Xi Jinping’s Boao Forum speech marked his latest appeal for an open global economy and against US-led decoupling By Pepe Escobar with permission and first posted at Asia Times In times of grave geopolitical trouble it’s up for a true statesman to step up in the global podium and defuse a noxious Cold War 2.0 atmosphere. President Xi Jinping did deliver with his keynote speech at the annual Boao Forum
By Francis Lee who looks at the politics of development and under-development for the Saker Blog. I think it was Sir Ian Gilmour (now deceased) who, as one time member of Mrs Thatcher’s first Cabinet in 1979, referred to her economic policy as ‘Clause 4 dogmatism in reverse.’ (1) This was an apt description from a thinking Tory. The notion that there existed a magic panacea which would banish all
by Pepe Escobar and widely cross-posted It’s not by accident that the Hegemon is going no holds barred to harass and try to smash Eurasian integration by all means available. It’s a scorpion battle inside a vortex of distorted mirrors inside a circus. So let’s start with the mirrors in the circus. The non-entity that passes for Ukrainian Foreign Minister traveled to Brussels to be courted by US Secretary of
By Michael Hudson and posted with special permission Nearly half a millennium ago Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince described three options for how a conquering power might treat states that it defeated in war but that “have been accustomed to live under their own laws and in freedom: … the first is to ruin them, the next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live under
By Dmitry Orlov and posted with special permission A terrible war is about to erupt on Russia’s border with the Ukraine—or not—but there is some likelihood of a significant number of people getting killed before project Ukraine is finally over. Given that around 13 thousand people have been killed over the past seven years—the civil war in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine has gone on for that long!—this is
By Zamir Awan for The Saker Blog While the world is suffering from a Pandemic, it is also leading toward wars. The two big wars seem inevitable. One in the South China Sea, and the other might be the Ukraine war. As a matter of fact, The U.S. was the beneficiary of World Wars and used wars, aggressions, coercion, conspiracies, toppling Governments, and cold-war tactics to maintain its supremacy. After
By Andrei Martyanov, exclusively for the Saker Blog For the US Navy ships to enter the Black Sea and hope to survive in case of the, God forbids, any kind of a conflict with Russia—yes, you read it right—is a fantasy, or, to be even more precise—an unscientific fiction. This group, let alone a single US destroyer of the Arleigh Burke-class (these are the most active types in the US
By David Sant for the Saker Blog Several analysts have written articles about how Russia is likely to respond in the theater to an offensive by Ukraine to restart the Donbass War. My purpose in this article is to look at the psychology and incentives of Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin and the possible moves that each of them may make in response to the Donbass crisis. The Nature of
The Triple Yoda, Nikolai Patrushev, hopes cooler heads can avoid sanctions such as the SWIFT ‘nuclear option’ By Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times The Beltway was always fond of describing the late Andrew Marshall – who identified emerging or future threats for the Pentagon and whose proteges included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz – as Yoda. Well, if that’s the case, then
By Larchmonter445 for the Saker Blog Early on in the introduction to “Raging Twenties”, Pepe Escobar points to the change, the disruption that confronts the Established Elites who for 30 years ruled the globe with a free hand: “The Empire we have been taught to accept as a fact of life is irretrievably losing its leadership position—and will have to deal with much pain implicit in the acceptance of an
by Ghassan and Intibah Kadi for the Saker Blog A tug-of-war game in Europe has been a strong feature of dramatic events in the region and further afield ever since the Roman Empire plus the Church split up. Which was the cause and which was the effect is subject to debate, but the split was much deeper than one that was political; the spiritual aspect of it is not to
By Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times Ukraine and Russia may be on the brink of war – with dire consequences for the whole of Eurasia. Let’s cut to the chase, and plunge head-on into the fog of war. On March 24, Ukrainian President Zelensky, for all practical purposes, signed a declaration of war against Russia, via decree No. 117/2021. The decree establishes that retaking
by Paul Craig Roberts – posted with permission On August 31, 2018, I wrote: “So, the questions for Andrei Martyanov, The Saker, and for Putin and the Russian government is: How long does turning your other cheek work? Do you turn your other cheek so long as to allow your opponent to neutralize your advantage in a confrontation? Do you turn your other cheek so long that you lose the
Note: Comments to this long-read article will be closed. However a temporary email, report.dealing@protonmail.com has been set up for serious comments on political, ideological, social, and economic aspects of SARS-COV-2/COVID19 only and your emailed comment will be placed in the comments area. Be a little patient, the Saker’s moderation resources are working hard on the open threads on the Ukraine, Russia and the dire situation. Any comments which mention, even
By Fabio Reis Vianna for The Saker Blog In an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine – one of the most prominent mouthpieces of US imperialism – , and signed by, among others, Marcus Hicks, former commander of the US Special Operations Command in Africa during the period 2017-2019, defends the idea that the increased competition between the great powers ignites a red alert that the United States should turn
by Ramin Mazaheri and cross-posted with PressTV In the first part of this article, titled Nixon ‘opened’ China, but only socialist superpower China could ‘open’ Iran, I discussed the historic role reversal: it’s the position of the superpower China which now counts the most, and not the the attitude of the United States. The 25-year Iran-China pact is actually an undercounting as it is essentially – to quote China’s foreign
by Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times The extraordinary confluence between the signing of the Iran-China strategic partnership deal and the Ever Given saga in the Suez Canal is bound to spawn a renewed drive to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and all interconnected corridors of Eurasia integration. This is the most important geo-economic development in Southwest Asia in ages – even more crucial
By Larry Romanoff for the Saker Blog On September 4, 2004, Yang Huanyi died at her home in Central China. She was 98 years old, and the last fluent practitioner of Nüshu, one of the oldest and most beautiful, and certainly one of the more intriguing languages in the world. (1) (2) Nüshu, (女书), (literally, women’s writing and/or women’s script) is the only known language in the history of the world that was
by Arcturus Le for the Saker Blog In the west, there is perennial bluster about the putative ‘weakness’ of the Russian economy. It is widely accepted as ‘fact’ that the Russian economy is somewhere miserably outside the ‘Top 10’ global economies by GDP, sinking ever deeper year by year towards #15, embarrassingly behind such smaller countries as South Korea, Canada, Italy and on par with countries like Spain, Australia, and
by Ramin Mazaheri and cross-posted with PressTV One thing about Western business media is that whenever any imperialism-opposing nation has a major success their subsequent understatement speaks volumes, as evidenced by an article in the oil trade press, The Iran-China Axis Is A Fast Growing Force In Oil Markets, at the website OilPrice. For trade journalists they are quite behind the trends of their industry: Iran and China are now
