What the West gets wrong about China

What the West gets wrong about China

Rana Mitter and Elsbeth Johnson August 23, 2021 Many people have wrongly assumed that political freedom would follow new economic freedoms in China and that its economic growth would have to be built on the same foundations as in the West. The authors suggest that those assumptions are rooted in three essentially false beliefs about modern China: […]

The East-West WWIII Tinderbox & Authoritarian-ization of America

The East-West WWIII Tinderbox & Authoritarian-ization of America

Gordon Hahn on Guadalajara Geopolitics Institute August 10, 2021  Professor Gordon Hahn is interviewed by Hrvoje Morić of Geopolitics & Empire Gordon Hahn discusses what he calls the New East-West Cold War or Russia-West Tinderbox, which can potentially escalate into a WWIII scenario. He examines the key drivers between the Russia-West divide which is primarily […]

Op-Ed: We don’t need a new Cold War with China

Op-Ed: We don’t need a new Cold War with China

Andrew Bacevich July 1, 2021 Has a new Cold War, this one pitting the United States against the People’s Republic of China, commenced? Rhetoric coming out of Washington, amplified by hawkish media commentary, appears to take a Second Cold War as a given, something perhaps even to be welcomed. Originally posted by Los Angeles Times […]

Will the coronavirus pandemic help curb war and militarism?

Will the coronavirus pandemic help curb war and militarism?

May 25, 2020 Dr. Lawrence Wittner Decades ago, when I began teaching international history, I used to ask students if they thought it was possible for nations to end their fighting of wars against one another. Their responses varied. But the more pessimistic conclusions were sometimes tempered by the contention that, if the world’s nations […]

Umberto Eco’s list of the 14 common features of Fascism

Umberto Eco’s list of the 14 common features of Fascism

By Umberto Eco February 24, 2020 One of the key questions facing both journalists and loyal oppositions these days is how do we stay honest as euphemisms and trivializations take over the discourse? Can we use words like “fascism,” for example, with fidelity to the meaning of that word in world history? The term, after all, devolved […]

Phantom democracy: A puzzle at the heart of Chinese politics

Phantom democracy: A puzzle at the heart of Chinese politics

The Goddess of democracy at Victoria Park in Hong Kong. Photo credit: AP The notion of a globally menacing ‘authoritarian China’ is too simplistic. Dig deeper, and you will find signs of local democratic experiments, thanks to its skittish rulers afraid of losing control By John Keane January 2, 2019 As China rapidly moves to […]

No Normalization: All the Fascist Highlights Trump still Hits

No Normalization: All the Fascist Highlights Trump still Hits

By Juan Cole Fascism as a political ideology is difficult to define, in part because it usually contains a big dose of populism, and the content of populism differs from people to people Via juancole.com In my view Mussolini’s fascism in Italy is a fair exemplar of the phenomenon. One characteristic fascist societies have in […]