Archive for the ‘China’ Category
Causes of the Ukraine War & the case for Georgian non-alignment — An interview I gave in Tbilisi, Georgia
Thursday, October 31st, 2024Europe’s foreign policy has been hacked and the consequences are dire
Tuesday, February 13th, 2024Europe’s foreign policy has been hacked and captured by US Neocon interests. That capture poses a dire threat to both European democracy and global security. The threat to global security is because Europe is now captive in the US Neocon war on China and Russia. The threat to democracy comes from European voters gradually intuiting they have been sold out, which helps explain their turn against the political establishment.
The consequences of hacking are simple and dire, but exposing it is difficult. The status quo is privileged and there is resistance to acknowledging unpleasant facts. This essay presents those facts.
What is Neoconservatism and who are the Neocons?
The starting point is understanding Neoconservatism and the Neocons. The former is a US political doctrine which rose to ascendancy in the 1990s. It holds that never again shall there be a foreign power, like the former Soviet Union, which can challenge US global hegemony. The doctrine gives the US the right to impose its will anywhere in the world, which explains why the US has over 750 bases in 80 countries, ringing both Russia and China.
(more…)The corruption of US foreign policy & weaponization of antisemitism
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2024Below are three brilliant articles and one interview that help understand geopolitics at the beginning of 2024. In my view, they should be read by anyone interested in the geopolitical situation & should be required reading for students of international relations and international political economy:
US Foreign Policy is a Scam Built on Corruption, Jeffrey Sachs, Common Dreams, December 26, 2023.
Two Cheers for Isolationism, Jeff Faux, The Nation, November 17, 2023.
Please share (or even tweet) these items.
Deglobalization, conflict, & the self-inflicted threat to democracy: consequences of US imperial over-reach
Wednesday, December 14th, 2022Because of the seriousness of the world situation, I have decided to get back in the business of doing interviews (which I do not enjoy doing). Here is a link to my interview (13/12/2022) on RT CrossTalk discussing “New Globalization?”
In that connection, here is a link to a paper (written in 2018) titled “The Fracturing of Globalization: Implications of Economic Resentments and Geopolitical Contradictions”. It significantly anticipated and predicted recent global political economic developments.
Neoliberalism and the Road to Inequality and Stagnation: A Chronicle Foretold
Friday, April 29th, 2022My latest book has recently been published by Edward Elgar.
The book explores the impact of neoliberal policies on the US, Europe, and the global economy. It shows how the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession were predictable outcomes of the neoliberal policy experiment, as is the emergence of global “race to the bottom” competition. It also explains how Europe’s economic fragility is connected to the neoliberal design of the euro. Neoliberalism creates a particular variety of capitalism and is a political choice. That means society is tacitly engaged in a “war of ideas”, the outcome of which will influence our future political economic trajectory.
The book is available HERE. The cheapest option is the e-book purchased via Googleplay (price = $13.11).
A crisis made in the USA: why Russia will likely invade Ukraine
Sunday, January 16th, 2022Preamble. Living in the US and writing honestly about US-Russia relations (and China too) is very difficult. That is because the US is the aggressor, but Russia is an authoritarian country. That split is used by the US establishment to shuffle discussion away from US aggression on to Russian authoritarianism. Side-by-side, anyone calling the US on its aggression is labelled pro-Russian. In that way, the US establishment cleverly inoculates itself against criticism and taints its critics.
President Vladimir Putin confronts a decisive historical moment. Talks with the US and its NATO partners have shown that the US has no intention of reversing its grinding long-running campaign against Russia. The US wants regime change in Russia. That does not mean democracy, talk of which is just camouflage for the true strategic objective of a permanently weakened Russia. All that matters is Russia be weakened, and the well-being of Russians is truly of no consequence in Washington.
That is the landscape Putin confronts. The implication is Russia’s position is unlikely to strengthen in years to come. Consequently, now may be the most favorable moment to take actions that both strategically strengthen Russia and achieve its own secondary long-term political goal of partial reunification of the historic European component of Russia (i.e., reabsorption of Belarus and Eastern Ukraine).
Implacable US antipathy
The baseline for the argument is recognition that the US has an implacable antipathy to Russia. That antipathy has a long history. In 1918 the US invaded Siberia, intervening in the Russian civil war between the Tsarist Whites and Reds. The invasion set the stage for pre-Cold War hatred of the Soviet Union.
