Subjects Archives: Strategy

No state has an intrinsic “right to exist.” As international relations scholar Scott Burchill points out, there is no abstract “right to exist” in international law, or in “any serious theory of international relations.”

Historically, the châteaux of the Loire Valley were assessed by their windows. ‘A fifty-windowed castle’, an onlooker might surmise to suggest its worth. Russian boyars quantified their properties in souls–whether dead or alive, according to Gogol’s Dead Souls.

In the early months after the World Health Organisation announced the coronavirus pandemic, the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy wrote of her hope that the pandemic would be a ‘portal, a gateway between one world and the next’.

Refusal to temporarily suspend several World Trade Organization (WTO) intellectual property (IP) provisions to enable much faster and broader progress in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic should be grounds for International Criminal Court prosecution for genocide.

The Japanese news agency Kyodo reported from Washington Sunday quoting “a source” that the Biden Administration had proposed to New Delhi, Tokyo and Canberra the idea of holding an online summit meeting of the leaders of the “Quad”. 

In an era when international cooperation in the face of pandemics and climate change is essential, the world appears to be racing towards a new Cold War, and unfortunately, few except the military top brass are talking about it.

Haiti’s president’s term has come to an end, but he refuses to step down. Solidarity is urgent.

On January 28th, a group of U.S. Congressmen, led by former Green Beret and now Republican Party legislator, Michael Waltz, introduced to the U.S. Congress a new bill dedicated to Venezuela entitled the “Bipartisan Banning Operations and Leases with Illegitimate Authoritarian Regime Act”.

According to unofficial results of an exit poll, Ecuador will have a run-off election. Andres Arauz won 36,2 percent of the valid votes and right-wing candidate Guillermo Lasso got 21,7 percent.

The ASEAN Chair’s statement of Feb, 1 recalled the “purposes and the principles enshrined in the ASEAN Charter” which include respecting the principles of sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity, non-interference, consensus and unity in diversity.” 

Yves here. Get a cup of coffee. This is another meaty talk with Michael Hudson, this time focusing on his classic Super Imperialism. Hudson has an updated and expanded version set to go to print soon.

In 2007–a digital time not spatially long ago–a month before the iPhone was production scheduled, the late Steven Jobs took some of his staff to an office. He had been carrying a prototype of the device in his pocket daily for weeks.

The report outlines a plan for the United States to pursue a China without Xi Jinping, with a weakened Communist Party, and operating in a region dominated by the US and its allies.

COVID-19 is now raging uncontrolled throughout the United States. New variants that are more easily transmitted have entered the country from the U.K., Brazil and South Africa. Vaccine is scarce.

Susan Ram explores the factors behind the February 1st military coup in Myanmar.

The 2020 uprisings articulated transformative visions of a world without anti-Black violence, a world without hyper-funded police forces and thus a world with deep community safety and care.

We thought climate catastrophe the main danger. Now we know there is another. A double-whammy ecological crisis threatens collapse into dystopian chaos.

Is U.S. President Joe Biden’s January 27 Executive Order to address ‘climate crisis’ as good as many activists claim, enough to reverse earlier scepticism?

The example of Sparta is an interesting precedent for the way in which people’s bodies have been controlled and utilized beyond their consent throughout history. The control of our bodies presupposes capitalism, but capitalism in turn has entrenched it.

As known COVID-19 infections exceed 100 million internationally, with more than two million lives lost, rich countries are now quarrelling publicly over access to limited vaccine supplies. With ‘vaccine nationalism’ widespread, multilateral arrangements have not been able to address current challenges well.