Foreign Policy Category Archive

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XI Reads Multilateral Riot Act to Virtual Davos

Xi shows the contrast between Asia's relative serenity and the chaos engulfing the West’s top power centers

Pepe Escobar • January 26, 2021

• 900 Words • 15 Comments • Reply

The virtual Davos Agenda is finally on, from Monday to Friday this week, promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF). No, this is not The Great Reset. At least not yet. The Agenda is the aperitivo towards the Great Reset apotheosis at the WEF’s Special Annual Meeting, which will take place this coming spring in... Read More

Source: Foreign Ministry of the People’s Republic of China

Containment Is Futile: Europe and China Seal Investment Deal as U.S. Grumbles

Guillaume Durocher • January 6, 2021

• 1,400 Words • 227 Comments • Reply

The European Union and China have agreed “in principle” to a deal on investment after seven long years of negotiation, pointedly ignoring the concerns of the incoming Biden administration. The economic consequences of the so-called Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) remain unclear, but the political signals are telling: the EU is following an essentially German... Read More

Dragon Flies, Eagle Crashes at Geoeconomic Summits

Pepe Escobar • November 23, 2020

• 1,100 Words • 19 Comments • Reply

Four geoeconomic summits compressed in one week tell the story of where we stand in these supremely dystopian times. The (virtual) signing of RCEP in Vietnam was followed by the equally virtual BRICS meeting hosted by Moscow, the APEC meeting hosted by Malaysia, and the G20 this past weekend hosted by Saudi Arabia. Cynics have... Read More

Coexistence with China or Cold War II?

Pat Buchanan • May 12, 2020

• 800 Words • 68 Comments • Reply

Under fire for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump, his campaign and his party are moving to lay blame for the 80,000 U.S. dead at the feet of the Communist Party of China and, by extension, its longtime General Secretary, President Xi Jinping. "There is a significant amount of evidence" that the... Read More

Coronavirus Devastates Italy: Is It the Result of Globalism and Free Trade?

Philip Giraldi • April 9, 2020

• 1,200 Words • 38 Comments • Reply

The devastating impact of the coronavirus on Italy has sparked considerable speculation as to why the country appears to have suffered so disproportionately from the disease. Some initial theories suggested that the deaths might be due to lower standards and ill-advised practices in the Italian national health system, but the reality is that northern Italy,... Read More

Will the Coronavirus Kill the New World Order?

Pat Buchanan • March 13, 2020

• 800 Words • 86 Comments • Reply

Dr. Brian Monahan, attending physician of Congress, told a closed meeting of Senate staffers this week that 70 million to 150 million Americans -- a third of the nation -- could contract the coronavirus. Dr. Anthony Fauci testified that the mortality rate for COVID-19 will likely run near 1%. Translation: Between 750,000 and 1.1 million... Read More

Remarks on the US/China “Trade Deal”

Paul Craig Roberts • January 18, 2020

• 400 Words

The first thing to understand is that it is not a trade deal. It is Trump backing off his tariffs when he discovered that the tariffs fall on US goods and American consumers, not on China. Trump is covering his retraction by calling it a trade deal. China’s part of the deal is to agree... Read More

China, Number One Economic Power for Half Decade, Dashes On

Ignorance or Denial by the U.S. Poses Grave Dangers

John V. Walsh • January 14, 2020

• 3,600 Words • 202 Comments • Reply

The recent China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai attracted little attention in the Western press but it is one more reminder that China is an economic and trading powerhouse that has surpassed the US. That is right, the word is “surpassed.” The CIIE also serves to remind us that China’s economic power now stands... Read More

New European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants a “carbon tariff” on imports to Europe.

Europe Is Turning Against Free Trade

Guillaume Durocher • October 19, 2019

• 1,100 Words • 112 Comments • Reply

After decades of piously reciting neoliberal orthodoxy, extolling a ‘post-political’ borderless world, the European Union seems finally to be turning away from free trade. Numerous factors are working in this direction: a decades-late reaction to China’s mercantilist trade policies which have gutted European industry, the threat of trade wars with America under President Donald Trump,... Read More

US-China "Trade" War? No Way. Only the Defeat of Turbo-Capitalism!

Andre Vltchek • October 17, 2019

• 1,800 Words • 88 Comments • Reply

It is very popular these days to talk and write about the “trade war” between the United States and China. But is there really one raging? Or is it, what we are witnessing, simply a clash of political and ideological systems: one being extremely successful and optimistic, the other depressing, full of dark cynicism and... Read More

Is China the Country of the Future?

