Cold war

In separate incidents, Moscow and Beijing sent a strong message that they will not tolerate being told what to do or how to behave Tony Kevin April 26, 2021 The past week has marked a watershed moment in Russia’s relations with the West – and the US in particular. In two dramatic, televised moments, US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin changed the dynamics between their countries, perhaps irrevocably. Originally posted on Asia Times on March 26, 2021 Most commentators in the West have focused on Putin’s “trolling” of Biden by dryly – though, according to Putin, unironically – wishing his American counterpart “good health.” This, of course, came after Biden called Putin a “killer.” But a more careful and complete reading of Putin’s message to the US is necessary to understand how a Russian leader is, finally, ready to tell the US: Do not judge us by...

Photo credit: The United Nations The UN Security Council is now the battleground for a new Cold War between the US and China Thalif Deen April 23, 2021 UNITED NATIONS, Apr 14 2021 (IPS) – A new Cold War – this time, between the US and China —is threatening to paralyze the UN’s most powerful body, even as military conflicts and civil wars are sweeping across the world, mostly in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The growing criticism against the Security Council is directed largely at its collective failures to resolve ongoing conflicts and political crises in several hot spots, including Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Ukraine and Libya — and its longstanding failure over Palestine. The sharp divisions between China and Russia, on one side, and the Western powers on the other, are expected to continue, triggering the question: Has the Security Council outlived its...

William J. Burns, President Biden’s nominee to run the CIA, speaks at his confirmation hearing on February 23rd. [Source: nytimes.com] March 30, 2021 Jeremy Kuzmarov William J. Burns’ appointment offers little more than an image makeover for the agency. As a diplomat, Burns supported U.S. military interventions in Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria and is now stoking the coals against Russia and China. William J. Burns was confirmed by a unanimous vote in the Senate on Thursday, March 18th, becoming the first former diplomat to become CIA director. At his confirmation hearing on February 26th, Burns continued a long agency tradition of playing up the threat from Russia and China along with North Korea, and said that Iran should not be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. Burns’s testimony signaled a continuation of business as usual for the agency in its promotion of alarmist rhetoric and ruthless geopolitical competition and...

Natylie Baldwin March 15, 2021 February 22nd marks 75 years since George F. Kennan sent his famous “Long Telegram” to the State Department in which he provided an assessment of the Soviet Union that led to the U.S. containment policy of the Cold War. The Cold War, in turn, saw various conflicts, scores of covert operations, regime changes, and a nuclear arms race.  Conventional wisdom generally has it that Kennan’s assessment of the Soviet government was accurate.  But was it?  And if it wasn’t accurate, why has it been treated as a brilliant analysis that underpinned a policy still characterized as an inevitable necessity? In order to answer those questions, it is necessary to look at who George F. Kennan was, what the main points of his analysis were and how they have held up to the historical facts, as well as the political context in which his assessment was...

Cooperation would be much better for all, more desirable and perfectly possible. But some want confrontation. Roberto Savio February 2, 2020 It will be quite different from the Cold War with the Soviet Union… While the Coronavirus has rightly taken much of our attention, a fundamental geopolitical realignment has been taking shape in the world, and it will become clearer in 2021. The realignment is the start of a Second Cold War, which hopefully will not become a ‘hot’ war. The new Cold War will be between China and the West, but it will be quite different from the one with the Soviet Union. The world has changed significantly since 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Originally posted on Wall Street International, December 29, 2020 The gap between the two opposing camps is now much smaller. The Soviet Union, a military giant with little industrial development,...

Credit: amagnawa1092/Shutterstock Andrew J. Bacevich February 1, 2020 A new essay casts doubt on the China threat as promulgated by our nation’s ruling elite. Writing in the journal Palladium, Richard Hanania has produced the first must-read essay of 2021. A research fellow at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Hanania is part of an emerging generation of young scholars who reject the increasingly dubious verities of the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. Their arrival comes not a moment too soon. Originally published by The American Conservative on January 4, 2021 The title of Hanania’s piece is “China’s Real Threat is to America’s Ruling Ideology.” In this context, ideology refers not only to a belief system – liberal democratic capitalism, in our case – but also to a theory of history. Hanania’s real subject is delusion: Washington’s insistence despite abundant evidence to the contrary that the American way of life defines the...

