkiye’s long-standing refusal to honour Kurdish ethnic, cultural, and political rights has come home to roost with Turkish opposition to Finnish and Swedish NATO membership. The opposition has sparked debates about Türkiye’s controversial place in the North Atlantic defence alliance. Türkiye’s detractors point to its...
Washington’s recent active attempts to play the Riyadh card in its confrontation with Russia and in maintaining any semblance of US influence in the Middle East have turned Saudi Arabia into a “political Mecca” to which many states have suddenly flocked. The natural front-runner in this race of political pilgrims is the US itself, which wants to get Saudi ...
“There can be no peace in Europe without Russia” was once the mantra of European political philosophers. Now, the desperate liberal order is determined to smother out this logic with all-or-nothing propaganda and a proxy war NATO strategists say will weaken Russia. Unfortunately, their strategy will probably starve half the world to death. The other day, Sou...
On 26 May the 2022 WEF concluded not with a bang, but with a whimper. When mainstream journalists start questioning the usefulness of the WEF, the world should listen. They asked to what extent WEFs slogan, “Committed to Improving the State of the World”, was relevant. Improving the state of the world – Really? What did the WEF and all the illustrious atten...
The first Eurasia Economic Forum, held last week [May 22-26-Ed] in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, should be regarded as a milestone in setting the parameters for the geoeconomic integration of the Eurasian heartland. Sergei Glazyev, Russia’s Minister in Charge of Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), is coordinating the drive to design a...
For now, Ukraine is the far from my bed show for most Middle Eastern nations. The question is not if but when Ukraine will arrive on their doorstep. Two centrifugal forces threaten to push Middle Eastern nations off the tightrope: an increasingly bifurcated world populated by a multitude of civilisationalist leaders in which “you are with us or against us,” ...
Following the launch of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, the Russian and international media reports on Russian military issues have focused mainly on the war in Ukraine. There has been much less interest in other important issues involving the Russian military, including Russia’s involvement in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CST...
In 2016, the United States committed to arming Ukraine to fight and win a war against Russia. Subsequently, the US Department of Defense organized a biological research program in Ukraine, and then huge amounts of nuclear fuel were secretly transferred to the country. These data change the interpretation of this war: it was not wanted and prepared by Moscow,...
Three months after the start of Russia’s Operation Z in Ukraine, the battle of The West (12 percent) against The Rest (88 percent) keeps metastasizing. Yet the narrative – oddly – remains the same. On Monday [May 23-Ed], from Davos, World Economic Forum Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab introduced Ukrainian comedian-cum-President Volodymyr Zelensky, on the la...
“Vatican hatred” is not a quote from a publication on the Croatian genocide against Serbs between 1941−1945. It is a phrase used by the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Thornton Wilder in his novel “The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” to describe a hatred that is strong, deep, persistent, and cruel. Of course, not everyone in the Vatican hates, nor are all hater...
On the front of the stage, NATO assures that it has been strengthened by “Putin’s madness”. Ukraine, powerfully armed by the West, is leading a counter-offensive and pushing back the “invader”. At the international level, the sanctions are bearing fruit. Finland and Sweden, feeling threatened, decided to join the Atlantic Alliance. Soon the Russians will ove...
NATO’s spat over Turkish opposition to Swedish and Finnish membership is about more than expanding the North Atlantic military alliance. It’s as much about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s immediate political goals as Turkey’s positioning itself in a new 21st-century world order. On its surface, the spat is about Turkish efforts to hinder suppo...
One, this crisis, in leading to the Russian invasion, has little to do with Ukraine per se. Certainly not for Washington; for Moscow it’s otherwise. It’s been the objective of American foreign policy for at least a decade to render Russia weak and unable to assert itself in any manner of speaking in European affairs. We want it marginalized, to neuter it as ...
As the death toll in Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine continues to rise, there have only been a handful of Westerners publicly questioning NATO and the West’s role in the conflict. These voices are becoming fewer and further between as a wave of feverish backlash engulfs any dissent on the subject. One of these voices belongs to Professor Michael J. Bren...