Pat Buchanan • October 4, 2019

• 900 Words • 170 Comments • Reply

"Who Lost China?" With the fall of the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, the defeat of his armies and the flight to Formosa, that was the question of the hour in 1949. And no one demanded to know more insistently than the anti-Communist Congressman John F. Kennedy: "Whatever share of the responsibility was Roosevelt's and... Read More

China, Not Russia, the Greater Threat

Pat Buchanan • August 13, 2019

• 800 Words • 169 Comments • Reply

Ten weeks of protests, some huge, a few violent, culminated Monday with a shutdown of the Hong Kong airport. Ominously, Beijing described the violent weekend demonstrations as "deranged" acts that are "the first signs of terrorism," and vowed a merciless crackdown on the perpetrators. China is being pushed toward a decision it does not want... Read More

China Trade War: America's Policy Dilemma

Godfree Roberts • July 13, 2019

• 3,100 Words • 223 Comments • Reply

EMBARGO DILEMMA Modern China has spent forty of its seventy years under American and Western embargoes, so the current round is nothing new. How likely is it to succeed? In 1949 Mao inherited the poorest country on earth, devastated by a century of wars, occupation, disease, and famine. The US immediately broke all contacts, withdrew... Read More

Trump’s Trade Threats Are Really Cold War 2.0

The G20 Meeting in Japan

Michael Hudson • June 13, 2019

• 900 Words • 161 Comments • Reply

President Trump has threatened China’s President Xi that if they don’t meet and talk at the upcoming G20 meetings in Japan, June 29-30, the United States will not soften its tariff war and economic sanctions against Chinese exports and technology. Some meeting between Chinese and U.S. leaders will indeed take place, but it cannot be... Read More

War with China?

It’s Already Under Way

Michael T. Klare • February 17, 2019

• 3,300 Words • 184 Comments • Reply

In his highly acclaimed 2017 book, Destined for War, Harvard professor Graham Allison assessed the likelihood that the United States and China would one day find themselves at war. Comparing the U.S.-Chinese relationship to great-power rivalries all the way back to the Peloponnesian War of the fifth century BC, he concluded that the future risk... Read More

Trade War III

Third Time's the Charm

Godfree Roberts • September 22, 2018

• 2,800 Words • 303 Comments • Reply

This is America’s third trade war on China: we held its head under water from 1949-1971 and from 1989-92. Inter alia, the US, the EU and the USSR embargoed all weapons technology to prevent China from independently developing the H-Bomb or launching satellites. She did both and kept her economy growing debt-free, twice as fast... Read More

Can Donald Trump Unite the World (Against Himself)?

The Rise of an Anti-Trump Movement Globally -- and on His Home Turf

Dilip Hiro • August 23, 2018

• 2,700 Words • 2 Comments • Reply

One thing already seems clear in the Trump era: the world will not turn out to be the American president’s playground. His ultra-unilateralist, rejectionist policies on trade, the Iran denuclearization agreement, the costs of defense, and climate change are already creating an incipient anti-Trump movement globally (and in the United States as well). To a... Read More

Protectionism Abroad and Socialism at Home

Ron Paul • August 20, 2018

• 600 Words • 5 Comments • Reply

One of the most insidious ways politicians expand government is by creating new programs to “solve” problems created by politicians. For example, government interference in health care increased health care costs, making it difficult or even impossible for many to obtain affordable, quality care. The effects of these prior interventions were used to justify Obamacare.... Read More

Trump Marches Onward and Downward

James Petras • July 11, 2018

• 1,800 Words • 93 Comments • Reply

Introduction Journalists, academics, pundits and experts have ignored the complexity of President Trump’s impact on the state of the US Empire. To properly assess the geopolitical configuration of power, we will consider the military, economic, political and diplomatic advances and setbacks of the Trump regime in Latin America, the European Union and Asia (including the... Read More

Imperial President or Emperor with No Clothes?

How Donald Trump’s Trade Wars Could Lead to a Great Depression

Nomi Prins • June 21, 2018

• 2,600 Words • 207 Comments • Reply

Leaders are routinely confronted with philosophical dilemmas. Here’s a classic one for our Trumptopian times: If you make enemies out of your friends and friends out of your enemies, where does that leave you? What does winning (or losing) really look like? Is a world in which walls of every sort encircle America’s borders a... Read More

The Absence of Diplomacy Is Isolating Washington

Paul Craig Roberts • June 5, 2018

• 2,000 Words

The dissolution of the Soviet Union removed the constraint on Washington’s unilateralism. The neoconservatives, who had just risen to power, seized the opportunity and replaced diplomacy with threat and coercion. One infamous example is from the George W. Bush regime when the Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, told Pakistan to do as you are... Read More

Fatal Delusions of Western Man

Pat Buchanan • March 2, 2018

• 800 Words • 96 Comments • Reply

"We got China wrong. Now what?" ran the headline over the column in The Washington Post. "Remember how American engagement with China was going to make that communist backwater more like the democratic, capitalist West?" asked Charles Lane in his opening sentence. America's elites believed that economic engagement and the opening of U.S. markets would... Read More

Trump the Eradicator

Eric Margolis • December 30, 2017

• 800 Words • 17 Comments • Reply

There is much President Trump does not understand about the outside world. High up on the list is the crucial importance of US trade policy in creating and sustaining the American Empire. The key to the post-World War II US imperium was granting other nations commercial access to the huge, vibrant American domestic market. This,... Read More

President Trump: Diplomacy and Democracy in America

James Petras • February 16, 2017

• 2,200 Words • 20 Comments • Reply

Introduction By the end of the first month of President Trump’s Administration we are in a better position to evaluate the policies and direction of the new President. An examination of foreign and domestic policy, particularly from a historical and comparative perspective will provide insights about whether America is heading for a catastrophe as the... Read More

Mock-up of planned Russian-Chinese airliner to compete with Boeing and Airbus. To enter service by 2025. Ambitious? Oh yes. Remember when we laughed at Toyota, Airbus, and Trump? Credit: Sputnik News.