(more…)Anti-China Fever in the US: a lethal contagious disease
Monday, September 20th, 2021Much of the United States (especially Washington, DC) is in the grip of a contagious lethal anti-China fever which is spreading fast.
Even people I usually admire and respect have become infected. Reason and facts have lost all capacity to inoculate.
Fortunately, I was sent a vaccine (that takes one minute to administer) which I would like to share with you:
Three points in response to China (& Russia) hawks:
(1) A mirror is a very good thing to have in these situations (probably the most valuable & cost-effective piece of equipment the Pentagon could purchase right now). When wondering about China’s naval posture in the South China Sea or Russia’s response to eastward NATO expansion, use the mirror to reflect on the Monroe doctrine & how we would react if a Chinese flagged 7th fleet were cruising the Caribbean.
(2) Ukraine & Taiwan are both special unresolved historical situations. They should each be treated as such, carved out as best possible, and not allowed to poison the entire relationship. The mortal danger is the US war lobby exploits those situations to provoke Russia and China, hoping the resulting optic will favor their ugly ambitions.
(3) In his later years, George Kennan, architect of the containment doctrine, believed the best way to deal with the Russians is to leave them to themselves (i.e. they will sabotage themselves on their own). That continues to be good advice & also has relevance for China.
The Fracturing of Globalization: Implications of Economic Resentments and Geopolitical Contradictions
Tuesday, January 15th, 2019The last forty years have witnessed a third wave of globalization which can be termed “neoliberal globalization”. Now, there are indications that the era of neoliberal globalization might be drawing to a close, as evidenced by the trade war between the US and China. This paper argues the fracturing of neoliberal globalization reflects the growing impact of economic resentments and geopolitical contradictions. The paper presents a simple analytical framework that constructs the global economy in terms of a core consisting of the US, China, and the EU. It then examines how globalization creates economic resentments and geopolitical tensions within and between members of the core, thereby fracturing globalization. The rise of US – China geopolitical competition promises to twist the character of the global economic order, which stands to be shaped by strategically motivated economic integrations and recalibrations rather than generalized global economic integration. The paper then extends the analysis to non-core country blocs and examines how they are impacted by globalization and the rise of US – China geopolitical competition. READ MORE
Three Globalizations, Not Two: Rethinking the History and Economics of Trade and Globalization
Tuesday, July 24th, 2018The conventional wisdom is there have been two globalizations in the modern era. The first began around 1870 and ended in 1914. The second began in 1945 and is still underway. This paper challenges that view and argues there have been three globalizations, not two. The first half of the paper provides empirical evidence for the three globalizations hypothesis. The second half discusses its analytical implications. The Victorian first globalization and Keynesian era second globalization were driven by gains from trade, and those gains increased industrialized country real wages. The neoliberal third globalization has been driven by industrial reorganization motivated by distributional conflict. Trade theory does not explain the third globalization; capital’s share has increased at the expense of labor’s; and there can be no presumption of mutually beneficial country gains from the third globalization.
Globalization Checkmated? Political and Geopolitical Contradictions Coming Home to Roost
Tuesday, July 24th, 2018The deepening of economic globalization appears to have ground to a halt and the process may even unravel a little. The sudden stop has surprised economists, whose belief in globalization has strong parallels with Fukuyama’s (1989) flawed end of history hypothesis. The paper presents a simple analytic model that shows how economic globalization has triggered political and geopolitical contradictions. For the system to work, politics within countries and geopolitics across blocs must be supportive of the system. That is missing. The model is applied to a global economic core consisting of the US, China, and the European Union. It is revealing of multiple tensions, fracture lines, and contradictions. Within the US, globalization has delivered economic outcomes that have estranged the electoral bases of both major political parties. It has also delivered outcomes that are inconsistent with the US neocon geopolitical inclination. President Trump is a product of those forces, and he will likely prove to be a historically significant figure. That is because he has surfaced geopolitical contradictions that cannot be swept back under the rug. Ironically, his biggest impact may be on the European Union, particularly Germany, which is being compelled to recognize the neocon nature of the US and the vulnerabilities of dependence on US exports and technology. China was already aware of its vulnerabilities in those regards.