Asia

( Tomdispatch.com) – America’s pundits and politicians have largely concluded that a new Cold War with China — a period of intense hostility and competition falling just short of armed combat — has started. “Rift Threatens U.S. Cold War Against China,” as a New York Times headline put it on May 15th, citing recent clashes […]

Afghanistan

Will our Post-Pandemic Forever Wars be Fought at a Social Distance?

Danny Sjursen

( Tomdispatch.com) – Covid-19, an ongoing global human tragedy, may have at least one silver lining. It has led millions of people to question America’s most malignant policies at home and abroad. Regarding Washington’s war policies abroad, there’s been speculation that the coronavirus might, in the end, put a dent in such conflicts, if not […]

China

Trump’s ‘Uncreative Destruction’ of the U.S.-China Relationship

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Economists like to think of the wreckage caused by stock market downturns, widespread bankruptcies, and corporate downsizing as “creative destruction.” As it destroys the old and the dysfunctional, the capitalist system continually spurs innovation, much as a forest fire prepares the ground for new growth. Or so the […]

Afghanistan

On Memorial Day: How the US Lost its “Battle of Aqaba” to the Coronavirus

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On July 6, 1917, Auda Abu Tayy led his Howeitat tribesmen in a successful attack on the Ottoman port of Aqaba in what is now Jordan but was then the Ottoman Empire. The Arabs of the Hejaz or Western Arabia and the Transjordan had allied with the British to revolt […]

Bangladesh

Double Whammy of Climate-Driven Monster Cyclone and Coronavirus hits Thousands in India, Bangladesh

Juan Cole

Don’t get complacent: North America is also Vulnerable

Central Intelligence Agency

Coronavirus and Intelligence: Trump is Getting up Conflict with China the way Bush did with Iraq

Bob Dreyfuss

By Bob Dreyfuss | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – There’s a meme that appears now and then on Facebook and other social media: “Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. Yet those who do study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it.” That’s funny. What’s not is […]

China

How China’s Han Empire Predicted America’s Imperial Decay

Martin Powers

Ann Arbor (Special to Informed Comment) – The Han dynasty’s collapse is an abject lesson in imperial decay that prefigures in alarming ways our own national decline. Bad policies replaced professionalism with cronyism and compromised formal checks on administration. Three years of the Trump administration can be compared with Han Imperial decline point for point. […]

European Union

Western Powers must Stop Rolling out the Red Carpet for Modi and Hindu Nationalism amid Pandemic: DiEM25

Arturo Desimone

The Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) expresses concern for the role of Kashmir in a dispute between two nuclear powers. We call on all participants to pledge to a process of nuclear disarmament of the subcontinent and of the long running India-Pakistan conflict, in which Kashmir represents one of the more inflammatory points. As […]

Afghanistan

Celebrated to Death: Memorial Day Is Killing Us, says an Afghanistan Vet

Tomdispatch

[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Here’s a way to support TomDispatch in tough times and end up with a good book while you’re stuck at home in this pandemic moment. For a donation of $100 ($125 if you live outside the U.S.), you can get a signed, personalized copy of Erik Edstrom’s striking new work, Un-American: […]