Sidestepping the Military Leviathan

Make Money, Not War

Fred Reed • January 19, 2017

• 1,200 Words • 149 Comments • Reply

Is Washington really going to start a trade war with China, or is it just huffing and puffing for position? I don’t know. Mr. Trump has inexplicably failed to brief me. A point worth bearing in mind: The United States cannot compete commercially with a developed Asia, or China. America has nowhere to go. It... Read More

Democracy Sold Out to Greed

While the “free Western media” cheers, the Western “democratic” governments sell out the peoples of the Western...

Paul Craig Roberts • December 1, 2015

• 100 Words • 6 Comments

John Massaria has turned my interview with Julian Charles into a video. The video helps me to bring home that “Western democracy” is a sham, a total lie. Every Western government and Washington’s Asian vassal states are totally under the control of private corporations and private interest groups. The corporations govern, and they are in... Read More

Vietnam: from National Liberation to Trans-Pacific Vassalage 1975-2015

James Petras • October 18, 2015

• 2,300 Words • Leave a Comment

Introduction: In 1975 the people of Vietnam successfully ended one of the longest and bloodiest anti-colonial wars in world-history – defeating the US, the world’s biggest imperial power, after 20 years of struggle. Barely forty years later the Vietnamese regime signed off on the US-Japanese dominated Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement (TPFTA), which essentially converted Vietnam... Read More

Grandmaster of the Great Game

Obama’s Geopolitical Strategy for Containing China

Alfred McCoy • September 15, 2015

• 4,600 Words • 41 Comments • Reply

In ways that have eluded Washington pundits and policymakers, President Barack Obama is deploying a subtle geopolitical strategy that, if successful, might give Washington a fighting chance to extend its global hegemony deep into the twenty-first century. After six years of silent, sometimes secret preparations, the Obama White House has recently unveiled some bold diplomatic... Read More

The Philanthropic Superpower

Pat Buchanan • May 2, 2014

• 900 Words • 4 Comments • Reply

If a single word could sum up the goal of Barack Obama's Asia tour, it would be "reassurance." Obama went to Tokyo to reassure Japan that, should China attempt to seize its Senkaku Islands, America will fight at her side. He reassured Seoul of our commitment to defend South Korea. He went to Manila to... Read More

US 'Pivots', China Reaps Dividends

Pepe Escobar • April 24, 2014

• 1,100 Words • Leave a Comment

Let's start with a flashback to February 1992 - only two months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. First draft of the US government's Defense Planning Guidance. It was later toned down, but it still formed the basis for the exceptionalist dementia incarnated by the Project for the New American Century; and also reappeared... Read More

“Free” Trade: Undermining Defense, Sovereignty, and the American Job Market

Nothing To Do with Either Freedom or Trade

Peter Gemma • January 23, 2014

• 1,200 Words • 7 Comments • Reply

A powerful conglomerate consisting of Wall Street moguls, multi-national corporate elites, and political insiders — the one percent cabal as some call them — are mounting an assault on the American economy, endangering national defense, and subverting U.S. sovereignty. Their weaponry includes so-called “free trade” treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) —... Read More

Shootout at the APEC Free-Trade Corral

Pepe Escobar • October 8, 2013

• 900 Words • Leave a Comment

What a photo - yet another instance of Bali working its magic. Chinese President Xi Jinping leads a "Happy Birthday" for Russian President Vladimir Putin, with Indonesian President Susilo Yudhoyono on acoustic guitar. You know who is not in the picture - he's in shutdown containment mode. US Think Tankland protestations notwithstanding, there could not... Read More

Empire Is Bad Business

The Pentagon sells out American manufacturing for Japanese bases.

Eamonn Fingleton • The American Conservative • January 20, 2011

• 2,500 Words • Leave a Comment

TOKYO—When German executives visit Tokyo, they are often treated to a session at Bernd’s Bar, a notably authentic German pub. A bit too authentic, perhaps, given its Axis-era accoutrements. The last time I was there, one of the walls still featured a huge photograph of Willy Messerschmitt in conversation with Charles Lindbergh. It had evidently... Read More

"Free Trade" Items Across Entire Archive

Category Classics

American Pravda: Our Coronavirus Catastrophe as Biowarfare Blowback?

Ron Unz

• 1,638 Comments • Reply

9/11 Was an Israeli Job

How America was neoconned into World War IV

Laurent Guyénot

• 444 Comments • Reply

John McCain and the POW Cover-Up

The “war hero” candidate buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam.

Sydney Schanberg