The Russian-Chinese Geopolitical Game
Governments, politicians, and media in the “western” world seem incapable of understanding geopolitical games as played by anyone elsewhere. Their analyses of the newly proclaimed accord of Russia and...
View ArticleJihadistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran
A jihadist movement, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), has just scored a stunning and sweeping victory by capturing Mosul, Iraq’s third city located in the north of the country. Their forces...
View ArticleThe Two Competing Middle-Run Scenarios for Iraq
The worldwide attention to the growing strength of the forces led by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has spawned an enormous debate about what ought to be done by all non-ISIS actors to...
View ArticleGermany and the United States: Unprecedented Breach
On July 10, the German government demanded the immediate departure of the head of the CIA mission in Berlin. Such demands are not unusual, even between ostensible allies. What is unusual is that it...
View ArticleHamas vs. Israel: Winning the Diplomatic Game
There has been a great deal of violence for about a century in the geographic zone we may today call Israel/Palestine. This zone has seen a more or less continuous struggle between Palestinian Arabs...
View ArticleThe Caliphate vs. Everyone Else
In the endless geopolitical realignments of the Middle East, the Caliphate of the Islamic State (formerly ISIS or ISIL) seems to have frightened just about everyone else involved in Middle Eastern...
View ArticleMerkel and Putin: Ukrainian Diplomacy
There is an immense amount of diplomacy going on these days concerning the quasi-civil war in Ukraine. But the only actors who really matter are Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russia’s...
View ArticleThe United States Heading for a Crash
President Barack Obama has told the United States, and in particular its Congress, that it must do something very major in the Middle East to stop disaster. The analysis of the presumed problem is...
View ArticleAfghanistan – Unending Outside Interventions
When does this story begin? It is difficult to decide. The modern story began in the nineteenth century, when the British and the Russians fought the “great game” competing to influence and control...
View ArticleSyria: Turkish Ambivalence
Amid the many and ever-evolving shifts of policies and geopolitical alliances in the various countries of the Middle East, one used to be at least sure what are the prime objectives of the major...
View ArticleLeft Victory in Brazil: World Consequences
On Oct. 26, Pres. Dilma Rousseff of Brazil of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party, PT) won re-election in the second round of voting by a narrow margin against Aécio Neves of the Partido da...
View ArticleNATO: Danger to World Peace
The official mythology is that between 1945 (or 1946) and 1989 (or 1991), the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR) confronted each other continuously – politically, militarily, and above all...
View ArticleU.S. Standing in the Middle East
On November 27, The New York Times headlined an article “Conflicting Policies on Syria and Islamic State Erode U.S. Standing in Mideast.” But this is not new. U.S. standing in the Middle East (and...
View ArticleThe Paradoxical Strength of Germany’s Merkel
Today, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany feels free to criticize openly and even harshly all the powerful nations with which she deals. They all continue to try to court her. She has incredibly high...
View ArticleCuba and the United States Resume Relations: Happy New Year!
On Dec. 17, 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro simultaneously announced that the two countries would resume normal diplomatic relations, which President Dwight D....
View ArticleIt is Painful to Live Amidst Chaos
The world-system is in serious trouble and it is causing pain to the vast majority of the world’s population. Pundits and politicians grasp at straws. They magnify every momentary, and usually...
View ArticlePanic About Panic: Russia and the World-System Today
Visiting Russia, which I recently did, is a strange experience for someone coming from the Global North. As we know, most Russians have an entirely different reading of recent world history from most...
View ArticleMulticulturalism and Its Dilemmas
Debate about something called multiculturalism is very widespread and passionate these days throughout the world. Both its advocates and those who denounce it seem to be under the illusion that...
View ArticleCombating the Islamic State: The Real Options
The Islamic State (IS) is pursuing its clearly stated objective of a greatly expanded caliphate by using extreme brutality deliberately. It expects that the extreme brutality will force others either...
View ArticleTurkey and the Kurds: A Possible Agreement
There seems now to be a real possibility of an agreement between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that would end the fierce struggle that dates at the least from the...
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