By Gordon Dumoulin TFF Associate in Beijing December 14, 2020 When numbers do not add up anymore, people turn to faith… I couldn’t suppress the feeling of a sense of a religious undertone when I went through the following report of more than 70 pages, released a little while ago by the US Secretary of State: The Elements of the China Challenge. It’s a 10-step blueprint for confronting the ‘China Challenge’ or maybe better phrased the 10 Commandments to counter the severe threat of China to the current world order – ‘the free world’. A senior administration official told the Washington Examiner that “over the coming weeks, the Trump administration will continue to expand the depth and breadth of the historic actions it has taken over the past four years to protect the vital interests of the United States and its allies countering Beijing’s predatory and coercive behaviors”. Originally published at Gordon...

Chinese students in U.S. universities are increasingly becoming the collateral damage of the ongoing China-U.S. friction. The University of North Texas (UNT) recently became the first American university to cut ties with the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) resulting in the expulsion of 15 Chinese visiting researchers. Beijing has criticized the decision, calling it yet another example of the U.S.’s sabotage of people-to-people exchanges. Meanwhile U.S. President Donald Trump is weighing a blanket restriction on Chinese students from studying in the U.S., according to reports. China has been the largest source of international students in U.S. for over a decade. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and Trump’s “unpredictable policies” have already reduced Chinese demand for a U.S. education. Beijing-based Dutch educator and a proponent of cross-cultural competence – and TFF Associate – Gordon Dumoulin sees the latest UNT action as part of the larger decoupling trend between the U.S. and China. “The radical...

Pepe Escobar August 26, 2020 Let’s start with the story of an incredibly disappearing summit. Every August, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) converges to the town of Beidaihe, a seaside resort some two hours away from Beijing, to discuss serious policies that then coalesce into key planning strategies to be approved at the CCP Central Committee plenary session in October. The Beidaihe ritual was established by none other than Great Helmsman Mao, who loved the town where, not by accident, Emperor Qin, the unifier of China in the 3rd century B.C., kept a palace. 2020 being, so far, a notorious Year of Living Dangerously, it’s no surprise that in the end Beidaihe was nowhere to be seen. Yet Beidaihe’s invisibility does not mean it did not happen. Exhibit 1 was the fact that Premier Li Keqiang simply disappeared from public view for nearly two weeks – after...

Photo: U.S. President Richard Nixon and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai toast, Feb. 25, 1972. (White House/Wikimedia Commons) A rant by Mike Pompeo regarding what the U.S. should do with China led to a fruitful exchange between an old China, and an old Soviet hand, writes Ray McGovern. August 24. 2020 Ray McGovern Quick. Somebody tell Mike Pompeo. The secretary of state is not supposed to play the role of court jester — the laughing stock to the world. There was no sign that any of those listening to his “major China policy statement” last Thursday at the Nixon Library turned to their neighbor and said, “He’s kidding, right? Richard Nixon meant well but failed miserably to change China’s behavior? And now Pompeo is going to put them in their place?” Originally published at consortiumnews.com Yes, that was Pompeo’s message. The torch has now fallen to him and the free world. Here’s...

The war in Syria has dropped out of the news, like almost everything else, in a time when the Coronavirus seems to dominate all discourse and reporting. But the regime of Bashar al-Assad continues to strangle its own country. The Russians continue to bomb on his behalf, terrifying civilians and hospitals. The Americans work semi-clandestinely to undermine both the regime and its Russian backers. There is no sign in the US-Soviet relationship of what was called in the 1970s and 80s détente. The big powers, Russia, the US, the UK and France appear intent on maintaining their interests in the Middle East. Russia has long been a friend of Syria and has had its single foreign base there since Soviet days. For even longer the US, France and the UK have been a friend of Saudi Arabia and today provide weapons for the Saudi air force so it can support...

By Jan Oberg March 17, 2020 Defender Europe 20 is a huge, basically US military exercise, on European soil between February and May this year. It has already started. In the midst of a closed-down coronavirus Europe. And it is war-preparing, not peace- or confidence-building. The diagram above from the British Army offers you details of this perverse, surreal idea – take note of Italy being one of the planned participants! Most likely, you have not heard about Defender Europe 20. When it comes to US foreign and war policies, all Western mainstream media practise self-censorship. The media would hardly be able to write about this exercise of militarist madness in a way that would not cause an uproar and moral condemnation in these times of deep, widespread concerns about war risks, climate change and the coronavirus. So better not write at all and cause diplomatic troubles with the unpredictable,...