Articles
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
The threat from China to the US and the West is real but it is not a military one, as the media would have us believe, which is used as the pretext for increased arms spending. In fact, it is the US that has threatened to annex Canada, take over Greenland, take back the Panama Canal (which it has partly succeeded in) take over Ukrainian mineral resources and redevelop Gaza ethnically cleansed of Palestinians. By contrast, what China has been doing is developing its technology and industry so that it is now a leading force in hi tech and green industries. This came into sharp relief with the success of DeepSeek’s new artificial intelligence system. This is what motivates Trump. He wants to focus on the serious challenge that China poses to the United States status as the world’s one superpower.
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
One aspect of the build up for war with China is the rearmament and increasingly aggressive military posture of Japan. Imperialists in Japan have long sought to shed the constraints placed on it as a defeated nation after the Second World War and now they have been given the green light to do this by the United States, which wants Japan to be part of the military encirclement of China and of Russia in the East. However, as the only country which has experienced the use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is also a strong peace movement in Japan which rejects these moves.
Sunday, October 13, 2024
In August the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina resigned. On the surface, and as reported in mainstream media outlets, she was forced to step down due to student protests, but there were deeper geopolitical reasons behind her ousting. Not least she had raised US ire by refusing to host a United States military base in Bangladesh and by drawing closer to China and the BRICS countries. The student movement, as has happened in similar situations in other countries, provided leverage for the US regime change agenda.
Saturday, October 8, 2022
Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan was a deliberate provocation to China, designed to ramp up tensions as prelude to a possible war. This visit was extremely dangerous as the United States heads towards unilaterally ripping up the internationally agreed “One China” principle which recognises that Taiwan is part of China.
Wednesday, October 5, 2022
The US is experiencing resistance from the developing world to its aggressive policies on China. The number of countries giving diplomatic recognition to Taiwan has declined form 28 in 2008 to 13 now. The latest to change its affiliation is the Solomon Islands which has recently concluded a range of agreements with China. It is strategically important in the Pacific area and its closer ties with China have led to threats against it from Australia and the USA.
Sunday, October 2, 2022
Whilst much of the focus is currently on the war in Ukraine the West has also been active in other former Soviet Republics surrounding Russia aiming the woo some and foment regime change in others. there are also those in the West who advocate for the break up of Russia.
Sunday, March 27, 2022
The biggest target the US has in its sights is China. There are similarities between the stand off with Russia over Ukraine and the attempt by the US to manufacture a crisis over Taiwan. Here too it has ignored historic agreements, increased tensions through talking up threats of war, war-planning and stationing military forces in the region. Here too both geopolitical and economic factors are at work. The US wants to prevent a peaceful reunification of China, as a separate Taiwan gives it strategic power in the Asia Pacific region. And of course, Taiwan also has a highly advanced semiconductor sector which it does not want China to get access to.
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
The United States’ world role under Biden has been different from Donald Trump only in that has been more effective in asserting US dominance, and bullying other countries. However, it is also causing consternation among US allies which are increasingly unhappy about its actions.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan was a shock. Previously Trump and Obama had talked about “ending the forever wars” and “pivoting to Asia”, but they had never taken the final step of pulling out of Afghanistan. However, it was not just that Biden did it, but the manner of the departure – hurried and without consultation – that bothered allies.
There were huge ramifications arising from this, not only making allies wary, but also changing the power relationships in the region and beyond, involving China, Russia, Pakistan, Turkey, India and others. Although the United States remains the world’s preeminent power it has damaged its reputation and emboldened voices among US allies who want their nations to be less dependent on an unreliable partner. This is particularly evident in the European Union with strengthened calls from many leading politicians, like Emmanuel Macron, for EU “strategic autonomy”.