East Asia

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Empires don’t just fall like toppled trees. Instead, they weaken slowly as a succession of crises drain their strength and confidence until they suddenly begin to disintegrate. So it was with the British, French, and Soviet empires; so it now is with imperial America. Great Britain confronted serious colonial crises in […]

China

Iranian Economy Buoyed By ‘Dark Fleet’ Oil Shipments To China

Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty

By Michael Scollon | – ( RFE/RL ) – More than 6,000 kilometers from Tehran, in treacherous waters off the shores of Singapore, a “dark fleet” of oil tankers waits to offload the precious cargo that helps keep Iran’s economy afloat — a dependency that could also sink it. The fleet has grown steadily over […]

China

The US and China at Year’s End: Still Treading on the Precipice

Michael T. Klare

( Tomdispatch.com) – This hasn’t exactly been a year of good news when it comes to our war-torn, beleaguered planet, but on November 15th, U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping took one small step back from the precipice. Until they talked in a mansion near San Francisco, it seemed as if their […]

Arab World

The Gaza Conflict Opens up New Opportunities for China in the Middle East, Global South

The Conversation

Shaun Narine, St. Thomas University (Canada) | – (The Conversation) – The western world’s support for Israel as it attacks Gaza has provoked fury across the Arab world and much of the Global South. This situation undermines the West’s international standing and offers opportunities for China to enhance its regional and global diplomatic influence. Whether […]

China

Israel-Hamas Conflict puts China’s Strategy of ‘Balanced Diplomacy’ in the Middle East at Risk

The Conversation

By Andrew Latham, Macalester College | – On Oct. 30, 2023, reports began to circulate that Israel was missing from from the mapping services provided by Chinese tech companies Baidu and Alibaba, effectively signaling – or so some believed – that Beijing was siding with Hamas over Israel in the ongoing war. Within hours, Chinese […]

Artificial Intelligence

Swarms vs. Swarms: How Intelligent, Artificial or Otherwise, is any of This?

Michael T. Klare

( Tomdispatch.com) – A war with China may not be inevitable, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks observed recently, but it’s a genuine possibility and so this country must be prepared to fight and win. But victory in such a conflict will not, she suggested, come easily. China enjoys an advantage in certain measures of […]

Artificial Intelligence

AI Goes to War: Will the Pentagon’s Techno-Fantasies Pave the Way for War with China?

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com) – On August 28th, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks chose the occasion of a three-day conference organized by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), the arms industry’s biggest trade group, to announce the “Replicator Initiative.” Among other things, it would involve producing “swarms of drones” that could hit thousands of targets in […]

China

New Cold War, Ever-Hotter Planet: What could Possibly Go Wrong?

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) – Tell me, what planet are we actually on? All these decades later, are we really involved in a “second” or “new” Cold War? It’s certainly true that, as late as the 1980s, the superpowers (or so they then liked to think of themselves), the United States and the Soviet Union, were still […]

Arab World

Expansion of BRICS, the anti-G7, in the Mideast: Is the Oil Gulf no Longer Pax Americana?

Hamdullah Baycar

Exeter (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – BRICS, a group of five developing countries that include China, Russia, and India, has invited another six countries to join the bloc, making the group 11 if all accept the invitation. Among 40 interested states in membership, of which 22 had already officially asked for admission, BRICS leaders […]